Monday Monday...
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 13, 2006 - 11:20
Joey Manley announced that WebcomicsNation now offers a free service offering the same core functionality as the pay service. Leaving business issues aside, I think this is a great thing as the WebcomicsNation tool set is very useful. Scanning reactions to this I noticed Journalista! today praised the move, but found this quote curious: "I mention all of this because of the potential for this initiative to create the one thing that webcomics have pretty much lacked up until now: a central gathering point." What Dirk is describing is Big Panda circa 1999, Keenspot/space circa 2001. They were the online gathering points. What happened? Webcomics got bigger.
Gabe posted the cover to the forthcoming Penny Arcade book, "Birds Are Weird" (along with some of the preliminary sketchwork).
Basic Instructions by Scott Meyer is pretty funny (sort of a non-political Tom The Dancing Bug). There was a Digg entry for it recently. It only got 3 Diggs and so it didn't make the front page (most comics don't get "dugg" much from what I've seen) but Google picked up the Digg.com entry for it (presumably because Digg.com has a great page rank in the Google algorithm). So there might be a value to posting to Digg even without much hope of making the front page of Digg.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
- Long time webcomics creator (Todd and Penguin, Taking Up Space) has a new comic called Girl and Monster.
- Menace Club - someone remixed Dennis the Menace comics with Fight Club dialogue. Funny as hell (a little creepy too...) See it before the lawyers attack!
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Webcomics In Print has another great update on current webcomic book titles.
- FLEEN has an interview with Kristin Lindsay, director of the Penny Arcade-founded charity, Child's Play.
- Journalista! catches a profile of creator Ethan Lee (Single Asian Female) in AsianWeek.
- Lots of people are pointing to this NY Times piece on Dark Horse, a fairly successful independent comic book publisher.
- Obdormio praises Adrian Ramos' Count Your Sheep.
I'd have to guess the
by Katie Sekelsky - 11/14/2006 - 16:01
I'd have to guess the comic didn't get dugg any more than 3 times (4 now... but the 4th is me) is more due to the bland title/description. If you notice, the title doesn't even give the name of comic, nor any sort of details about it's contents (beyond "about life"... but what comic isn't?). Not to mention, it was filed under the "health" category, when it would've likely faired better elsewhere.
Though, in the end, webcomics don't really get dugg that often. Of course, Digg is more for news anyhow, and webcomic *news* hasn't gotten up there once and a while (Diesel Sweeties getting syndicated hit the front page for a while)
-reva- http://www.thinksynch.com
-reva-
http://www.thinksynch.com
Dirk asked me a question
by Joey Manley - 11/14/2006 - 00:27
Dirk asked me a question about "gathering places" when he interviewed me for TCJ. The context was he was looking for something that is the equivalent of the local comics shop where fans get together every Wednesday and shoot the breeze. I guess he's continuing that concern here. I'm not sure how WCN compares to that, or how it compares to that more than the other candidates that have been mentioned by Chris & Xerexes -- maybe Dirk will expand more on it. I have a feeling it's an important concern for him. But I'm not quite sure what he's getting at, either.
My answer to his question when he interviewed me was that most of the "community centers" in webcomics seem to me to be more about the creators than the readers. And I added that I don't think creators and readers are the same people all the time -- that there really are a lot more readers out there than creators, despite what some cynical folks say.
Joey
www.webcomicsnation.com
I definitely agree with
by Chris Crosby - 11/14/2006 - 01:43
I definitely agree with that, Joey. Only a tiny fraction of any webcomic's readership bothers to participate in the webcomics "community", much like only a miniscule percentage of, say, the 15 million+ people who watch NBC's "Heroes" every week choose to also talk about the show online with other fans. Most readers are just interested in getting their entertainment and moving on. Only the most hardcore fans would think of visiting any webcomic-focused discussion site.
I imagine the total number of people who read at least one webcomic on a regular basis to be at least 8-10 million. By comparison, I remember reading about a decade ago in a COMICS BUYERS GUIDE article (by stat fanatic John Jackson Miller, if I recall correctly) it was estimated that about 500,000 people read periodical print comic books regularly.
An interesting statement
by Chris Crosby - 12/10/2006 - 03:03
An interesting statement made by DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz in a recent NEWSARAMA interview:
PL: [laughs] I think the American population is reproducing a lot faster than copies of Watchmen are moving out of stores. But that brings up the point that we have to face the fact that we're dealing with a country that's not one made up of an enormous number of readers. Maybe…maybe we're touching a million people [emphasis added] in this country with comics, between traditional comics and graphic novels. That's a very, very hard number to get a hold of as a solid analysis. Maybe it's a larger number when you start throwing in the most causal readers of Archie Comics and other things that people buy once in a while and don't stick with for any length of time.
But we're not at ten million. And we've got a country of 300 million people. So I don't think that we're going to get the whole country set up with their individual copy of Watchmen anytime soon. It'd be a better country if we did.
Full interview: http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/Levitz/Levitz06_1.html
Chris
by Xaviar Xerexes - 11/14/2006 - 09:05
What kinds of data leads you to guess 8-10 million readers of comics online? Not trying to snark - I'm curious about how you guessed that.
____
Xaviar Xerexes
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.
I run this place! Tip the piano player on the way out.
Well, considering Penny
by Chris Crosby - 11/14/2006 - 09:32
Well, considering Penny Arcade alone has 3.5 million uniques per month (according to Robert Khoo in July 2006), it seems like a fairly realistic estimate to me. If I was being particularly conservative (which is obviously rare for me :>), I'd say 5 million.
Note that I'm including all comics published online in that number, including syndicated comics (Dilbert, Peanuts, etc) and online comic books (Marvel's DotComics, etc).
Chris -- Do you happen to
by Joey Manley - 11/14/2006 - 09:53
Chris --
Do you happen to have documentation of where Khoo made that claim? Was it in an interview or something? It's not that I doubt those numbers -- quite the opposite, I'd like to show it to some doubting Thomases I know.
Joey
www.webcomicsnation.com
I read it in a transcript of
by Chris Crosby - 11/14/2006 - 20:51
I read it in a transcript of a Comic-Con 2006 Webcomics School panel on Fleen.com... here ya go...
Q: How many unique visitors do you get a month?
Barnes: I’m not sure anybody here wants to say exactly how …
Khoo: 3.5 million.
Barnes: Okay, fine. 30 thousand.
Tayler: I’m not sure about per month, but 25 thousand a day.
Kurtz: 1.2, maybe 1.3? Robert, yeah? Okay, call it 1.3 or so.
Breeden: 1.3 what?
Kurtz: Million.
Breeden: That’s two commas. Okay, 10 thousand a day.
Karlsson: I don’t run a webcomic.
Thanks! This will come in
by Joey Manley - 11/15/2006 - 11:04
Thanks! This will come in handy.
If anybody else has any data about webcomics' popularity that isn't already easily available (like Alexa numbers, which are easily available), or publicly-available but fairly-well-hidden information about revenue growth, that would be appreciated, too. It's for a little writing project I'm working on. I'm collecting all the stuff that has been said in public about actual numbers and actual successes -- especially from credible sources like Khoo. If you guys can help me, I'll be glad to make my compilation of data public, too -- though that's not really the reason I'm doing it.
Talk To Rob Balder
by Xaviar Xerexes - 11/15/2006 - 11:33
Joey
You should talk to Rob Balder - he has done some research on webcomic traffic (I don't know how recently he's looked at anything though)
____
Xaviar Xerexes
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.
I run this place! Tip the piano player on the way out.
My understanding was that he
by Joey Manley - 11/15/2006 - 12:06
My understanding was that he was clutching his data to his chest and keeping it secret until the day he died.
Joey
www.webcomicsnation.com
As I remember it, and I
by Erik Melander - 11/15/2006 - 12:28
As I remember it, and I might be wrong, he might be willing to tell you personally. He just doesnt want to publish it.
Vir Bonus
Yeah
by Xaviar Xerexes - 11/15/2006 - 12:40
Rob offered to show it to me - we've certainly talked about it although I've never seen the spreadsheets.
I think he just didn't want to deal with any "drama" from publishing it. I don't know how detailed it is - the general thrust of it is not shocking to me - the rising tide of readership interest in webcomics as a whole has benefited individual webcomics that were already popular much more significantly then those that were/are not popular.
____
Xaviar Xerexes
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.
I run this place! Tip the piano player on the way out.
Yeah, people forget that the
by Joey Manley - 11/15/2006 - 12:47
Yeah, people forget that the Long Tail is attached to something (shall we call it the Short Body)?
One of the things I'd be interested in knowing is: how that long-tail traffic, aggregated, compares to the top comics, aggregated. That is, instead of comparing Penny-Arcade to, say, Popcorn Picnic, and then just going, "Penny-Arcade is more popular! Wow!" I'd like to see the top, say, 50 comics treated as one unit, and the bottom, say, 60,000 comics treated as one unit, and how those two units compare in terms of actual traffic growth and traffic trends. If that makes sense. If the long tail is growing more and more popular vs. the small number of extremely popular comics, that would be good for WCN. If not, it would be bad. The problem, of course, is in coming up with data for the *entire* long tail. The most popular comics are well-known by definition. Finding comics # 40,000 - 60,000 and learning about their traffic might be impossible. Hm. Maybe I'll play with Alexa's new web services data toolset. I dunno.
I'll see if I can't hook up with Rob soon -- I'm planning another trip to Virginia to visit family in a month or two. This is probably the kind of conversation best had in person, if he's worried about leaks.
But that long tail/short tail thing isn't all I'm interested in. I'm also interested in any solid numbers from anywhere. Anybody else got any data? Off-hand remarks in interviews or conference panels, etc?
Joey
www.webcomicsnation.com
I'd guess Rob's take would
by Xaviar Xerexes - 11/15/2006 - 15:49
I'd guess Rob's take would be that the stars (the "short body") are growing faster then at least some portion of the cumulative long tail but you're right that it would be difficult to capture all of that.
What's the link to the new Alexa data toolset?
If you're in VA stop by the next WW or shoot me an email and we (local webcomic types) can all meet for lunch or something when you're in town.
____
Xaviar Xerexes
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.
I run this place! Tip the piano player on the way out.
Come to think of
by Joey Manley - 11/15/2006 - 16:38
Come to think of it.
There's really two possible growth dynamics for the Long Tail, come to think of it: thickening (individual comics in the Tail getting more popular) and lengthening (more and more comics coming onto the end of the tail, each of which has some small single or double-digit audience to add to the aggregate whole). The methodology I mentioned above (cutting off the definition of the Long Tail at 60,000 -- or at any arbitrary number) would not accommodate an analysis of the latter growth dynamic. I have been led to believe that most of the audience growth in blogs, for example, has been due to the latter dynamic -- but I can't put my finger on where I got that information, and it may be faulty or misremembered.
Must think more.
Joey
www.webcomicsnation.com
Chris Anderson
by Xaviar Xerexes - 11/15/2006 - 17:01
Probably something Chris Anderson wrote or said - his blog and book are both called The Long Tail I think.
Common-sensically (is that a word?) it's probably both for the tail (that is tail gets longer and bigger) but really the question is how does overall growth in webcomics readership allocate over the pool of total webcomics. As a percentage of that growing number of readers do the rich get richer faster or slower?
____
Xaviar Xerexes
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.
I run this place! Tip the piano player on the way out.
If you're an individual
by Joey Manley - 11/15/2006 - 17:18
If you're an individual cartoonist, I think the key question is: are new hits possible now, or is the "short body" limited to comics that started pre-2000? In other words, is the "short body" itself getting longer?
That's not the question that applies to my business, though. Nor to yours, Xerexes. The question that applies to our businesses, it seems to me, is: is the sum total number of people involved in the webcomics community -- creators, readers -- growing, and, if so, how much of that growth is singularly tied to one or two top comics, and how much is spread around in the Long Tail (and therefore more likely to be participants in more general webcomics-community type websites and businesses)?
Joey
www.webcomicsnation.com
It's
by Joey Manley - 11/15/2006 - 15:53
It's here:
http://www.alexa.com/site/devcorner/web_info_services
But it costs money, I think.
Joey
www.webcomicsnation.com
Thanks for the context
by Xaviar Xerexes - 11/14/2006 - 00:33
That still confuses me as to what Dirk means but it does shed some light on what he was pointing to.
____
Xaviar Xerexes
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.
I run this place! Tip the piano player on the way out.
I'm a bit confused by Dirk's
by Chris Crosby - 11/14/2006 - 00:00
I'm a bit confused by Dirk's comments as well. BigPanda.net was definitely our central gathering point in the early days of webcomics. Nowadays, I would consider the central gathering point for webcomics (at least in terms of cataloguing) to be thewebcomiclist.com. I may be alone, but I look at this page as the BigPanda.net homepage of 2006: http://www.thewebcomiclist.com/profile.php?order=ranking
As Manley mentions in his announcement, Keenspot's ComicGenesis.com continues to be the most popular free webhost for comics by far, according to Alexa. Our current rank is #9,846. For web popularity, that puts us in striking distance of Marvel Comics' marvel.com (#6,617) and DC Comics' dccomics.com (#9,460). Here's a rundown of Alexa's rankings for comic webhosts:
ComicGenesis.com: #9,846
WebcomicsNation.com: #34,358
DrunkDuck.com: #52,313
SmackJeeves.com: #143,974
TransplantComics.com: #384,740
ComicDish.com: #2,078,230
Webcomics Nation! We're
by Joey Manley - 11/14/2006 - 01:34
Webcomics Nation! We're number two! We try harder!
Most people in the webcomics world are probably too young to remember those Avis ads.
Joey
www.webcomicsnation.com
Thanks for the reportage!
by Xaviar Xerexes - 11/14/2006 - 00:35
Thanks Chris!
I wouldn't argue with The Webcomic List as a Big Panda like hub. I wonder though if any site can be as "central" when there are SO many more comics today then at the turn of the century. As a percentage of comics online I suppose its unknowable but I wonder if The Webcomic List has the same percentage?...
____
Xaviar Xerexes
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Gnaw.
I run this place! Tip the piano player on the way out.