Making money with webcomics. Seriously!
A first-hand account of an author with good intentions and an open-source marketing plan who almost busted his budget on bandwidth. Click here for the entire NY Times article. This is exactly the problem many popular webtoonists face. Continue Reading
A great thread over at Talkaboutcomics Dot Com about day jobs and the eternal quest to eventually quit said day job to focus solely on the art.
What do you do all day? Continue Reading
DC Simpson (Ozy & Millie) writes about how he got to where he is today and offers a few words of wisdom to aspiring webtoonists. Continue Reading
In an interesting thread on “can webcomics be profitable” over at Comicon, Freddy Wertham Jr writes:
I have a near-total ignorance of webcomics so forgive me if this question seems stupid but how many of you webcomic creators offer printed versions of your works via your websites and, if so, how successful/profitable are they?
The reason I am curious is that I do consultancy work for self-published book authors. The biggest problem my clients have once their work is complete, is distribution to the mass market. Like comics distributors, book distribution companies take 65% of the profits.
As per an interview @ Anime News Network, Comics One stopped using ebooks due to low sales. They felt they were ahead of their time… would things be different now? If not, when will ebooks be a viable form of distribution?
ANN: Comics One when it started, was only releasing manga titles over the web using software from Adobe. Can you tell us what led to your company originally doing this and then moving away from it?
Nicole: We originally felt ebooks were the next big thing. They had many benefits: portable, easy distribution, no warehousing issues, cheap sales, price, etc… Unfortunately, after a few months of low sales, we knew we were ahead of our time and we began publishing hardcopy books. We now only use ebooks for promotional purposes.
Read more at Comics One Profile Continue Reading
CD-Romix sells comic books in CD-Rom format, I think. Actually, it’s slightly unclear because nowhere on the site that I can find does it specify the format of the comics you might purchase there. The site describes itself:
CD-Romix is an electronic publishing company designed by artists for artists as a more feasible alternative for them to publish their work.
So far, you can purchase issue 1 and 2 of a comic entitled “27” by Dan Jaaren. All in all it looks like a promising new entrant to the online comics marketplace. Continue Reading
Uclick/uComics is re-running Berkeley Breathed’s entire BLOOM COUNTY and OUTLAND catalogues, plus his 1978-1979 college strip ACADEMIC WALTZ for subscribers. Six daily strips will be offered one day, a Sunday strip the next, alternating back and forth until the entire BLOOM COUNTY collection is digitally back in print.
Details at www.mycomicspage.com/free/comics_new.html. You might also check the www.bloomcounty.com web page.
Here’s an article which outlines MIT professor and e-commerce pioneer Ron Rivest’s latest idea: a means of averaging out internet purchases in such a way as to allow for a profitable and sustainable system of micropayments.
I read the article and I’m not entirely clear on exactly how this idea is supposed to work, nor how it could be applied to the world of webcomics. Anyone care to explain it to me? Continue Reading
Over at Top Webcomics, Brian Clevinger of 8-Bit Theater has posted an interesting article on “webcomic success.”
One of the most common questions I’m asked is, “How can I make my webcomic successful?”
Well, that depends on your definition of “successful.” I started 8- bit Theater to entertain four or five specific people with my crude exercises in Photoshop. They have liked every page of 8BT, and I have gotten more proficient with Photoshop, so I have always considered it a success. If this is all you want out of your webcomic, then you don’t need me to tell you how to do it and the rest of this article will be a waste of your time or, at best, a curiosity.
Hell, I don’t even know how 8-bit Theater got to be popular. But I can tell you why. And some of you won’t like it. Continue Reading
K. Dreger has an article on the demise of Wowcomics dot com, a defunct company started to publish comics online that left its site running long after the company seems to have collapsed. Although the article is scant on the details of the wowcomics business plan (there must have originally been some promise there as they do appear to have signed up several creators and obtained rights to their work), it does show how messy cleaning up a failed online venture can be if the owners don’t do the responsible thing in winding it down. Continue Reading
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