Business

Making money with webcomics. Seriously!

Short News Update

Xaviar Xerexes 1 Comment

Well I had my first hiccup on the new server – you wouldn’t have noticed unless you were up from 1 AM to 2 AM though.  In any event, learning server stuff under pressure = grey hair!

Also, before I forget – the magazine tab in the navigation link at the top of the site now takes you to an issues archive page which right now has links to the December 2005 through April 2006 issues.  Because I just moved to the site the December through February issues, the "recent magazine articles" box is displaying older articles right now.

In webcomics related news, I found this press release from PhD – I wonder how effective this kind of old school press release is in today’s world.  Maybe as part of a larger campaign to get a mention in old school corporate media that still insist on certain formalities (I’m thinking of newspapers and broadcasts)?

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Wednesday News Update

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Zach Miller wins the first Blooker prize for comics for his Joe and Monkey book, "Totally Boned."  Congrats to Zach!

Actually there’s a lot of book-related news today: 

  • Over at Blank Label Comics, Howard Tayler is taking pre-orders for the first Schlock Mercenary book, "Under New Management".  There is a four page PDF preview here.
  • AP Furtado has new books for sale: a two volume collection filled with 48 pages of Tween called "Tween: The Collected Bad Mojo."  Also available is "The Underground Pop Anthology" which features 32 pages of different Furtado stories.  (There are more details and cover art in Furtado’s blog post on this here.)
  • Chris Baldwin announced that a book collecting his Little Dee series should be out sometime this month.
  • Butternutsquash has a new update.  These guys got hit by the Speakeasy shutdown and are now working on how to publish and sell the comic book series version of Butternutsquash.  Artist Ramon Perez is also part of a new group blog on comics called Transmission X.

I may have posted this before, but you may be interested in Debbie Ridpath Ohi’s tax tips for freelancers.  We’re almost on top of the 2005 year tax filing deadline so if you’re not already done with your paperwork get to it already!

Peter Hayward writes a bit about Alexander Danner’s Panel One series on the Weekly Webcomics Review blog.  Speaking of Alexander Danner, he wrote a short review of Hope Larson’s Salamander Dreams for this week’s Webcomics Examiner.

And, have I mentioned Chopping Block is back?  Lee Adam Herold’s creepy-funny webcomic about a serial killer named Butch is back.

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It’s Friday And I Am Out Of Here…

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A few housecleaning, self-promotional details first:  we added one more article to the March issue this week: Kelly Cooper’s column, The Webcomics Reader, which this month examines aspects of comics criticism, including noted critic R.C. Harvey.  You can check out the entire March issue by clicking here.

I moved Comixpedia.net over to the new server last night.  A few things got garbled in the move and it looks like it’s not entirely functional today.  My apologies to the toplist members – I will be working on it tonight and I’m pretty confident I’ll have it fixed.

Also don’t forget that there are two conventions this weekend (at least that I’m aware of): Technicon and Fluke – if you’re exhibiting or hanging out at either feel free to post a comment to the note for each convention to let folks know you’ll be there.

And now the news! (click through to read more)

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Wednesday Bloody Wednesday

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Oh wait that’s Sunday, isn’t it?  Well I’m bloody tired anyhow (was up much too late)…

Flight 3 is in Diamond’s Previews.  The third edition of this anthology series promises to be just as amazing. 

In notwebcomics news, Jeph has hit upon what is sure to be a hugely successful t-shirt featuring the inscription "Bomb the Blogosphere" (here’s a link to it appearing in his webcomic Questionable Content).

And this site looks interesting: Start A Story

Start a Story is a project that encourages creativity and collaboration. To find out more click here. To the right are quick links to the various ‘Start A Story’ projects, to see them all, a description about each of them and the chance to be involved; click here.

 

Editor and Publisher reports that F Minus will be offered for syndication to newspapers by United Media.  You may recall that F Minus was the winner of a contest on MTVu back in December 2004.

And Lirazel points out a new Christopher Baldwin project (reportedly NSFW): I Am Hans Krunkel.

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OK/Cancel on SXSW Blogger/Comics Panels

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SXSW is a huge music/film/stuff festival in Austin, TX (it seems to expand borg-like into new mediums every year).  This year they had bloggers and cartoonists on some panels talking about blogs and money I guess.  A great webcomic called OK/Cancel did a comic on a panel between two well-known bloggers and also a write-up of a panel called "How to Blog for Money by Learning From Comics".

Kevin Cheng of OK/Cancel (which is part of Off-Panel Productions) was on the panel along with Bill Barnes (Unshelved), Dave Kellett (Sheldon), and a blogger named John Gruber along with moderator Nicole Lee (blogger and "comics fan"). Continue Reading →

DJ Coffman on Placing Webcomics With Big Company Websites

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DJ Coffman has a post today on SPUN, a webcomic on the CBS Sportsline website.  The new comic by John Moore is apparently a paying gig with CBS.

This point has been pushed a lot this year by multiple folks – if you want to get paid as a cartoonist one avenue would be to tailor a comic very tightly to a specific subject matter and then approach companies and communitys relevant to the subject matter with it.

It would be interesting to get more examples of success with this approach – post ’em in the comments here if you know of any… 

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Tuesday News Blues

Xaviar Xerexes 3 Comments

TCJ has an interesting article up examining R. Crumb’s copyright suit against Amazon.com for an image Amazon used on its 404 page (File Not Found).  The image, although not the Crumb original, is somewhat like Crumb’s "Keep On Truckin’" man image.  Besides outlining that case, the article delves into some of the changes to copyright law in our lifetime.

More newsy stuff after the jump:

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Goats Drops Premium Membership, Redesigns Website

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Jon and Phillip have redone the Goats website.  I really like the evolution of the look and the new layout scheme.  It’s the kind of thing I’d do if I had any talent for writing code and doing design.

Jon also talks about dropping the Premium membership feature he’s had for the last couple of years.  Paraphrasing a bit, what Jon wrote sounds like he’s very excited about the new direction he’s taking Goats in and wants to invest more time in it.  Time he’ll no longer have to spend on the Patent Pending and other Sunday strips he did for his Premium members. 

A tip of the hat to Jon for being upfront with his fans and striving to do the right thing for them.

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