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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."
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 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.
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
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)
...the article didn't mention keenspot.com at all, esp since they host so many different comics.
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.
Not to mention that his "experiment" was rigged to fail. For example, he computed a ratio of users to payments based only on downloads. This ignored the fact that some downloaded the material and never read it, that some downloaded it in more than one format, and (horror or horrors), some didn't find it interesting after the first few lines.
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
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.
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 agree - this is the way things will really go. Think about it - you don't subscribe to the AP, a regional newsfeed, a city news feed, and a local news feed, do you? No, you just subscribe to a newspaper that contains all of them. Likewise, if all of the comics that I read regularly were in a conglomerate like that, I'd have no problem subscribing to demonstrate how much I've enjoyed Sluggy Freelance, etc. over the years. Keenspot is a good start, at least. You just have to make sure that the money really goes where it needs to go - just like in other artists conglomerates, you don't want the lion's share of the money going to Britney Spears or Scott Adams (better example: Jim Davis); you want your payment to encourage more of the innovative humor that you were looking for in the first place.
It seems to me that the real gravy train for a comic artist would be breaking into a real paper, though. I wonder why more web comics haven't been picked up by major papers recently - they're a lot more fun than the repetitive blandness of being that is Cathy or Garfield or Family Circus (the non-disfunctional one). Although I imagine that web comic authors get used to being able to vary their use of color, number of panels, and layout on an almost daily basis, combined with intense online interaction with fans that you just wouldn't get with the printed page.
Maybe reading Megatokyo in the morning paper is the impossible dream, but I'm not giving up hope. After all, my wife actually sat through Cowboy Bebop last night, so anything's possible :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
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.
I did too... so I paid for it, and I got screwed. Lucky for me, I got screwed out of only $10 and the time I invested setting up my photo album and captions and stuff. Lots of people were using it to host images for ebay, and paid a lot more money for a lot of extra storage. They lost a lot more than I did.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
bollocks they don't work now. i've heard that excuse so many times now, it drives me to anger.
the only reason "they don't work now" is because nobody can be bothered putting in a little bit of framework!
i've had micropayments working on my blog of all things, for the last year, and they're worked wonderfully.
basically all you need is a bit of code that only lets people view so many pages before it stops them and says "you've viewed X pages, to go further you have to pay for those ones. the best bet is to pay up a bit further so you don't see this message again in a while"
it's not strictly micropayments, as people generally pay in lumps, but it *definately* works. i've been covering hosting costs plus a little on the side via that method for long enough to prove that it wasn't just an initial fluke.
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.