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."

Comments

Personal Whine

[Torinaga-Sama]

How can it be comprhensive if it mentions neither Penny Arcade or Megatokyo?

Bitter, party of one.

Re:Personal Whine

[Kallahar]

I agree with your sentiment, but the article is about moving established print comics to the web. I believe that both MT and PA started out as web-comics.

Kallahar

Re:Personal Whine

[Freeptop]

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).

Re:Personal Whine

[Osty]

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.

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.

Question...

[MMaestro]

If a comic was, presumably, successful to become a comic book in the first place, why would it turn into a web comic later on? Usually its the other way around, web comics doing well and then making the slow change to real life comic. Unless the real life comic wasn't making a profit, different area of discussion, then I can't see the logic of making a move like this.

One thing I've noticed recently

[Anonymous Coward]

Is an increase in comics piracy, in particular over BitTorrent. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right places before, but you can download scans of most the major books.

Where have all the comic books gone?

[psxndc]

I realize the article talks about moving comic books onto the internet, but it touches on an interesting topic: the state of the modern day comic store.

When I retire, I think I'd like to own a comic book store (I fall into the hobbyist subsidizng their habit group). But what will be the state of comic books and stores in 30+ years? Will we still have them as they are (but at $10 a pop at the current rate of comic inflation) plus internet distribution? Will they be only downloadable issues that go into an eBook-like device? Straight into your head? What is the future of the modern day comic book and thus the comic book store? On top of that, what happens to the collectibility of the digital comic book? Comments, please.

psxndc

Re:Rule 1: Be Funny

[Thatmushroom]

OK, you're trolling, but I'm going to bite.

Your rule is absolute, utter crap. I hardly thing that Krazy Kat is funny, or that Maus should be funny. One Over Zero, for the digital world, had a few chuckles now and then, but I didn't read it daily because I loved how utterly hilarious it was. Comics can be more important than a laugh. Krazy Kat was a poetic comic, and is widely regarded as the best newspaper strip of the 20th century. Maus told the story of the Holocaust in way that was both accessable and mature. One Over Zero had a very enjoyable take on religion.

Being funny is hardly an all-encompassing goal, and what you might find stale others will enjoy immensely. If you don't like it, don't read it.

Comics on the web just aren't the same thing

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

how to migrate comic books from print to web and make it work

I used to read comic books. I still do on occasion, as well as comics on the web. I notice one thing : comics that work well on the web are shorter, simpler in drawing and text and quicker-paced than paper comics. In short, web comics have their own style, quite distinguishable from paper comics. I reckon that's merely due to current screen resolutions : 75dpi, even 100 dpi isn't much to display nice graphics, complex actions or texts, while paper can bear (near-)infinitely complex details.

Once, I started to scan my old paper copy of Art Spiegelman's Maus, which is my all-time favorite comic, because the poor book was getting worn out and I wanted to preserve it. Well, after 2 or 3 pages, the digital result turned out to be awful and I reckon took away much of the atmosphere of the book, so I gave up and ended up buying another, recent hardback.

So is it such a good idea to migrate printed comics to the web ? I'm not that sure. It would certainly give an idea of what the original work is, but I think many comics deserve to be read on the media they were designed for originally. Maybe web comics could be considered as a wholly separate subform of comics in general, with its own style and talented authors ?

Finally, as a side note, there's another reason to prefer printed comics over web ones : have you noticed, on cheap comics, that sometimes you can see through the paper and have a look at what's on the next page, in reverse ? if that next page is colorful, or packed in action, you can see something's going to happen in the story and it makes you anticipate the rest with great pleasure. Web-based comics don't do that, and in a way that can take some of the reading experience away.

manga scanlations

[nagashi]

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 :)

Nobody wants to read comics on a monitor

[jasko]

I am a co-creator of an original indie comic. When we were first getting started, the idea of web publishing was very attractive, and we gave it a lot of thought and discussion. We rejected it because primarily, we wanted to make comics. It was my opinion that what we are selling is more than content, it is an experience. Seriously. There's a lot that goes on in your head about paper. Just think about how the act of turning pages controls pacing. We set the reader up with something exciting, the page gets turned quickly. Something dreadful, the page gets dragged over slowly. That's just one example, there are others.

Our decision has largely been vindicated. Nobody we've ever spoken to wants to read comic books on a computer. Strips are another matter, they fit neatly on a screen and once one has loaded you can decide whether you want to read the rest or not. They're like M&Ms. But a comic book is different. Even if you reformatted the standard page to fit a monitor's aspect ratio, you still have problems. No 2 page spreads, for example.

The lack of micropayments is another problem. And yes, I'm on Peppercoin's mailing list. Not a peep since the announcement.

We've got a website obviously, where we try to keep in touch with our readers, promote ourselves to the unsupecting masses, and allow people who don't live where we do to buy our books. We've tried both online pictures and downloadable samples in PDF. Neither one has exactly gone gangbusters.

I'd love to know what you guys think -- would anyone pay to read these (or other comic books) online? How many subscribers does Crossgen have? Try to keep in mind that we have four people who work at other jobs and that we lack Crossgen's millionaire benefactor before comparing us.

Thanks.

Re:Nobody wants to read comics on a monitor

[sleeplesseye]

I would qualify that statement to the following...

"Hardly anyone wants to read comic *books* on a monitor."

This is an important distinction, because it's worth pointing out that millions of people read comics (strips or single panels) every day through visiting websites, email, web-based syndication, etc. Also, millions of people view Flash animations, which are in many cases just another form of comics, made appropriate for the media.

The fact of the matter is that standard sized "pages" do not translate well onto the web, and people resist reading documents presented in such a manner. You'd think that PDFs would fix this problem, but unfortunately not. We can talk all day about how PDFs allow people to put up photo-quality artwork on the web, but the basic fact is that half the time, PDFs crash my browser, and even when they don't, they don't feel like a "normal" reading experience. I understand why they're used sometime, but more often than not, I just think of PDFs as "the lazy man's way to put print content on the web". I get a bit resentful that they didn't create the content for the web, thereby making it far more useful (and usable) for me.

If you want to get readers on the web, you need to make sure your content fits the media. In other words, design for the web or scale the size of your creations so that they fix in a browser better... not much compromise is needed.

A good case in point here is MegaTokyo. They are getting plenty of regular readers, feeding people a page at a time, and producing what is effectively a comic book, without the book. Of course, they also benefit by having a storyline that works very well on the Internet, too.

Also, there are creations by Scott McCloud and friends which are designed specifically for the web and make use of scrolling, etc. These are also good, and also tend to get a fair amount of readers.

Now, assuming you have a comic that is well-suited for the web, you have to deal with the issue of how you distribute it. Frankly, when it comes to the internet, the widest audience is always the audience who wants something for free... and why shouldn't they? After all, if you won't give them something for free, someone else will.

Free is actually not a bad business model, however... there are lots of people who give something away for free (Sinfest, Red Meat, Megatokyo, etc.) who get a lot of readers, a dedicated fan base, and who use that as a platform for making and selling books, merchandise, collecting donations, etc.

Sure, you can try to lock up your creations and sell them, but you have to realize that if you do that, your work will be exposed to fewer people overall. So, if you are trying to make a name for yourself, locking up your creation isn't the best way to do it.

The ultimate truth, however, is that you have to give the people what they want (or didn't know that they wanted...), in the way they want it. Do that, and you should do fine. Just don't expect fame and riches overnight, because it can take years of hard work to build an audience for anything, and once you have an audience, you have to maintain a "relationship" with them and keep them coming back.

Some people, like the Bill Wattersons and the Charles Schultzes of this world, can create that simple, humanistic bond with their audience in four panels. You, however, might have to work harder...