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Comics On The Net - A Business Primer
Snotty Pippen writes "There's a new article/report/white paper called Comics
on the Internet: A Primer in 7 Parts that's showing up in all the right
places. It's currently being cited over at
Heath Row's Media Diet and
The Comics
Journal's Journalista blog. Media Diet says thinks it's the first
report of its kind. The Comics Journal says it's how to migrate comic books from print
to web and make it work. I think it's a somewhat comprehensive overview, and the bit about print-on-demand comics is interesting."
From the article: In summary, I see a lot of untapped potential. Assuming you could cover costs with advertising, until you could show me the online audience strongly mapped to the current retail audience, I would advocate print publishers showcasing their titles online, a few months behind the most recent issue and pushing the reader towards either a trade paperback compilation or a subscription. The hobbyists will seek out the specialty retailers on their own. As a bonus, if the advertising revenue was to pan out, at a certain level of traffic your online ad revenue is capable of exceeding the revenue of todayâ(TM)s depressed print circulation. More quickly if online subscriptions work. I guess my major question with this is why does the newest stuff have to be in print only, and have the online run stuff that's "a few months old"? Looking at something like, say, megatokyo [megatokyo.com], it seems that they opt more for the stance of having the original content posted webside, and then providing print for the people who would like to purchase it. Of course, this does tend to lean a lot more toward the free side rather than the profit side (and I can see why that would be a factor, big business in comics). I think that megatokyo is onto something, though, because the whole idea of it being free opens up (imo) a bigger audience to sell merchandise to. I imagine they wouldn't have an online store or even a demand for it if it was all about pushing people into buying if they want to stay current. I bought megatokyo vol. 1, and I thought it was worth the investment to give something back. Am I just the minority?
"I'm not saying what you think I'm saying, but I'm not saying its opposite, either. In fact, I'm not saying anything at
I agree. Especially these days. You can almost compare it to the music industry. Imagine a guide on how to migrate from producing music the "old-fashioned" way (i.e. using a greedy record label etc)to self-publishing via the web.
This is aimed for the "professionals" or at least those who already have published in print.
These days its more common for the average person to try to use web comics as a way to get their stories out. Some even manage to sell printed compilations of their work to their fanbase. I have found a few web resources here and here
The problems are the same that face the self-producing musician... it's tough to generate a good fanbase.
-John
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and hoping for different results"
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One thing that this article didn't really go into is the already existing and very developed communities devoted to translating and distributing japanese comics on the web. Every day hundreds of pages of japanese comics, or manga are scanned, translated, and then edited (japanese taken out, english put in) and then distributed via irc, http, and bittorrent. If you're interested in dling, check out this site for a list of daily/past releases: http://www.dailymanga.fr.st/ There are hundreds of people working on this accross the world (including myself), and thousands of people already relying COMPLETELY on the web for their daily manga fix. The industry is way behind :)
This guy seems to leave out other sources of publishing such as Plan 9. I just recently shelled out over $100 for copies of Sluggy Freelance for my boyfriend's upcoming birthday. They seem to work directly with the artists and cut them a fairly significant fraction of the proce (mind you that's provided the readers buy directly from Plan 9 and not Amazon).
The article left a lot of big-name webcomics, actually. On the other hand, all the webcomics it specifically mentioned offer "exclusive content" if you pay for their "on-line subscriptions." Neither Penny Arcade, nor Megatokyo do this. I'm not sure if the author didn't understand that these sites and ones like them (such as Sluggy Freelance) make money by using their web-presence and fanbase to generate revenue via merchandising, or if he wanted to focus on making money specifically on the comics themselves, and therefore they did not really fall into the same
category as the comics he mentioned.
It was an interesting read, but I did note that the author had a number of errors in his article. (Keenspot is not a paper publisher, though he basically said they were, for instance. It just happens that most of the webcomics on Keenspot that do get books published do so through the same publisher: Plan 9 Books).
It's funny that you mention User Friendly, Sluggy Freelance and Megatokyo here while asking if on-line comics are economically viable. I don't know about Kevin and Kell, but in the case of the other three you mention, the artists/authors have all quit their day jobs, and live off their webcomics alone now, (Megatokyo is only the most recent of the three to have done so, in fact).
On the other hand, I do still grant the point. Those three have among the largest readerships of webcomics, and therefore have a larger base from which to make money off of when selling merchandise, while other webcomics are not so fortunate.
You're right that Megatokyo doesn't do this (Piro makes his money off of merchandising, not subscriptions), but Penny Arcade offers exclusive content through the Penny Arcade Club (subscription). You get lots of stuff, like the Over Easy comic, desktop wallpapers, original art, etc. I guess Penny Arcade could even provide exclusive comic strips since they tend to have an aversion to continuity, but a story-based web comic really shouldn't offer story-related strips on a subscriber-only basis if they offer free strips as well. Either make it all subscriber-only, or don't do any of the story exclusively to subscribers.
Well, The PC Weenies toon wasn't mentioned, but their website got a complete overhaul earlier this week.
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
Keenspot has a subscription system that means that you don't have to look at their ads, get to use their the 'weekly' view when reading the archives and get to view all the Keenspot comics that one follows on a single page.
Subscribers also gain access to exclusive content. I think that Jeff Darlington of General Protection Fault has an exclusive story arc available only to subscribers, and I suspect that a few others do as well. (I don't have a Keenspot PREMIUM subscription so I can't check easily)
Most cartoonists take the route of publishing extra stories in comic book form, which brings us back to merchandising. The idea is similar, though, as the main online comic can't rely on the pulp-and-ink comic.
Have you ever fancied reading a comic, then suddenly someone makes a film based on it and all the back issues sell out? There's quite a few commercial services where you can read back issues to your heart's content.
I wrote an article a few months back that discussed commercial web-based comics, inspired by the release of Crossgen's online service. Although reading comics on a screen is obviously not the same as collecting real comics, it's a pretty good way to find something amusing to do during work/university when you're slacking off... ;)
Kevin and Kell creator Bill Holbrook still has mainstream strips running; On The Fastrack and Safe Havens.
--- Gary McClellan