Jeezus, imagine had it been Bitcher & Prickman!

Beatrice Bitcher

Richard Prickman

My Thoughts on E-Book Pricing? Let Me Draw You a Picture
Julie Bosman
Tuesday, September 4, 2012

This comic strip is among five pages of strips about e-book pricing that Bob Kohn filed with a federal court

The Department of Justice’s proposed settlement with three book publishers over accusations of e-book price fixing has prompted hundreds of court filings, responses and public comments in advance of the settlement’s final approval before a federal judge.

Until now, none has arrived in graphic novel format.

On Tuesday afternoon, Bob Kohn, the chairman and chief executive of RoyaltyShare and one of the more outspoken critics of the settlement, filed a friend-of-the-court brief that laid out his case in five pages of black-and-white comic strips. In an e-mail, Mr. Kohn said he had been spurred to do so when Judge Denise L. Cote of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who is presiding over the case, required him to keep his brief to five pages.

Finding it difficult to whittle his 93-page argument into five pages, Mr. Kohn, an authority on licensing, rights and antitrust matters, tried a different approach.

“I thought of the idea of using pictures which, as we know, paint a thousand words,” Mr. Kohn said in an e-mail.

He called his daughter, Katie, who is studying for her Ph.D in film studies at Harvard, who connected him with a fellow student, Julia Alekseyeva. After conferring with Ms. Alekseyeva, Mr. Kohn wrote the script and she drew the illustrations. (Judge Cote and Mr. Kohn play a role in the fictional narrative.)

Mr. Kohn filed the brief on Tuesday afternoon.