Slashdot Mirror
Webcomics As Business Model
oddjobs writes "It's not the most groundbreaking article, but the Chicago Tribune does a pretty good job of looking at the state of webcomics-as-business-model. They mention the usual suspects (Marvel, McCloud) but most hopeful is Unbound Comics, which is selling comics collected in Adobe's e-book format. Fans of the 80s book Dalgoda take note."
I think that most webcomic writers do what they do for the fun they have drawing/writing comics. I don't think its much of a business thing. Take PVP. Scott gets profit from writing actual comic books (although, I'm sure, he probably gets some good money from the site also).
And then there's Sluggy Freelance (a GREAT comic if you people havne't read it yet) where he puts collections together and sells them as books.
I don't think there is much profit in the webcomic business....
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I'd pay a buck to read Spiderman #1 online.
But then I'd have to pay a buck to read Spiderman #2.
And then... how many Spiderman issues are there?
ender-iii
that the e-book format won't go over very well. I would like to think it would but thinking hurts and I have done too much of that today already. I have read the e-book format, and I can honestly say I hated it. There is something about being able to pick up the book (comic or otherwise) and flip through the pages. It seems a little more intimate that way. (OK, waiting for +4 funny post to follow that comment)
Sent from your iPad.
Well, I think that says it all. They should just contract out like the rest of us content providers.
Quoth Piro from MegaTokyo:
:)
With our hosting change, our hosting expenses have also gone up dramatically. We don't really know where it will settle out at, but we are keeping our fingers crossed. Before people start asking, we will NOT be asking for donations or having a paypal donation button - MT will survive like any other good property, based on it's ability to sell a reasonable amount of merchandise. If you would like to support MT, please visit our store and buy some swag
Also note Scott Kurtz from PVP, who is selling original sketches for $300-$400 a pop on ebay.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I run an online web comic. But it's the sunday funnies type, not the comic book/novel type. My business model (once up and running, sigh) is to sell merchandise.
Thanks to Cafe Press this is really, really easy to do. They are legit to - I've made real money selling merch for my band. Of course with the cut they take, it had better be legit!
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
I must say that Marvel's DotComics are great. There's no way I'd be paying out the monthly $$$ to buy Spiderman Unlimited, X-Men Unlimited and/or any other comics. I'd more likely just forget about following comics. But their DotComics lets me browse select comics for free. I have to put up with a few ads which (with the exception of one that has sound) aren't too annoying. I also get the comics a few months past their release date, but I really don't mind the delay. In return, they get another fan to their line of books and someone who's slightly more likely to buy the actual book. (In my case, probably not, but if I were the comic-buying type I'd definitely add books to my list based on the DotComics.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
User Friendly is making a decent profit from ads because they get a zillion hits a day.
By the way, I find it hillarious that someone is selling commics in adobe e-book format. An 8 year old could write a program to decode them.
Repeal the DMCA!
paying per download for comic books or any other medium will never work because you'll always have the people who pay their $1 to download and then find some way to distribute the product freely to others (i.e. Kazaa, Morpheus, etc)...
i'd think that advertising (banner ads, those terrible pop-up ads) are still the way to go...that and having an on-line store selling merchandise, et al., related to the comic...
but, again, as long as their are ways to freely distribute the subscription material, paying for it will never work...the content wants to be free...and will always find a way to do so....
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Comics is exactly the kind of thing I would use micropayments for. I would never consider a subscription. If they try to fool me into making a subscription, they will loose me. It's as simple as that.
I wouldn't be so sure about that either. I would gladly pay for good, accessible products, that doesn't infringe on my privacy, take away my fair use rights, doesn't try to abuse my trust in any way, and make available a convientent method for making payments.
Right now, that doesn't exist, and it seems the industry isn't going to make it happen. All the industry care about it making offers that sucks, infringe on my privacy, take away my fair use rights, and abuse my trust in every way. In addition, they all stand behind their little sand castles shouting at each other trying to make different ways of making payments that are not going to work. Instead, they should come together and agree on common, open standards.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I believe this will be similar to online books, and hence, fail. When Stephen King put his book online [ http://www.stephenking.com/ ], he set the rate at one dollar to read it. One would expect the reply to be large, as paperback books run about 6 bucks nowadays. However, extensive reading of on-screen material tires the eyes and readers in the end decided that it wasn't worth it because it was too uncomfortable to read, and they'd rather have a paperback version.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Penny Arcade had a comic on Scott McCloud's take on micropayment systems. Basically they said micropayments are a nice idea, but they don't work now, and that's when artists need them. Bandwidth isn't free, and most sites don't sell enough merchandise to make a profit. So now, it is confined mainly to people who have a passion about it or people for whom it is just a hobby.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
...the article didn't mention keenspot.com at all, esp since they host so many different comics.
Yeah, I'm sure our friend Dmitry would be delighted that comic artists are using this.
sulli
RTFJ.
So now, it is confined mainly to people who have a passion about it or people for whom it is just a hobby.
Sound familiar?
Actually, Adobe are currently hard at work on the E-Comic format.
While it's probably a flagrant breach of the DMCA for me to talk about it, the format involves putting the panels in... now here's the cunning bit... reverse order. By using Rot-Pan, the technical name for ROTating PANels, Adobe intends to use the DMCA to prosecute anyone who simply reads them backwards.
When questioned about using the DMCA to protect such a ludicrously simple encryption technique rather than actually make it genuinely secure, the Bush administration was quoted as saying, "Well, pretzels look simple the surface too but look how complex they really are."
I would discuss this further but the Feds appear to be knocking at my door with a search warrant signed by yet another large corp.
Although it's over five years old, this Wired article has a nice summary of the challenges that faced and face the idea.
Ccott McCloud, a prominent comics artist, shares his thoughts in comic form. He humorously addresses these issues from the point of view of an on-line comic artist.
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
Adobe products like .pdf are typically extremely slow, hard to use, and really clunky (such has having to slam the + magnifying glass a bunch of times just to read a document when it loads up.... never happens with any other file type).
.HTML? A lot easier to use, and you also avoid the problem of worthless encrypted files that run across with .PDF.
Why can't they put these out in
Uhm... Webcomics as a business model? This just sounds funny. Since when does the product become/define the business model? I can understand a web business model, because doing business on the web is different than doing business in a store, or by mail order, or by phone, or by infomercials.
."
When I read this, my first thought was something stupid about Microsoft. Then I realized there really isn't anything comic about their business model. They're more like a one train thought destruction device. "Must destroy
I'm not saying I have anything against comics. In fact, I'm desperately in search of Lord Pumpkin. But I don't think naming a business model off of the product is right.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
7It's no secret that comic book publishers make zero profit on back-issue sales; that's entirely the realm of the collector. So why shouldn't Marvel, DC et.al. get into the business of providing their own back-issue archives in downloadable eBook format?
It's perfect, really. The publisher gets paid for books they otherwise wouldn't want to reprint. They could even include new advertisements between the pages, although I'd rather pay more for an ad-less eBook myself. Fans get the back issues they want to read at a fraction of the cost and hassle. Collectors will still get top dollar for the most collectible original, physical publication. Store owners don't have to worry as much about sealing their back issues in taped bags. And the entire industry gets a low-cost kick in the butt.
Of course, there are some losers. Store owners who earn money from non-collectible back issues will have more trouble selling those, even as the collectible back issues become more valuable to fans. Publishers may not make as much money from trade paperbacks collecting popular stories -- then again, there's really no substitute for the printed page, especially where several issues are concerned. But I think the potential increase is worth it. And, of course, the publishers themselves may have to buy back their own back issues in order to make them available online.
Still, it would be an excellent way for Marvel to cash in on the long-running popularity of the X-Men, or DC and Batman, or Dark Horse and Aliens. I can think of plenty of fans and even not-so-fans who'd happily pay $2 per back issue of a known hit when new paper issues of unknown ones are priced at $3 apiece.
I'd say start with comics that have been out for a long time.
Like all those #1's your grandpa used to read that are now worth a fortune.
Shit, I might subscribe if I could read the comics I own now. They sit there doing nothing but making me money, and I haven't read a one.
Ok, I read a few.
[I've got a friend that claims the comic _book_ industry is a huge rip off. He worked at shows and said they gave stuff away, like to each other. This shit was supposed to be real 'collectors items']
Get your Unix fortune now!
What about Keenspot?
You don't subscribe to a particular comic but to Keenspot premium, an ad-free version of all their comics and you get several gifts such as autographed comic books, original artwork, ...
You still can also donate to authors through paypal if you want to.
And they often seel original art through auctions
Guvf vf abg n EBG zrffntr
I remember Stephen King's e-book experiments. He got no money from me...
.txt or .HTML, I would have downloaded and quickly paid.
... not because I downloaded and refused to pay, but because the books files were in an unusable unportable format and I never downloaded them ever. If they had been
My favorite webcomic recently came to an end. Apparently, the author decided to get a life. *sniff* Still, I always felt that the lifestyle depicted in there hit a little too close to home.
http://hotzp.com/badboys/archives/021900.html
The guy who does 8-Bit Theatre just started attempting to do the webcomic thing full-time. He's only around 20 years old, so no great risk if he fails, but I certainly expect his non-comic updates to get more amusing.
Of course, given the nature of the comic (8BT is a webcomic that uses Final Fantasy 1 sprites), I expect Square to sue him if he starts to do okay.
-Grant/JimTheta
My stupid web site
I refused to download his e-books since they were in extremely difficult to use non-portable formats. If he made them text files, they would be a lot more accessible, portable, and..... readable.
Would not work for comics, however. Is there an open source, more secure (You control the files on your machine, not others) format similar to PDF with none of its ease of use problems?
Adding that one to my bookmarks right now
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Some of the best comics today are produced by Fantagraphics. Not the boring superhero stuff, but more sub-culturish and mature. The artwork of Daniel Clowes is amazing. Rember the Ramones video he did in the 90s?
I enjoy this in print, however if Clowes or Peter Bagge or Bill Griffith were to do an online version, I'd gladly pay.
I live under the bridge, in a pile of feces.
Just create one or two characters that are shameless exploiters of others and use that character to hawk your wares at your site. Scott Adams' site has Dogbert selling anything and everything Dilbert. It seems to be a winning combination.
My sig hates me. That's ok, I never cared for it much anyway.
Micropayments are being touted as a replacement for ad revenue. And this SHOULD be the case. To pay a few cents to eliminate annoying ads would be worthwhile for some people, but for others who have grown very accustomed to the web being free will probably go on prefering intrusive ads.
It also differs on the artist's needs. If he's just trying to cover his bandwidth costs, he has more options than if he's trying to use the web as his only source of income. Even with a readership in the 10's of thousands, it can still be a challenge to do much more than break even.
Ultimately it would work best as a complimentary feature. It's less expensive from the publisher's point of view, and that should certainly be taken into account when considering the per-issue pricing scheme. But as other posters have mentioned, some value of the comic's is the collectable value as well as the content value.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I'd really love to be able to get Eerie and Creepy back issues in PDF... I wonder if it'd be possible to resurrect those titles? They had some truly weird, but fun, stories.
I've been doing an online comic now for just over two years. I have a regular following of readers, manage to get decent traffic and the feedback I receive has generally been good. However, I have not made one dime from this venture and I can't imagine that I ever will.
This is partly due to the fact that the online advertising model is dead and/or severely flawed. Last year I grossed (yes grossed) around $3 and my poor readers suffered a bevy of pop-ups, pop-unders and other flashing menaces. Likewise the model of pay-per-download just doesn't work -people won't pay to be mildly entertained when then they can get the same stuff for free.
Ultimately, this caused me to abandon the comic, ending my adventure in online comics just as quickly as it began. Then something unexpected happened. People actually emailed me wondering what happened to the comic. For some unknown reason, they actually cared that my tiny contribution to the world of online comics vanished. And for me, that was enough to try and bring it back. So this February it returns.
If there's a point to any of this, it's that not everything has to be about money. The internet can be more than a virtual marketplace, if only people are willing to work at it. Sure, I'd love to make money from this, but just knowing that people get some enjoyment out of something I do has its perks. And it's good enough for me.
DigiSquid Design.
I have all my comics in boxes and boxes, baged and borded. I'm afraid to read them in case I hurt the value.... This would allow me to actually read the comics I purchased. Who am I kidding I should just sell the dang things on E-bay and get em gone...
The Only Person Willing to be Me is ME!
The basic assumption everyone is making is that artists should get paid. Maybe that's totally wrong. Perhaps the whole idea was only a temporary concept and now it's finally ending. So what if we are entering a world where a certain segment of society can't make a living. Big deal. It's happened before to other people. The laws of economics are not here to make everyone happy. Move along to what works (like cooking food) and stop bitching about what has stopped working. Art is much more pure without money anyway.
Do you know of any free webspace sites that don't get hung up on bandwidth?
pah. count me out then. no windows no comix.
Just thought you all would benefit from some of Scott McCloud's writings on comics (he's the author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics as well as a comic artist himself). His work on Online Comics has been really interesting, and informative. You might also enjoy reading Demian5's webcomic "When I Am King" which has been getting a lot of attention. If you are at all interested in self publishing, you must take a look at Dave Sim's "Cerebus' Guide To Self-Publishing".
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Comic book readers are a completely different demographic than music listeners. They A) aren't already spoiled by free comics, and B) they already pay big bucks to collect them. Buying a download and then printing it out on your own color printer is a small price to pay compared to what you *would* have paid. And besides...many of us would pay a buck to read the first Superman, Spiderman, Batman, etc.
Pop up ads *are* the way to go (until the subscription models work out). The real question is whether or not these places will get smart and not allow those using ad killers (such as Guard-IE.
If everyone used these types of programs, then no one would buy ad space.
This gives me the idea to go to eBay and start selling packages of mylar bags to use to protect online comics. Someone is bound to want to buy these. Might as well get in on the ground floor of the online comics revolution!
Without going on too much of a tangent, people asked by pollsters say they go to church every week but actually they don't.
Likewise, of course if you ask somebody, "would you pay 3c a page for good content?" They say "well, of course, I support artists, I'd pay that even if I didn't have to bleah bleah fair use bleah bleah." It's practically a religious thing for people, like myself and, lets be frank, everyone else on Slashdot, who download gigs of Mp3s.
However, when you actually look at the numbers for this - Penny Arcade doesn't get a tenth of a cent in micropayments per pagehit. Now, maybe some people are making that up in buying coffee mugs, whatever, the point is, when you look at how people actually behave, they don't pay the three cents per page when you demand it, they go read something else.
Is this because PayPal is too bulky? I'm sure that that is part of it, and that if it were easier to make micropayments than half of the people who say they'd make them really would.
Just my 0.02$ per page.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
(Warning: This will look like a plug for a bunch of webcomics. It probably is, but I have a valid point. Mod me into oblivion of you wish.)
/. has Mega Tokyo banners!
:)
The big players in the print industry seem to be the only guys getting real attention when it comes to producing "comics" on the web.
What about the Keenspot or the Keenspace groups? They have a valid revenue model, even if they aren't making a ton of money(making money is a secondary concern to them). Heck, they're doing the opposite of the big boys: Moving from the 'net to print media. (Check for Roomies! and Superosity in your local comic store)
Another group is , which hosts, among other comics, Algernons Dilemma.
There are the big ones you've probably heard of, PvP and Sluggy Freelance who are actually making a living on their webcomic.
Heck,
Personally, I'd rather these, and others, than the majority of the junk the syndicates, et al, try to push onto the web. Nevermind X-Men, give me it's Walky!
Disclaimer: I run a webcomic, so this story pushed my buttons
J. T. MacLeod
-------------
UBERGEEK the Comic. Umlauts be danged.
http://ubergeekthecomic.com
It's neato!
-------------
Maybe put the first few pages of each issue online for free (to hook the reader). Then when the reader wants more, charge them some small amount ($1 maybe). The costs to DC or Marvel would be minimal. You'd have the cost of transferring all the comics to a web-friendly format and server-related costs. But all in all it'd be cheaper than running off new reprint copies of those issues. And it wouldn't drop the price of the physical back-issues since no collector will be contented to just have a file on their hard drive. If anything, it might spark interest in some old issues and drive the price up a bit. Or even create some extra demand for the current issues. If I'm reading some two year old issues of Spiderman and I'm really getting into the storyline, I'm more likely to buy a new issue to see what's happening with the characters.
If their costs were low enough, they could offer free/low-cost subscriptions and track member usage to target print offers. Is the user reading the "Death of Superman" storyline? Why not offer them a special online-only deal on the printed book with the entire storyline? (Kind of like an Amazon system. "People who read this comic also liked these comics/books/merchandise.")
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Apart from the cofounder's stock scam destroying any chance the company might have had at success, the article fails to mention that the writing for Stan Lee Media's "webisodes" was just awful...
If you can imagine the most hackneyed plots, stereotypical characters, and stilted dialog of comics published 30 years ago, you've pretty much got the gist of content Stan Lee Media had to offer. Which is a shame, because they had a very talented team of artists and animators.
I wonder if any of these comics that are sold in pdf are indexable in anyway.. google has this cool search where they somehow highlight your search even if its a word printed in a scanned catalog image. This technology would be great for comics which are generally scanned artwork and not originally digital products.
True. You should check out a cool comic by a guy in like sweden or somewhere named Demian 5. It's called When I am King. And while you are at it, sned him a couple of bucks. =)
Just take a look at www.sexylosers.com must be 18 or over. In my opinion the best webcomic ever made. Of course its not a marvel comic or anything like that. It is a comedy strip that comes out once a week.
Hmmm -- exactly what I was wondering when I arrive d at the Tribune web site.
I've been reading several keenspot/keenspace comics for a while now. Their model, as far as I can tell, is to give free web space to online comic artists, along with some helpful stuff, like scripts to archive old comics and post new comics. The normal site seems to make revenue off of banner ads, but they have several other revenue making ideas, and presumably they share the profits with the artists. They print up and market collection books, or periodical issues, as well as offering premium no-ads service to people who want it.
I have no idea how well they are doing, but I frequent:
www.rpgworldcomic.com
www.crfh.net
www.bobbins.org
and a couple others.
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Your audience doesn't have to go to a store or track down a copy. You don't have to pay for publishing and word of mouth can spread your web address quite quickly if the content is good.
Speaking of which (cheesy plug in effect):
http://miracle.keenspace.com/d/20010910.html
Any genre and any style can be represented because it's not limited to shelf space or a particular audience.
--- Jim Zubkavich
The Makeshift Miracle
updated on M/W/F
http://www.makeshiftmiracle.com
I've been thinking about the online comic book business because one day I want to start one myself. Actually it's an online animated cartoon, but I think the model would be similar. I have issues with things like "what happens if people constantly distribute copies of the animations to each other and bypass my income generator?"
I think there are people scared of the idea of once they sell a few copies, they propogate virally and nobody pays for it. I know that has me a bit spooked, but I have a few ideas that might be useful.
- There needs to be new content regularly. The faster, the better. That keeps people checking with the site instead of checking Morpheus every so often.
- Sell things besides the content itself. You can transmit comics/animations/movies etc around the web, but you cannot transmit T-shirts, coffee mugs, and little figurines etc.
- Make distributed content worth something. I want to do an animated cartoon, right? One approach is the 'to be continued...' story that requires multiple parts to get the whole thing. If somebody gets only one or two episodes, the best way to get the rest is from my site. I think comics could work this way too, admittedly they'd propogate easier though given their smaller file size.
- Include a coupon with the content. "Mention this comic and you'll get $2 off a T-shirt, go to our site at www.comicbookname.com." With this approach, even pirated works are of value because it's possible some people will buy some of your merchandise. If the ads/coupons aren't too intrusive (don't put a 30 second commercial in it! >:I ) nobody'll edit them out.
- Consider a subscription model. Give away a few episodes, ideally so they have some type of cliffhanger that just keeps your eyes glued, and say 'for $x a year you can have unlimited access to downloads' or something like that. Even if that isn't too profitable, at least you have SOME people out there getting vids and getting them around the web.
- Use the content as a commercial for merchandise. Do you all remember the Transformers cartoon? That cartoon was seriously a 20 minute commerical for toys disguised as a cartoon. If the artwork of the comic/cartoon is interesting and unique enough, turning it into a marketing device for t-shirts/posters/coffee mugs etc really isn't that difficult. I'll give you an example, there was a Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert had a doll of his boss sitting on his monitor. The boss asked what that was about, Dilbert replied "It lifts my spirit to have a likeness of you near by." The boss left, feeling good about what Dilbert told him. As soon as he walked out, Dilbert backhanded the doll off his monitor and said "Stop barging in while I'm working!" From what Scott Adams said in one of his books, a bunch of people wrote in wanting one of those dolls.
I think one thing Hollywood and the Record Industry needs to learn is that they should care about the money they are getting instead of worrying about the money they aren't getting.
"Derp de derp."
It's not the most groundbreaking article.. (Slashdot.)
Alright, so let's rewrite it in ambic pentameter!
Comic artists try to draw on new revenue sources
By Todd Allen
Translation into verse by
Anonymous J. Coward
Special to the Tribune
Published January 21, 2002
A glow, the only light-source his office
Shone from his computer monitor.
In the nearly perfect dark he gently
Clicked his mouse and watched the pages turn.
And as the saga was unfolding in those words,
Lo! Like an angry surpent with cruel fangs,
Horrific sights leapt at him from the screen.
More irritated than unduly frightened,
he clicked again. The brief intrusion vanished
Nor left a trace behind. Our hero frowned
and muttered "stupid pop-up ads", and then resumed
his former task of leafing through the wonder,
the tale to disbelieve before his eyes.
For with his cunning twists this reader flipped
Naught but an online comic, like the text
that others flip through, printed all in color.
Ah the web -- what natural medium for Comics,
what the Form!the publishers contend it is the One
And many -- many, even now fresh blood
Has seen to venture into that abyss.
(Online we see the companies persist
To hawk their art and content, paperless.)
Consider Marvel! Marvel comics, who of late
Have sold such selling titles as The X-Men,
And, too, one arachnoidal hominid,
(Spider Man) who with these other Titles
Has served as Subject for a million downloads,
Nay! A million and three tenths, such is the figure
Of how many times in but one month
These "dot-comics" are copied to our hard-drives.
(One more amazing glory we shall share:
Astounding Space Thrills, whose aesthetic flair
Has won it more than three thousand sites
As paying syndicates with all the rights
to leech off their own content unconcerned
Of being by those pesky lawyers burned.
[The article does not at this point mention
The greater-numbered bootlegging dimension].)
And yet the prospect of producing profit
Eludes these sites, which live (or don't live) off it.
(The article therefore mentionss: "many an enterprise
Met from a lack of profits its demise".
[Your humble bard, the AC, reckons it
beyond a need to say, "uh, duh. No sh--!])
"There's no economic model!" adds Strazewski
About our comic case, "it's rather pesky
Trying to charge the right amount for stuff
That only hobbyists need -- yeah, it's tough."
[Tough, yes, dear Len (for that is his first name)
But why are online markets to take blame?]
That's all of Strazewski our story quotes,
although, in journalistic style, it notes
that Len is a professor of the college
Of Columbia, with special knowledge
in online publishing. Oh, and he wrote
for "major comic publishers". So we note.
Continuing then our brave and noble toil
We reach what seems the first of foreign soil.
For now we're getting into a recent history
Of Marvel Comics' woes (though why's a mystery).
For it was Marvel Comics' lauded Lee
(Stan Lee) who first tried that troubled sea:
The online venue. Though we all should know
He was a luminary and in his show,
the creator of the likes of Spider-Man, no less
and yet we have not words to well express
the fashion (most spectacular!) in which he failed
--My God, the man was nearly jailed.
The tale, we are assured is fully "ripe
for comic book treatment" (though that's tripe,
we all do know, but, sigh, all journalese
consists in vapid statements such as these)
Anyway, to make a long case shorter
The co-founder of Stan Lee Media was, third quarter
(June) indicted with in a stock-fix scheme
(say federal prosecutors), and it would seem
He (Peter Paul, this samely said co-founder)
Left his unled company to flounder.
(Oh, and the allegations were in the amount
of $25 million [in his stock account?])
"The company had ceased operations in December"
(Of 2000, if I do remember)
Anyway, it shoook out something like this:
okay, I need to go now. heheh. Somebody else want to finish this up?
For me, just getting feedback is a great motivation to continue with my work.
Well, I admit I'm not quite talented as a cartoonist (I'm better off as a computer programmer ^_^), but even if I were, I know how things work here, and so I don't expect to get a dime for it. Ever.
It's something I wanted to do for fun. That's all.
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
He didn't provide the book for a reasonable $1. He charged the ludicrous amount of $1 per chapter for it!
The main cost in producing webcomics seems to be bandwidth; a lot of them seem to be struggling with it. What I can definitely see happening is a lot of the smaller, no- or low- profit ones moving to P2P. Release it, send it out to a few people, it'll propagate pretty fast over Morpheus.
Personally, I think the best comics will stay free, and they'll make their dough on concrete items.
I'm just thinking about myself and my friends, and most of us have bought a shirt or two from their favorite on-line comic. I personally have both User Frendly and GPF wear because the comics are funny enough to follow daily and the shirts are funny enough on their own, and as reference to the comic.
A note to anyone reading this who has a web-comic: I don't care if I'm paying $15 versus $20 bucks for the shirt: take your profit for your creative output on the shirt, please! Just don't mark them up 200 percent, and I'll buy a shirt if I think it's funny enough.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
For us that want it both free and adfree. Of course it takes some configuration, and some sites it doesn't work all that well with, but I'd say we're winning for now. Should all start to filter I suppose they'd come up with something new.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is not going to work.
As anyone who's ever collected comics knows, it's the scarcity of comics that helps create their demand and popularity over time, not their wide distribution. How many of you have an X-Men #94? Amazing Fantasy #15? Detective Comics #27? But if you did, you'd cherish it like an heirloom, you'd pass it to your children when they got old enough to know the difference between acid-free backing boards and regular cardboard.
Sure, widespread distribution will help if all you want to do is read the comics, but that's not where their value comes from. The important thing is that I have an Avengers #3, and you have an Avengers #16, and if we're going to trade, yours better be in mint condition.
There's just something very visceral and male about holding a rare comic book. What am I gonna do, have a swapable harddrive of Marvel and DC. "Hey, check out KaZaa, they've got the latest Superman story." Bah! There are some things that technology simply cannot improve on.
E-lusive E!! E!!!!!!
ELUSIVE!!!!
The word is ELUSIVE!!!
What is this, the third largest metro newspaper?? sigh... (goes off to weep)
Start small, stay small, build an audience, price reasonably, provide value for the price. Sounds simple, but it remains ELUSIVE (nrgh!) for a lot of businesses.
:)
Many congratulations. Sounds like there's a lot of potential here. Might even start reading a few comics here and there.
I, however, would like to see this expand further. My idea is a community of comic artists / writers publishing under Mad Ink. Instead of a free-and-crappy service like KeenSpace, I envision Mad Ink's members paying a small amount of money just to help keep the site going, much the same way that PnC help pay our hosting costs. With enough interest, a decent co-located server could support a fairly large community. One other thing that I've thought of is making an archive for the ever-increasing number of dead webcomic backlogs out there.
Any thoughts on this? Also if you're a comic-writer and would like to join Mad Ink, please contact me. I'd like to know.
09
All I ever see is three small pains(sic) and the ring of fire.
More professional comic ads and animations surround the tiny drip of content like hemroids.
If it's not Dancing Spam it's Self promotion and links to more spam sites with zero content and LOADS OF REVIEWS.
Content is King, and he is very ill, hell the fucker's dead from a barrage of WebRing links to nowhere.
The reason webcomics will never work is because of the very nature of the thing. While actual, physical comics have been accepted as something you have to pay for, this is not the norm for web comics, and in my opinion, will never be.
Take the following situation:
A) Good comic guy A starts charing
B) New comic guy B scans a few comics he drew in school and puts them up on his site.
C) New comic guy B's comics become famous.
D) Increased visiting.
And that'll be on a loop.
Of course, I could be wrong.
As I see it, the problem with micropayment is that you don't have any way to predict your expenses. Spending 10 cent each time you view a comic strip (or reading an article in an online newspaper) adds to the feeling that the money is actually being spent. Before I got broadband, the online-counter was a constant reminder that I actually was spending money. Today I have DSL, and the only variable expenses I have is phone and electricity (and food and other stuff I buy of course). I find it much easier to have a organized personal economy when I don't have to worry about being online too much (or reading too many comics).
For businesses subscription may be of more interest than micropayments too. Your income won't decrease the moment people stop reading your cartoons, you get some time (by monitoring popularity) to know that popularity is decreasing.
Just a suggestion, what if the online comic had a subscription service (monthly, quarterly or yearly maybe) where you had the option to get the daily strip/weekly page as email in addition to be able to view it online. The email could either consist of just an gif/jpeg attachement or a link to the comic. The latter could be used to avoid abuse (like people signing up with a mailing-list address). The link in the mail could be unique for each subscriber to monitor abuse (although this may be of some concern to the paranoid people out there :).
You still can't stop people from downloading the images and putting them their own website though, but I don't think "secure" formats is the way to go. I want to be able to read the stuff I've paid for on my Windows laptop, my Indigo2 and my Sparcstation 5 running Linux. :)
I think that the best way to go is subsciptions. For $10 to $20 a month you could get access to a companies whole library except what published in the last 5 to 10 years. Tht way it would be a resonable cost if your going to read a lot of issues, and the year thing would prevent people from just waiting untill it gets put on the web to read it. They could even give yearly subsriptions to idivdual titles at $12 (half of a mail sub) that let you read a book as it comes out, I'm sure that the money saved on printing would easily cover it.
Adobe have no current plans to market a Linux version and lots of plans to sue the ass off of anyone who does... as Dmitri found out...
when i first read the headline, i thought it read "webconomics" and i was going to have to shoot hemos.
and i'm sure somewhere out there, some pundit actually did come up with that one. "hey, 'e-economics' and 'i-economics' just doesn't sound right with that double vowel beginning--but isn't 'webconomics' just grand? doesn't that just capture the spirit of the age?"
8-Bit Theater is really a great webcomic, if you haven't checked it out, then for the love of all things sacred, do it now.
---- Yay! I have a sig!
The online comic strip revenue model doesn't work.
Here is a good indication of that.
The problem here is that they don't trying to make money. Or they believe that some advertising from companies that are failing will pay for it. If you want to make money, you must sell a product, not just advertise for other people.
I know that 'tell that to NBC' is going to come up. The problem is that tv/newspapers/etc are accepted places to advertise. Advertisers believe that it makes it to the audience so that it influences them. Most advertisers don't believe that web advertising makes it to anyone. With TV, sometimes people change the channel. With newspapers, sometimes people turn the page. With the web, most people don't even -see- ads anymore.
Quick. Without looking, can you tell me what the banner ad at the top of the page is for? Can you even tell me what color it is? I can't.
Without actual products to sell, websites will not be able to make money in the near future.
--
Mike
-- Mike wildcard@illuminatus.org
People are working to make this a success, though it seems to vary.
Kevin and Kell seems to do pretty well. The author, Bill Holbrook, does two other paper strips. I know that he's making a profit - my friend is his colorist, who tells me that Bill is all business, and wouldn't pay my friend if he couldn't afford it. But the strip has a huge variety of revenue sources, like book sales at Plan 9, merchandise, and special "memberships". Most people know Sluggy Freelance, which also does the same thing. It also seems to make a profit.
But other strips like Bruno the Bandit are just as high quality in art and humor (in my opinion at least), but it seems like Ian McDonald has had just no luck in turning it into a profitable business, even though he's a prominent member of Keenspot and has two collected books published. My friend (who colors Kevin and Kell) has also had trouble keeping his strip Unlike Minerva afloat - he just doesn't have the time to juggle the strip and day-to-day living.
Anyway, it seems like the very best can survive, but even the very good like Bruno have difficulty making it. I know of one strip right now trying to make it with "tips", 8-bit theater, which seems to be having some success. Hopefully the author, Brian Clevinger, will pull it off. But even then, he's just struggling to meet the costs of bandwidth.
I don't know what the future of this medium is. But if anybody at all can make it, then I think there's hope for others.
Yeah, people who collect, seal, and archive back issues of men-in-tights, won't get anything out of this. However, those of us who actually buy comics to read them will certainly appreciate the the opportunity to catch up on older, otherwise out of print titles.
OK, OK, so I do lust after a complete collection of the Incal, but I would settle for at least being able to read all of it.
Similarly Akira, the reissue of which appears to have stalled. AGAIN!
Anyway, we of course have been trying to deal with this making money thing for 6 years at WebComics. We've had competitors come and go (like toonscape.com and mycomics.com) which all thought they could make lots of money I guess. As with most messed up web companies, the problem is very simple, they just spend too much money. The web lets you do things so efficiently and a company has to take advantage of that.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Why wasn't Penny Arcade featured in that article? The guys that make that comic are actually making so much money through donations that they both quit their jobs and each have a $1500-$2000 monthly salary.
The question of how to make money is a good one. I write for an online comic myself, www.ghost2138.org It's a rarity in the world of online comics, an actual full-sized comic book sort of thing actually divided into issues. We are currently paying all costs out of pocket and are simply trying to build a fanbase. Primarally this is a means of creative outlet for both myself and the artist. If we could make enough money to cover hosting costs we'd be happy. As is, we can afford to pay for what we're using right now so we can take a wait and see attitude, see if anyone in industry comes up with a decent idea for making money off these things. Personally I find the Penney Arcade story to be a bit fantastic, actually making upwards of $4k per month just on donations. I mean, if that's really the case, then holy hell, somebody is doing something right.
The one advantage to web comics is that the reader does not have to spend the same kind of cash as they do on phsysical books in order for you to be profitable. Of course, the question is whether they will be willing to even pay that reduced fee. Is PA the exception or the beginning of a new rule?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
a comics business model? THIS i'd like to see!
http://www.clango.org
A webcomic had a great series on micropayments... if an author gets everyone who reads your comic to pay 1 cent, the authors wudl make much mroe money than they do fromthe current system!! However, the logistics of a payment system for that have yet to be worked out.s t-5.html
s t-6.html
Check out http://www.thecomicreader.com/html/icst/icst-5/ic
and http://www.thecomicreader.com/html/icst/icst-6/ic
for a well presented comic about this.
Juln
Another excellent web comic that uses a university to avoid bandwidth expenses is Jorge Cham's PhD.
Because of course, we know that books NEVER go out of print...
I guess the person doesn't realize that once the comic market became a *collectible* market (oh, say 20-30 years ago?), fans would never stand for continual reprint after reprint of old/rare issues. The odd trade paperback collection, or reprints of very old and unique issues perhaps. Also, the demand just isn't there for every comic to be in print continuously.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I've been collecting comics for over 20 years now. I also drew comics years ago when they were 75c for the book instead of the $5+ that you see now. Never mind that.
The existance of web comics (i.e. comics in some downloadable medium, say PDF) cannot co-exist with real comics without having diverse effects. If I can download a PDF of X-Men 118 for $1.50 then why is the original $25? Sure it's a collectable, but there's the rub. Let's say a few years/months off in the future Marvel decides to digitize it's entire line. Paper costs are too high and print runs are abolished. All comics are put online for you to download for a minimum fee. Of course now Marvel has a problem that they're not about to recoup any costs from comic shops for the printing since there is none. Sure it's cheap to distribute but now there are also 10,000 copies of it floating around on Morpheus and peoples websites. Where's the collectable value in that?
Personally I'd like to have my collection in digital form and maybe that's the alternative. Just scan the whole lot of them and stash the originals away until they're worth $10,000 on eBay. The collecting of comics is what is the focus. Sure the content is important to a certain extent, but look at the rush (and increase in value) when a John Byrne, Neal Adams or Michael Turner book goes up on the block. The book has some value and that value is meant to increase because of various things. Resale value, content, character, artist/writer, scarcity, etc. Now imagine again if all books (or even some of them) were in PDF format. There's no real sense in obtaining it except for just reading and admiring the artwork. Anyone can own a copy just by downloading it and wheres the fun in that? Then what happens at conventions when your favorite writer/artist is scheduled? You print off a copy at Kinkos and bring it in to be signed?
One thing is possible here. The expandibility of the comic book to an electronic medium. Remember when everyone bought VHS movies just to own them? Now everyone is buying DVD to get the extra content. Imagine if you could download your own PDF comic of X-Men and view it in pencil, ink, color or production mode? Maybe even have the pre-production sketches that went into the making of the comic. Now THAT would be something to own. Let's see the media extended rather than transferred.
Anyways, whatever business model a comic company thinks they can fit into cannot measure up to the collectable value of a true comic book. The online guys that are selling content are doing so because they don't live in the same universe Marvel, DC and others do and don't distribute millions of copies each week.
Just my 2c
liB
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see some of these comic guys make a buck, but I'm simply not willing to dish out a couple bucks for something I can't actually hold in my hands. Besides that, with the sheer number of comics I read every day, to give everyone a buck or two would add up to a massive amount.
On the other hand, I have a few very good friends who own Megatokyo t-shirts, and I confess, they're pretty cool things. If authors truly want to make some cash, this is the way to go.
They won't get rich, but who expects to get rich by drawing pictures, anyway?
"Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life."
Comics collecting started when some people realized that comics readers would get nostalgic for old issues they once read, and would be willing to pay decent (or, in the case of really ancient comics like Action Comics #1, indecent) sums of money to read them again. Then it became a game of speculation, where one collector (thinking that the price has plateaued) would sell to another (betting that the price will rise). At some point, it ceased to be about betting that some comics lover will want to reread a back issue, and became about betting that some other guy will want to resell it. It became just a big pyramid scheme.
Meanwhile, the major studios catered to the speculators (who would actually buy ten copies of a single issue if they all had different covers) and stopped writing and drawing stories that were fun to read. Hell, at the height of the collecting bubble, Marvel and DC could have printed comics filled with blank pages (after all, once somebody has picked it up without sterile gloves and opened it, it isn't "mint condition" anymore), and idiot "collectors" would have snatched them up as long as there was a woman with breasts the size of Volkswagon beetles in spandex holding an AK-47 on the cover. Fortunately, they still had enough self-respect left to actually print stuff on the inside pages, although it was rarely readable. Then, when some collectors realized that all they were doing was selling these things to each other in circles, the market collapsed, and the studios are now stuck trying to appeal to comic readers, a group they nearly destroyed through neglect.
In short, collectors do nothing but damage to the comics industry, subsidizing talentless hacks like Rob Liefeld, driving off readers, and generally making life miserable for the rest of us.
Oper on the Nightstar
For those of you who aren't comic geeks here is a translation of the big time books mentioned above:
X-Men #94 - Introduction of the new team including Wolverine, Collosus, Storm, NightCrawler, etc...
Amazing Fantasy #15 - here for more - First appearance of Spider Man.
Detective Comics #27 - pic First appearance of Batman