But high production values?  Really?

Hey Don?  I run a very successful web company that’s been in business for more than ten years.   When I started out I think there were five webcomics and I read them in Netscape Navigator on a gray background.   So let’s dial it back juuust a notch or two, okay?  

How ’bout that.  Did you run that company for ten years?  Did it take a long, long time to become successful?  Did you stick it out and pay your dues and eventually after long sleepless nights and a starvation budget, did you finally meet with success?  If yes, my sincerest congratulations.

But if not, then your resume is irrelevant.  I don’t worry overmuch about your tone on those frequent occasions when I agree with you, so don’t imagine that I’m out to get you.  But when you say declarative, absolutist things like

There’s no chance anyone would willingly work free for three years for a chance to make a living.

, then you get my Somebody’s-Wrong-On-The-Internet dander up.  I’ve been writing screenplays for seventeen years without making a nickel off them.  Maybe they objectively suck, no one can say.  I haven’t yet written one that I consider fit to sell, so I haven’t tried to market any of them.  You might consider that a hobby or avocation rather than a serious artistic effort, but in any case the effort is still there.  Long, late nights spent after long workdays, writing and rewriting, in the hope of eventually coming up with something that will make a mint.

Am I an utter fool for doing so?  Very possibly, since seventeen years without even seriously trying to market my work displays some fairly crippling self-doubt.  But I also know I’m far from alone.  You toil in the tech world, but I live and work in the home of the entertainment industry, the Hollywood Dream Factory, and I can’t throw an iPhone without hitting two agents, three struggling screenwriter/waiters, and a dozen aspiring thespians, to say nothing of the musicians hunched on the sidewalk, busking their little hearts out.

If you think I’m denigrating your character by pointing out that you wouldn’t stoop so low as to follow your passion for free for however many years it took to find fulfillment or break your spirit completely, then I apologetically point out that it was you who claimed nobody would ever do that.

And I’d like to see that explained alongside the breathless hand-waving over the six-figure Kickstarter lottery wins.  

Like all too much in life, it’s a popularity contest.  OOTS may have a larger audience, or a more loyal one, or a deeper-pocketed one, or any combination of these factors.  Or it may have been a strange outlier event involving a perfect storm of consumer demand and Kickstarter networking.  Who can say?  Sometimes, I hate to remind, life is simply not fair.

when the Internet is populated by successful independent businesses as opposed to the “where’s my free update” party.

Surely, if you’re old enough to have been running a web company for ten years (though you didn’t say that; you said the company was ten years old, not that you’d been running it that long), then you remember when the internet was largely populated by academics and scientists.  It should come as no surprise that the average level of discourse has necessarily degraded somewhat since then.  The proles enjoy largely unfettered access to the web these days, and have done so for approaching two decades.  You could hope to legislate the fratboys and freeloaders off your internet lawn, but you know as well as I do that they’re here to stay.

Think of how people find sites such as webcomics: random browsing, curated recommendations from aggregators, or recommendations from friends (either directly or indirectly though things like Facebook likes).  The democratization of access opens the floodgates to unimaginable oceans of content, and most of it is still free.  If you want to make like King Canute and convince the multitudes that they should financially support the artists they enjoy, then you’re going to soak your royal tootsies.

And if people give all they have, invest their best talent and work hard for years and still fail, well, you know what?   That means we live in a world where some people can’t succeed, and that’s not the America I was taught about.

Then your education was faulty, and sounds like it may have occurred during the everyone-gets-a-trophy days of the early 1990s.  Ours is not a purely meritocratic world.  Remember those like Keats, van Gogh, Poe, Dickinson, Kafka, and even Stieg Larsson, who died before any real success or recognition could be realized.  Should they have given it all up before dying as apparent failures?  Meanwhile Rebecca Black has a record deal and YouTube’s #1 video of the year for 2011.

What can one possibly do to fight chaos like that?

As for the examples you did make, Phil Foglio, Chris Straub, and Scott Kurtz all make a living fully supported by their art.  I don’t think that those support your original argument about toiling in anonymity only to be spurned by the consumers of your work. 

Scott and Chris’ Kickstarter project was successfully funded by their fans – while you may balk at the idea that they didn’t get as much money as Rich Burlew, there are a lot of very valid potential reasons for that.  I don’t think that the ratio of fans who want merchandise directly related to the webcomic they enjoy is going to be the same as the ratio of fans who want to watch a reality TV show about their favorite webcomic. 

As for promoting a “hit-driven dynamic”, I’m not sure that there’s a solution to that in a free enterprise marketplace.  Should I withhold money from artists I like to support artists I’m lukewarm on?  If anything, communities like Kickstarter allow for creatives to get past “anti-creative gatekeepers”. 

can you point out an example

While it’s clear your question is cleverly framed to subjectively disqualify all webcomics on the grounds of insufficient anonymity, I can, in fact, provide examples of webcomics equal in quality and professional credibility to Order of the Stick that have not scored mid-six-figure hauls on Kickstarter or anywhere else.

Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub, both tremendously talented and successful webcomic artists, managed to raise only $60K on Kickstarter for their DVD project.

Phoenix Requiem has been running for years.  Page after page of lavishly illustrated color stories.  But no six-figure Kickstarters.  

Hell, Girl Genius is an example!  Phil Foglio has been drawing comics since the Earth first assumed a spherical shape.   Now these four examples make money to varying degrees (almost exclusively due to the tireless hard work of their creators), but nowhere near this lottery-win level. 

Again, this isn’t about bashing an individual webcomic for its success.  I’m overjoyed that Order of the Stick has done well.  

It is to question the re-introduction of hit-driven dynamics to a marketplace where they do not belong and I want to know why.  

Anyone who runs a business on the web should be concerned about this.  Hit-driven market dynamics will turn the Internet into a bland low-quality junk factory ruled by a handful of anti-creative gatekeepers just like they did to radio, television, cable, movies, print publishing, comics and animation.

My argument is more concerned with people who aren’t prepared to put in the work and sacrifice necessary for success and wonder why they aren’t successful.  I think that situation is far more common and far more likely than a talented artist who consistently generates quality content and somehow is unable to make money from that. 

I may be suffering from confirmation bias, though – can you point out an example of someone who has toiled in anonymity for two years of putting out quality content and is unable to make money from their efforts? 

As to “butthurt”… it’s not really shocking to read on the internet but in the real world we speak respectfully to each other when we want someone to listen to us. I was just making the suggestion to coffee100 that he might be more successful in his endeavor to convince others of his point of view if he didn’t use curses and various compound words of dubious character. They make the user sound unintelligent and crude and I was pretty sure (given the energy he was expending to prove a point that nobody seemed to agree with) that this wasn’t the image he was going for.

Although I talked a lot in my original post about why OOTS was great I never thought that coffee100 was attacking the creator. I was simply offering an explanation for why the economic model was working in this case and used the comic as a template for other successful comics. His reaction that I thought he was attacking Rich was misplaced. His original post had a problem with the fact that some comic artists are successful and others aren’t and the apparent randomness and unfairness of this (which is kind of a weird thing to get upset about) and this is something that I disagreed with. I thought there were concrete things you could look at to help explain the discrepancy. He disagreed. In my personal opinion he handled the criticism poorly and if I’d known that he’d react that way ahead of time I’d have been more careful in my original post.

And I hope you don’t think I’m upset at anyone! I just think the topic is interesting and I enjoy discussing it. I wish we could all just get along and actually talk about what matters instead of tripping over our own egos like this! I mean, look how off-topic we’ve gotten!

1) Not every audience has large amounts of disposable income
2) Even if you have an audience, that audience may consist mostly of people without disposable income
3) Quality work is not good enough, well drawn and written webcomics aren’t going to succeed purely because of the work that went into it; the real world does not work that way, you need to be special in a way that attracts a loyal following. e.g. A well drawn/written 2 gamer dudes comic is still just another Penny Arcade rip-off.

The simplistic idea that “if you build it, they will come” has never been true, the Internet has not changed that simple reality. No matter how hard you work and the amount of effort you put into it, next to no-one is going to pay money for your one-winged airplane that can’t fly. Marketing and market research have not, and are not, going anywhere.

Lastly, I find it hard to believe that creative types would be impressed with your supposed defence of them. Creative works are not a commodity that are intrinsically interchangeable with each other, you can’t just crank out ‘widgets of creativity’ and sell them for $2 each like a box of bolts where the value proposition of your bolts guarantee success over your competitors. The market for creative material is not so easily predicted.

If the former, well, perhaps they should move on to another project.

P.S. Who gets butthurt about people using the word “butthurt” in this day and age?

“How could you accept a free beer if you had no intention of paying for it?!?”

Firstly, both you and Allen are wrong: that is not ad-hominem. Ad-hominem means attacking someone instead of their argument in order to somehow render their argument “invalid” (i.e. don’t listen to him! He kills babies!). Calling you “bitter” does not achieve this. It’s merely an induction based on the tone of your posts and has no actual bearing on the content of your argument. I did not (nor did anyone else) imply that whether you were bitter or not had any effect upon the truth of your arguments.

Next: Allen’s rejection of the tip-jar is completely sound and I’m afraid you can’t brush it off so easily. A tip jar is a completely voluntary donation. There is no reward except for the fuzzy feeling you get from doing contributing to it. Additionally you have no idea how much has gone into the tip jar and there is no inherent sense of community among those who are tipping. There are also no goals and there’s nothing in it for you. Kickstarter provides rewards set at different levels. If you’re smart like Rich Burlew you create new rewards periodically at multiple price ranges and new rewards are unlocked at certain points in the drive (i.e. when the total amount pledged reaches $X). Because everyone knows how much is in the pot and everyone knows that when we hit X we get these extra rewards (and the rewards are things that people REALLY want like books that literally cannot be printed unless the pledges reach X) there becomes a community mentality, a kind of camaraderie among the backers. They encourage each other, discuss the project, get excited, urge each other to donate, ask questions, muse about the possible future updates, etc. Check out the OOTS drive comments to see this in action. None of this would be possible without Kickstarter and I can say with 100% certainty that this has been largely responsible for the success of this particular drive.

On the matter of webcomic artists: I think the general point that we’re discovering on this page is that yes, luck is involved heavily in this process but attention to detail, quality, and consistency are far more important. I also hold to my point that the proper creation of an online community is vital to this and it can be done wrong. For instance: OOTS is popular and has fans who will donate because of it’s got amazing value. I would say it’s actually far less popular than it could be because it doesn’t update regularly and it doesn’t advertise itself. So the following is small (compared to some) but cult-y. I do regret the phrase “selling out” because it was just a throwaway point. There is obviously nothing wrong with having advertising. That said, when an author decides against advertising and sticks to it they build up trust with the readers because the readers see that they care about the experience of their comic. Rich doesn’t shout from the rooftops “look! no ads! no ads!” so it’s not like it’s a publicity stunt. Fans care about that sort of attention to detail. Other comics like Penny Arcade choose their advertising personally and do it that way. The outcome is the same: fans see that they care about the experience. Not indispensable but it’s a nice touch. (I disagree of your assessment of why PA is popular ENTIRELY but that’s a different discussion.) As to the 50 who are not slouches, I would probably agree that they are great. I read many fantastic webcomics. The reason I named the three I did was because they strike me as being of the very highest quality both in writing and in aesthetics (not that they are the best drawn ever but that the art matches the tone perfectly which is far more important for success), because they all were comics that fully supported the authors, and because they all had successful communities. This doesn’t take away from the other great comics out there but if you look carefully at most of them the gap becomes evident. This is true in every profession: some people are just amazingly good, and it’s not just the comic. It’s the package, the experience.

People aren’t as cheap or lazy as you think. Scratch that: some are. But there are enough people out there who are willing to be loyal to a deserving comic. As an artist I can tell you that being an artist is hard, hard work. But I can also tell you that that’s how it’s always been and if the internet is doing anything, it’s helping improve that situation, not making it worse.

No. It means we live in a world where some people may not succeed at some of the things they try. They can succeed, just not at the thing they’re currently doing.

Whoever told you you could succeed at everything was lying to you. But very few children can parse “you can be anything you want, as long as you don’t need the approval/votes/money/assistance of other people”.

Frankly I think I’ve struck a chord here with people who are more than a little alarmed that the great democratization of the Internet has left us with the same hit-driven economy ruled by the few we’ve tried so hard to escape.

That and the fact that talent AND hard work aren’t enough.  People are scared of that.  And they should be, because not only is that “success by sheer luck” but it’s also all some people have. 

And if people give all they have, invest their best talent and work hard for years and still fail, well, you know what?   That means we live in a world where some people can’t succeed, and that’s not the America I was taught about.

Well, so some people worked hard on stuff but didn’t make lots of money off of it. Same as it ever was. But now you don’t have to move to Paris or Nashville or Hollywood to make it as an artist. Still better than before. It may still take luck (and work), but at least anyone, anywhere can take a shot. How many people do you think tried for years to get a comic strip started in earlier decades, but never got anywhere? None? And in that case, we were stuck with Garfield, not Order of the Stick.

There’s a clear and obvious opportunity, or many opportunities, for creative sites, markets, communities, and so on, to encourage artists and connect them with fans.

Or maybe we could try whining hard enough. That might work too.

If people just generally aren’t willing to pay for art (or apps, or whatever) then tough. You (or ‘they’, whatever) ought to walk away. Because nobody’s going to guarantee your success.

It took me longer than three years to write my first book, for which I have yet to see dollar one, and I’m starting #2. I know people who’ve been struggling in Hollywood for more than three years, actresses and comedians, who are still waiting to make enough money to live on. Welcome to the art world.

So let’s dial it back juuust a notch or two, okay? 

Your tone is the sharpest one in this conversation: “…get the fuck back down in that hole. Sell out bitch,” and “…the ego of the Internet geek-intellectual-gamer ‘neckbearding as a personal philosophy’ reader,” and “…giant toilet clogging shit”. Look to your own notches, dude.

Regardless, your whole premise that this is asking for “donations from the commons” is laughable anyway. If you’re going to talk about misusing the definition of “the commons,” then hey, you started it.

I can see that there’s no chance you would ever pay dues like that.

 Hey Don?  I run a very successful web company that’s been in business for more than ten years.   When I started out I think there were five webcomics and I read them in Netscape Navigator on a gray background.   So let’s dial it back juuust a notch or two, okay?  

Have you ever spoken to a waitron in any Los Angeles eatery who was not spending all their free time writing spec screenplays or toiling in acting workshops for the chance to eventually make a living from their art?

 I can tell you this much:  I’ve never met one who waited three years to get paid.

 And once the attention has been attracted, monetizing that attention is harder still.

So we agree.  Now maybe you can answer my question:  why?  

People are used to getting a whole lot of eye-candy for free from the internet, and most of them are not prepared to pay one thin dime for anything at all.

 No shit? 

If your fifty webcomics cannot monetize even with a readership in six figures, then either they’re doing something wrong with their marketing, or they simply are not good enough (entertaining enough, addictive enough, etc.) to attract a readership that thinks they’re worth paying a buck or two for.

And I’d like to see that explained alongside the breathless hand-waving over the six-figure Kickstarter lottery wins.   

Is it that Internet businesses need a personality cult attached?  Do they need a pitchman?   Do they need a spokesperson to get the audience interested while the talent draws behind the curtain?  If so, great!  Let’s get that established so talented people aren’t wasting their gift serving iced tea.

I say this with great concern for the Internet.  Things like SOPA and ACTA are going to be one HELL of a lot easier to fight when the Internet is populated by successful independent businesses as opposed to the “where’s my free update” party.

And those Internet businesses, while they struggle, have to clench their teeth and ride out another asskicking every time the snort-laughing frat house assclowns light another bag of dogshit on fire on someone’s porch and give those who want the Internet unplugged yet another justification for their bullshit legislation.

It all fits together, Don. And we who want this experiment in free communication to succeed better all start pulling in the same general direction or we’re in for a long dark night of fuckery when the “let’s turn the Internet into a TV channel” crowd takes the wheel.

 I don’t think there’s anyone here who loves everything that gets posted here.

There’s a definite shortage of people griping about ad banners.  Webcomics apparently aren’t worthy of that privilege for some reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_commons

Do you understand what that does to new artists?  There’s no chance anyone would willingly work free for three years for a chance to make a living.

I can see that there’s no chance you would ever pay dues like that.  Michelangelo enjoyed a paid apprenticeship at a time when nobody else did, but was, after all, Michelangelo.  Have you ever spoken to a waitron in any Los Angeles eatery who was not spending all their free time writing spec screenplays or toiling in acting workshops for the chance to eventually make a living from their art?

Just because the internet affords instant access to a worldwide audience of billions, there’s no guarantee that an artist can expect to enjoy the attention of a sizable portion of that audience through hard work and talent alone.  There still happens to be a fair amount of good luck required.  And once the attention has been attracted, monetizing that attention is harder still.  The vast majority of page views by the vast majority of browsing people results in exactly no money changing hands.  People are used to getting a whole lot of eye-candy for free from the internet, and most of them are not prepared to pay one thin dime for anything at all.  A smaller chunk are willing to pay for things they absolutely love more than anything and can’t get enough of.  The rest of the content they see is just… free content, as far as they’re concerned. If your fifty webcomics cannot monetize even with a readership in six figures, then either they’re doing something wrong with their marketing, or they simply are not good enough (entertaining enough, addictive enough, etc.) to attract a readership that thinks they’re worth paying a buck or two for. I don’t see an easy solution to escape the “hit-based economy” as you put it.  There is so very much content and there are so very many hungry eyeballs that putting them together requires either dumb luck or a whole lotta curation.  And anyone who curates a sizable collection of things-they-think-you’re-absolutely-gonna-love is in for an incredibly thankless task.  There’s still no way in hell that they’re ever going to manage to see, let alone judge the quality of, the vast majority of what’s out there.  And whatever they do choose to present to your discriminating eye isn’t always going to be a perfect fit for your tastes.  BoingBoing finds us all kinds of neat stuff, but they don’t find anywhere near all of it (nor do they claim to scratch the surface), and I don’t think there’s anyone here who loves everything that gets posted here. Recognition as an artist (and making a living thereby) has never been easy, and I don’t see how it ever could be.  It’s become so easy to get one’s art out there for all to see, that the entry bar has been lowered drastically, and billions of artists of one stripe or another have put their creations (as well as remixes and outright thefts) online for our consideration and (they hope) purchase.  As with many things pertaining to the 21st century, the signal gets drowned in the noise.  And again, the ease of access means that everyone who’s used to viewing or hearing or otherwise experiencing genuinely awesome stuff for free might fall out of the habit of financially supporting the artists whose work they admire the most.

It’s not unlike music.  Time was, if you wanted to hear some music, you had to make it yourself, pay to purchase it, listen to it over the radio (a presentation curated by record labels and DJs before listeners ever get to vote on it with their wallets), or expend a fair amount of effort bootlegging it.  Recording equipment was expensive, gear wasn’t cheap, and you really had to have some drive (and/or talent, but especially drive) in order to succeed in a career as a musician.  That’s no longer true in the same way.  It’s never been easier to make music and put it out there in front of a huge potential audience.  But attracting their attention away from other forms of entertainment (including other musicians) is quite a trick… and then convincing them to pay you is a stone cold bitch.  Unless they really love you.  Because the Free Alternatives are absolutely everywhere these days.