MIT on Comics and Micropayments

Snotty Pippen writes "Henry Jenkins, Chair of MIT's Comparative Media Department, has posted 'Comics and Micropayments: An Interview with Todd Allen.' Todd Allen is a professor/consultant with a book on the business of comics. The two discuss a number of online business models and web comics, ranging from the print-to-web migrants like Girl Genius and Finder to the print-to-web download of Flying Friar; the long tail as a driving source for reprints & back-issues; and PayPal's effect on micropayments. All-in-all, a fairly comprehensive round-up of the industry."

How to Make Money in Online Comics

1. Get mentioned in a book by an MIT guy
2. Get a link from slashdot
3. ???
4. Profit!

DC and Marvel

DC offers little more than a few pages of previews. One occasionally hears rumblings, but DC seems to be a little on the web-phobic side, to look at their actions.

Marvel continues to waffle. They stepped back from their web comics, then returned to them with a strategy geared more towards promotion of upcoming collected editions. Their initiative of late have been establishing a wiki and instituting some editorial blogs. On the other hand, Marvel also issued a survey about attitudes towards digital downloads, including questions on how much the consumer would be willing to pay for one. So with Marvel, they're definitely thinking about it, if not jumping to action.

So, it looks like, as with the music industry, the established players are scared/hesitating over using these new web tube things, whilst the smaller independants are stealing a march on them. Apart from the one's mentioned, UF must be every geek's favourite example of how to make a living from offering a web comic.

Re:DC and Marvel

What's stupid is I have money that'd I'd GLADLY give them to be able to get subscriptions of comic books that I enjoyed way back when I was younger. Comic fans understand (I think..but I could be wrong) that he continuation of their favorite series is based on SALES. Yes, you can download scanned comics off of bittorrent, but I'd gladly PAY to read those comics if I knew it influenced in some way the future publication of comics I want to read.

I'm out of the collector "phase", I don't need/want boxes of comics in my basement.

Finder!

If you have not read Finder [lightspeedpress.com] then you are missing the best thing going on in independent comics today. Aboriginal Sci-Fi, set in a future world with a mix of technology and industrial-age mentalities. It helps to read everything in order, and only the recent stuff is available online. If you don't want to start with the big 2-book, 14-issue trade paperback that begins the whole set (called "Sin-Eater"), let me recommend just purchasing "King of the Cats", or seeing if your local library has it. It's her best book, just four issues, and is almost guaranteed to get you hooked. I've been reading this title now for close to years, since it first started, and it's the only thing I continually come back to, month after month.

Song of Songs the Comic Book

You guys forgot "web to print". Song of Songs is made by an independant Toronto artist. He has been making the comic and posting the pages online for people to download for quite a long time. Now that the pages are all done it has been printed up and it's selling in stores around Toronto.

It's completely independant, so it will be interesting to see how successful it is outside Toronto and internationally.

http://songofsongsthecomicbook.com/ [songofsong...icbook.com]

(I'm not affiliated with the kid in any way. Just posting AC because I don't have an account.)

iTunes Analogy...

...really isn't valid, from my point of view. You can download a stand-alone, complete song from iTMS for $0.99. Do most cartoonists who use micropayments give you the entire issue/volume/story for that price? I know McCloud sells the entirety of The Right Number (http://scottmccloud.com/comics/trn/intro.html [scottmccloud.com]) for $0.25, but I'm not sure about other artists. If they don't sell the entire issue for a small price, the analogy falls apart, since you're not getting something stand-alone for a micropayment. I also think the iTMS analogy is invalid in that music is not a niche market, while webcomics still are, for the most part. Personally (as a webcartoonist), I don't think micropayments are a viable means of "making a living", but some cash can be made. This reminds me of a quote, either by Jerry Holkins or Jon Rosenberg, that basically stated that if someone was willing to pay $0.15 for a comic, they'd pay $3.00.

Conclusions

1. Yes, it is possible to sell comics/books/movies/music on the Internet, despite the fact that TEH NOOBZ R TEH PIR4T3ZING.
2. Yes, it is possible to make a living selling comics/books/movies/music on the Internet.
3. The Internet is not a dump truck
4. The big giant media companies are not interested in sales, revenue, copyrights or customers. They want control.
5. The only reason more stuff isn't being sold online is because big giant media companies are pricing their product "money grab" instead of "good value."
6. The independent guys have development and payments down. Once they get marketing, it's over.
7. The Internet is a series of tubes.

The problem with micropayments

As mentioned in the article, BitPass requires you to put a minimum of $3 into your account when you open it. Obviously this seems stupid if you only want to spend a nickel. I understand BitPass's plight--it probably costs them a minimum $0.30-0.40 in fees to process a credit card. However, If you remember the early days of Paypal, they burned through some serious VC funds by basically throwing millions at people to get them to signup. It worked and paid off in spades big time. If BitPass wants to ever be a contender, they're going to have accept the fact that they'll need to bleed money for a year or two.

Micropayments again

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so [penny-arcade.com]:

When I hear the word "micropayments", I reach for my revolver.

You know...

...you need more sleep when you glance at a Slashdot title and see: "MIT on Chronic and Micropayments" Skochie Bochies! :)

My web comic is doing its part...

...to flesh out the end of a very long tail. ;-)

Another comics download service

Just yesterday I read an announcement about a new service [comicsworthreading.com] called Drive Thru Comics [drivethrustuff.com]. Like the interview, they're describing it in terms of iTMS.

Not surprisingly, it's mostly small-press, but there are at least some names I recognize.

What a silly title.

Good to know that Henry Jenkins now speaks as the representative for all of MIT. Even when he posts something on his personal website, rather than on his MIT-hosted site [mit.edu].

He's awesome and all, but c'mon. Maybe President Hockfield has a totally different take on webcomic micropayments. Or maybe there was a vote at the last faculty meeting to not conduct this interview.

Micropayments

From what I've seen (I read ~100 webcomics on a regular basis), the most successful, money-wise, webcomic artists are the ones that don't use micro-payments. Despite all the comics I read, I don't read any that require micropayments, because I could never get enough into the comic to justify it. If a comic I already enjoyed moved to micropayments, I wouldn't mine paying for it, but to pay for a comic before I know if I'll enjoy it just seems silly, especially with the huge number of free ones out there. The best approach I've seen to this was Narbonic, which had a significant portion of the early comics available for free, which got me to pay for it (though it is all free now), since I had an emotional investment in the characters.

Really though, most webcomic artists that do it for a living use advertising and merchandise sales, and are very successful at it. I was a bit astounded at the trend toward micropayments that started about 2 years ago. The big question to me is "why?" Why automatically alienate a large portion of your potential audience when the alternative has been proven successful many times?

My only thought is that maybe it's better for those mid-sized comics that don't have enough readers to pull in a lot of money in advertising, but I can't see that micropayments would really be much better, when it would be a significant barrier to the growth of that audience.