engleski

(Non)Comic book market in Croatia

Comics are different today than they use to be. Golden ages for book comics in Croatia were the 1970’ and the 1980’s. Yugoslavia was than the fifth European country in comic book publishing. Due to the war in 90’s and after-war economic situation in Croatia, many generations have grown up without comics. Some of the problems in comic-books publishing today are: lots of investements and none, or very little, financial reward for the publishers, small market, small number of copies, high prices of print copies on the market and free copies downloadable from the web, lost habit of reading comics. The aim of the paper is to analyze comic book market in Croatia, as former Yugoslav Republic (from 1926 to 1990) and as an independent state (1990 till today). For the purpose of research, following research questions were set: Who were, and are, comic book publishers in Croatia? Who were, and are, comic book authors and illustrators in Croatia? How has the comic book market changed? What do students know about the comic books and do they like to read them? Research methodology: content analysis and the print questionnaire. Content analysis was used on the websites of the comic book publishers, comic bookstores and other sites of the comic-book communities in order to explore the market and provide answers to the RQ1 and RQ2. Data for the analysis were gathered from the online databases of comic bookstores. For the RQ4, the following hypotheses have been set: H1: Students don’t read comic books because they don’t find them interesting compared to the other media, like video games, cartoons, electronic publications, H2: Students don’t read comic books because they don’t have the habit of reading any other periodical publications (newspapers, magazines), H3: Students don’t know anything about the comic book authors, illustrators or publishers in Croatia. It is expected that research will contribute to better understanding of comic-book publishing environment, as well as provide some of the solutions of the comic-book publishing problems.

comic-books; market; Croatia; publishing

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