In a recent article, the journal Editor and Publisher highlights Comic Sherpa as a tool to getting noticed by more people and possibly publishers. The Sherpa is a listing service whereby creators can submit their works for $9.95 a month (or $99.00 a year) for the privilege on being posted alongside an established professional syndication site, uComics.com, beside such classics as Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes.
The article goes on to mention several “graduates” of Comics Sherpa that are now featured on uComics and uClick, like Dan Thompson (Lost Sheep) and Frank Page (Bob the Squirrel). If getting syndicated in a print newspaper is your primary goal, this may be worth looking into.
That was me with the first reply, hadn’t logged in.
We’re still arguing quality vs. quantity. I believe that, if you want to be noticed by a syndicate, mirroring on Sherpa isn’t a bad idea, regardless of how your traffic compares to established webcomics. I wouldn’t be so naive as to say the syndicates are “out of touch”, though news of the past week or so may give evidence to the opposite. This is PR, not some dewy-eyed, innocent news article. For their purposes, I’m sure they decided to define “personal web site” as “Geocities or somesuch which can’t handle, let alone generate, traffic comparable to ours.”
I tried not to make it strictly PR, per se. It’s an article about how syndicates are using webcomics as a submission board. This particular one happens to be a part of uComics.com, but maybe it will lead to more publishers and more syndicates taking a more serious look at the web in the future instead of being second-class citizens.
I wasn’t calling your writing PR, Chris. 🙂 I was referring to the article you linked to. You’re doing what folks back home call a “damn fine job”.
Feh! Go with Keenspace, and if you’re really good just use the money you’d spend on Comics Sherpa to buy advertising on an already popular webcomic.
I suppose it depends on your goals. Some people still have syndication as a goal. But yeah…if you want a bigger web audience, go through webcomic avenues. Park on a driveway, drive on a parkway.
Aspiring creators can post their comics on personal Web sites, but these sites usually don’t generate much traffic. Traffic isn’t a problem when strips appear on Comics Sherpa. “We’re getting more than one million page views a month,” said Scott Shorter, who was involved in the creation of Comics Sherpa just over a year ago.
FYI: KeenSPACE (KeenSPOT’s version of Comics Sherpa, only it’s free for all aspiring comic creators) gets over 20 million pageviews a month. The most popular comic on KeenSPACE gets about twice as many pageviews a month as all of Comics Sherpa gets, combined.
That may be true, but what about the type of readers to both? I’d be willing to bet that CS gets a higher percentage of people who are actively searching syndicated and syndication-type strips. Also, I’d think that CS pulls in a lot more publisher types than Space. Quality over quantity, so to speak.
Sure, I’m just talking pageviews. To quote the article again, “Aspiring creators can post their comics on personal Web sites, but these sites usually don’t generate much traffic.” That’s just silly. There are dozens or even hundreds of webcomics on “personal Web sites” that generate more traffic per month than all of Comics Sherpa does.
In other words, the syndicated comics industry continues to be out-of-touch.