MIT on Comics and Micropayments

Snotty Pippen writes "Henry Jenkins, Chair of MIT's Comparative Media Department, has posted 'Comics and Micropayments: An Interview with Todd Allen.' Todd Allen is a professor/consultant with a book on the business of comics. The two discuss a number of online business models and web comics, ranging from the print-to-web migrants like Girl Genius and Finder to the print-to-web download of Flying Friar; the long tail as a driving source for reprints & back-issues; and PayPal's effect on micropayments. All-in-all, a fairly comprehensive round-up of the industry."

Comments

Re:DC and Marvel

[pizza_milkshake]

Those with the most to lose gamble less.

The webcomic #3.

[AltGrendel]

Keep current with updates.

Seriously, I've seen some really good comics die online because the author didn't keep a regular update scheculd. VG Cats almost went this way, but managed to recover.

Re:DC and Marvel

[Kelson]

So, it looks like, as with the music industry, the established players are scared/hesitating over using these new web tube things

And on top of that effect, DC has the disadvantage of being a subsidiary of Time Warner -- which means that even if DC thought it was a great idea, they'd have to convince their higher-ups to go for it.

Micropayments

[HoboMaster]

From what I've seen (I read ~100 webcomics on a regular basis), the most successful, money-wise, webcomic artists are the ones that don't use micro-payments. Despite all the comics I read, I don't read any that require micropayments, because I could never get enough into the comic to justify it. If a comic I already enjoyed moved to micropayments, I wouldn't mine paying for it, but to pay for a comic before I know if I'll enjoy it just seems silly, especially with the huge number of free ones out there. The best approach I've seen to this was Narbonic, which had a significant portion of the early comics available for free, which got me to pay for it (though it is all free now), since I had an emotional investment in the characters.

Really though, most webcomic artists that do it for a living use advertising and merchandise sales, and are very successful at it. I was a bit astounded at the trend toward micropayments that started about 2 years ago. The big question to me is "why?" Why automatically alienate a large portion of your potential audience when the alternative has been proven successful many times?

My only thought is that maybe it's better for those mid-sized comics that don't have enough readers to pull in a lot of money in advertising, but I can't see that micropayments would really be much better, when it would be a significant barrier to the growth of that audience.