Comic Sales Soar After Artist Engages 4chan Pirates

An anonymous reader writes "Steve Lieber, the artist behind the graphic novel Underground, discovered that someone on 4chan had scanned and posted the entire comic. Rather than complaining, he joined the conversation, chatting with the 4channers about the comic... and the next day he saw his sales jump to unheard-of levels, much higher than he'd seen even when the comic book was reviewed on popular sites like Boing Boing."

Comments

Re:Good?

[jack2000]

You do know 4chan has a big comics board right? People on it are pretty heavily into comics. If the world is out that the author cares enough to discuss with his fans the non hardcore fans will hear good things from the hardcore crowd and also buy.

What Monty Python Did

[HannethCom]

This kind of reminds me of what Monty Python creating their own YouTube channel and their sales going up 23,000%. http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/monty-python-youtube-move-boosts-dvd-sales-23000

Cryptomnesia

[tepples]

Ah, but as shares concentrate into the hands of the few and powerful,but sales dwindle

Then the music publishers affiliated with the major record labels will likely start making accusations of cryptomnesia, or accidental infringement of copyright in a work published years ago, against indie songwriters and recording artists. See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music for an example of how it could go down.

Somebody should mention

[Kevin108]

The B&W chapter 1 preview PDF on the author's site is NSFW.