… They are?

*zoom*

They are!

Thanks!

Phil’s point about Webcomics taking 2 years to monetize can just as easily be applied to indy print comics. The only difference is publication. Two years to construct a Trade Paper Back, or two years building an online audience?

Keep in mind, Phil’s entire point is that the monthlies _cost more money than they make_. So even if your print comic is doing great, you’re bleeding cash until the TPB.

So which costs more money up front? Which gives you a more predictable ROI? What if your print comic flops due to bad reviews or lack of audience? You’ve still bled all that money on the monthlies and you still haven’t recouped your loss.

At least with the webcomic, you know how many hits you’re getting daily, and can make some reasonable assumptions about your print sales.

As for living off of webcomics: Phil is unique in that he moved from print to online, _not_ in that he makes his living that way. Dozens of people earn their rent from webcomics. Sounds like a small number? Ask yourself, how many regularly-updated high-quality webcomics do you know? Practically all of the top-tier in webcomics make their rent from their comic.

Granted, past a few superstars, none of them are _rich_, but hey, no one said it was a goldmine.

I’m kinda leery of buying vol1, though, since it’s b&w, and the local comicstore guy suggests there might be a colour version someday semi-soon.

Is this trueish?

I stumbled accross the Girl Genius comics around last June. Bookmarked them because I was too busy. Re-discovered them (via my delicious bookmarks) when I was bored and looking for an amusing web comic.

Read all the volumes posted online in about a week.

Kept going back from time to time and reading newly posted adventures.

Decided volume one would make a great Christmas gift for someone. The decided I should also have all the volumes.

Couldn’t find them at any local comic book store, so bought them all on line (v. 1-5). Now I’m reading them all over again in print. Up to volume four. Plan on buying any future vollumes as well.

Ripping fun stuff. Really well done.

Copyright is not the issue as much as it’s figuring out how to reign in the moochers. I regularly tip folks in the real world—and online—when they provide value to something I have done, experienced or bought. But few other folks I know instinctively do that.

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=7022

I wish TalkShoe still paid me by the download. Or for that matter, anything at all. :P

Second of all, I avidly read each online update as soon as it comes out, and yes, I am buying the books as well, despite the fact that I can read it free online. Let me repeat that for all the book publishers out there: getting this content online, for free, =makes me want to buy the hardcopy=.

Hi, obviously, as this quote from one of the comments shows, I was not clear in a few things.

Okay, first of all, to be slightly didactic, the Girl Genius comics were (at best) quarterlies. I have never been able to do a monthly book in my life, as many patient editors can tell you.

Secondly, The comics did indeed pay for themselves. Make no mistake, this was our business. Our initial orders from our main distributor (Diamond), always covered printing and production costs, with a couple of thousand bucks left over, and that didn’t even cover the copies we sold at retail.

Now a couple of thousand bucks isn’t much, true. However whenever we had a new comic come out, we saw a sudden re-energizing of sales of our entire product line. THAT was where we made our rent and grocery money. We realized that the Girl Genius comics were, in effect, a giant, super effective ad for our books that was, in addition, making a small profit on its own.

By putting Girl Genius online, we massively cut our advertising costs, while bringing out a new ad every three days, as opposed to every three months.

It’s definitely not something you could jump into directly and make money at off the bat, but in the webcomic world the Foglios’ experience is rare. Usually, it’s a longer process toward profitability, but they’ve taken a strange path for sure. Certainly cool to see someone originally successful outside webcomics jump into it, though, and it’s probably my favorite of the many that I read.

If I could work full-time on my comic and keep a regular schedule, instead of being on lengthy hiatuses between chapters to rebuild the buffer, do the dayjob, slack off, and do other art, it probably would be paying the rent. It’s the “thousand true fans” theory in action.

It does not have to take two years to have something people are willing to buy – but Phil and Kaja sure as hell had a big boost to making GG self-sustaining as a webcomic by having those couple years of print backlog to flog as collections!