Business
Making money with webcomics. Seriously!
News & Views for Friday, May 11, 2007
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on May 11, 2007 - 12:13
HEADLINES
BUSINESS
- Comic Screw has an article called Digital Distribution that lays out how the comic book industry has helped fuel the rise of file-trading of illegal scans of comics. In the sense that currently there is no legal alternative currently available it's seems to be part of the same puzzle at issue in Joel Fagin's recent article for Comixpedia titled Reinventing Micropayments.
ADVERTISING
- Schlock Mercenary adds Project Wonderful ads. It sounds like the new features at Project Wonderful (like the ability to set a minimum bid price) helped convince Howard Tayler to give it a try. (The Weirdlings webcomic also recently added PW ads)
INTERVIEWS
- Wizard talks to David Willis of Shortpacked.
- Pink Raygun interviews Paige Braddock of Jane's World.
- Daily Cross Hatch has a three part interview with Raina Telgemeier. (part 1, part 2, part 3)
- Gigcast talks to D.J. Coffman.
- Jack Carter interviews Renee Katz of The Nineteenth Century Industrialist.
REVIEWS
- Mr. Myth reviewed Zap! and Abstract Gender.
- Zhi reviewed Zero Hunters.
- Aarin reviewed School Spirit and Bear and Kitten.
- Jack reviewed Annhilicious, Bug Report, and Bear and Kitten.
- Time Well Wasted reviewed Real Life.
- The Ferrett reviewed The Mansion of E. (review links from a Talkaboutcomics post)
DEAD TREES
- Pre-orders for the dead tree collection of David Willis' Shortpacked! end this coming Monday.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
-
T Campbell muses about the high-webcomics-profile of writer/actor
Wesley CrusherWil Wheaton (with copious linkage to webcomic cameos included). - Reinder Dijkhuis incorporates the latest Intertubes meme into some nifty advertising buttons for his comic ROCR.
- Toon Brew reproduces what may well be the first episode of the first webcomic: David Farley’s Doctor Fun. (link from Journalista!)
- Shaenon Garrity observes that the Eisner's Digital Comics category "cruelly and unfairly overlooked this year... Templar, Dicebox, Family Man, [and] Grace...."
- FLEEN's Anne Thalheimer muses on webcomic references in random places in a short column.
- Famed videogame designer, Ron Gilbert, to help out with Penny Arcade's forthcoming videogame.
Free Scott McCloud!
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on May 2, 2007 - 15:48
Interubes pundit Clay Shirky posted about Scott McCloud's decision to re-release The Right Number for free (formerly it had been available for purchase via the just recently discontinued Bitpass payments system).
Interstitial Comics at MoCCA
The Interstitial Arts Foundation in collaboration with the MUSEUM OF COMIC AND CARTOON ART's MoCCA Mondays presents a panel on COMICS AND THE INTERSTITIAL:
Monday, 30 April, 6:30 pm
Interstitiality and the Comic Book Industry
MoCCA * 594 Broadway, Suite 401
New York, NY 10012 * 212-254-3511
http://www.moccany.org/
Will There Be A YouComic?
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on April 13, 2007 - 14:05
Joey Manley, webcomics entrepreneur, posts about "analyzing the market" which he defines as webcomics portals, aggregators and technology providers. (Which as Manley notes is a bit different than the questions an individual creator asks themselves when working on a comic) In the comments there's some talk of Web 2.0 as well which I'll tie into things later on.
Interview On Fleen: Jeff Knooren Of Super Unit 5000
Submitted by Compugasm on April 13, 2007 - 09:18
David Hamilton, a graduate student and freelance journalist in Toronto Canada, interviewed Jeff Knooren of Super Unit 5000 about webcomics. The full interview is at Fleen.
The interview covers topics such as:
- When did webcomics really take off? What were the most influential ones?
- What type of person is the typical reader?
- Can someone make enough money to write a webcomic full-time? Is the goal of many webcomic authors, as you see it, to break into the publishing industry with their own book?
Comics Success Story
Submitted by Compugasm on April 3, 2007 - 19:19
I thought comixpedia might find it interesting to hear my comics success story. In fact, I didn't have time to blog at comixpedia lately, because the growth of the comic left little time for blogging.
Errant Story Donation Drive
Submitted by Erik Melander on March 27, 2007 - 06:57
Michael Poe, creator of Errant Story, and his girlfriend(wife?) are experiencing some financial trouble that they hope to deal with by doing a donation drive.
For those of you who missed the thread on the forum, Poe and I are facing some rather serious financial difficulties at the moment. This is largely because this month we have a lot of single-time expenses associated with running the comic, that the comic has not brought in sufficient income to cover. This is not something minor. In fact, what with various last-minute expenses and taxes and advance payments for conventions and the like (a breakdown of most of the payments needed can be found here), we have to pay out well over $10,000 this month!!
Read on for quotation madness.
TalkAboutComics Podcast: Todd Allen and the Economics of Webcomics
Submitted by Joey Manley on February 27, 2007 - 18:33
Joey Manley interviews Columbia College business professor Todd Allen, whose 2003 study "The Economics of Webcomics" will be released in a heavily-revised second edition in a few weeks.
Scootles Unscuttled
Submitted by Tim Tylor on January 7, 2007 - 16:47
Just been reading the sorry tale of H C Noel's Mr Scootles and the little publisher that couldn't, and the commentary
Webcomics and VC's: Who Knew?
Submitted by Joey Manley on November 22, 2006 - 13:35
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of my blog that I've been contemplating steering WCN into the dangerous and exciting waters of venture funding. Sort of an open secret. Today, in the course of researching a very promising partnership, I stumbled tangentially (from a comment on a post on a blog on a comment on a post on a blog on a ... you get the idea) onto this, a true webcomic from the dotcom boom/bust era, all about the world of venture capital.
I thought the first wave of webcomics was all about videogames and UNIX engineers. I mean, I always knew that that was an oversimplication, but still -- a niche webcomic serving financial industry types? That's the kind of weirdly mainstream play you'd expect to see launching now, not way back when. The history of webcomics is studded with these little surprises, I guess.
