Comic Genesis Forums

This thread is reserved for discussion of the "Why Pay?" article, soon to be located at <A HREF="http://faans.com/why-pay.html" TARGET=_blank>http://faans.com/why-pay.html</A>. <P>I'm aware that I'm moving into dangerous territory here... it's much more comfortable for me to come out here and do a song-and-dance number every day than take on something as controversial as the "business" side of webcomics publishing. On the other hand, I may end up just speaking a bunch of generalities that everyone can agree with, and that won't lead us anywhere either...<P>But from where I stand, somebody has to try to address this. And if I can't put my money where my mouth is, what good are my words?<p>[This message has been edited by T Campbell (edited 04-28-2001).]

I think the objection to paying for Webcomics is that you don't get to keep them. At least with comics, as absurdly priced as they are, you get a fixed and permanent physical object that you can hold in your hands-- proof of ownership.<P>With online comics, you get archives, sure, but the tangibility and sense of ownership just aren't there. Reading comics online is never going to compare, for me, to the experience of sitting down with a nice fat graphic novel.<P>That said, I'd be willing to pay up to the cost of an average comic book each month to read FANS! It's often just as intelligent, high-quality and enjoyable as the ink-and-paper comics I buy every month. It's worth the expense.<P>Of course, I'd even more eagerly buy a FANS TPB, but that's just me.<P>-- Nathan,
who's not saying this just because he's one of the writers for Webcomics World.

I have to admit that Nathan's hit on an important issue... What if you spend money on a comic and it goes away anyway? You can keep back issues of old magazines, but you can only keep archives of online comics if you download them all to your own machine, but for some of us, that feels a bit like stealing. (not to mention highly time and space comsuming. One webcomic might not be so bad. What about folks who subscribe to ten or twenty different webcomics?)<P>That's just my take on the issues<P>-Wish
Going to hell 'cause she's late for church.

I would pay, for a webcomic like FANS (by which I mean of the quality, quantity, and reliability), what I would pay for a print comic, minus about 10 to 20 percent since I'm not, as people have already mentioned, getting anything permanent. Since you save on printing and distribution costs, that seems reasonable.<P>The bad news is that what I'd pay for a normal comic book is around 1$. CANADIAN.<P>Yes, I'm serious. Barring certain very specific issues, I don't spend more than about 1$ on comics. And all I've got to show for it are six or so thousand of the damn things cluttering my room. And no, I haven't traded quality for quantity; I have full runs of the New Teen Titans (first series), the Legion of Super-Heroes from 1975 to 1995, All-Star Squadron, Crisis, the Giffen JLA, the Byrne Fantastic Four, etc., etc., etc., not just Valiant and Defiant deadwood.<P>Call me cheap if you must, but I'd rather go without comics than spend 4$ apiece for things I can read in under 10 minutes.<P>But if you want to charge me about 10$ (Canadian) a year for FANS, I'll pay.<P>Nicolas

For those who don't know, Scott McCloud has addressed this very issue here:
<A HREF="http://www.thecomicreader.com/html/icst ... cst-5.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.thecomicreader.com/html/icst ... -5.html</A> <P>My opinion on this is complicated. I'd mentioned in some private correspondance that, while I'm not opposed to the idea of paying for online content, I expect it to be far cheaper than a print book or magazine. I do agree with T that the quality of online work is suffering, in part because of the financial situation. For every Fans! or Sluggy Freelance, there are a dozen webcomics not worth the bandwidth it takes to download them.<P>I, for one, would be willing to pay for high-quality work. A web-comic would have to cost significantly less than a print comic, if only because there's no printing or delivering cost involved. As Nicolas already mentioned, print comics are one of the most costly forms of entertainment out there; a $2.95, 22 page comic costs nearly 13 and a half cents per page. The fact that many of print comics use lots of splash pages, large panels, and very spare dialog leaves one with a very poor bargain. <P>If an online comic were to charge $10 a year, to continue someone else's example, that would be under 4 cents a page. If one only wanted to keep up with one or two webcomics of consistantly high quality, this would be quite reasonable. The next big problem I see is that of drawing new readers in; I'm not sure I'd spend even four cents on a single viewing of a comic I'd not seen. In a brick-and-mortar comic store, one can browse the racks before buying. The print world also has the advantage that a writer/artist who spends the money and effort to print his book AND gets someone to distribute it has had to clear at least a few hurdles. The online world is an environment much more forgiving of sloppy, unprofessional work. A webcomic that wants to charge needs some way to set itself apart from the pack, for both its current fans and potential new readers.

I would also be willing to pay for online content, Fans being one of the webcomics I would pay for. But, I already know it's a quality comic. What if I just stumbled across it and was asked to pay for it before I knew anything about it. Perhaps I would try it if I could get a free trial subscription via my credit card, pay pal account or some such. But are there enough people out there with access to some form of compatible payment system (and willing to use it) that will pay for online content. Maybe subscriptions could be offered via something like paypal for a weeks issues, not just a year. If it were under an umbrella site, maybe people would be willing to pay to get access to several comics. Maybe you could entice with limited access to archives (say, the most recent storyline could be up).<P>--Tuscahoma

Just a few more questions on the idea of paying for webcomics:<P>How would you feel about the kind of experimentation T has engaged in if you were paying a fee? Would you be less tolerant of new ideas and experiments if the comics weren't free? Would you feel cheated, for example, if there were sound that you couldn't hear because of technical limitations? <P>What about things like Sluggy Freelance's temporal vacation weeks, madlibs, and other non-comics content? CCS's guest strips? Would this bother you if you were being charged? Would you drop your subscription over it? <P>What's the longest subscription you'd want? A year? A month? Something in between? What subsdcription term would you prefer? Would you rather pay as you go, or send a lump sum up front?<P>I have my own opinions, which I'll share later. I'm later for a meeting now...

Why pay for something you can get for free? Well, lets examine that more closely.<P>Nothings for free, it just looks that way on the surface. Server hardware isn't free, telco's charge for bandwidth, and the support staff have to be paid. As it stands, Keen seems to be working on the "Commercial TV" model, where the content brings in viewers who are a captive audience for the advertisers, who are the paying customers: we, the consumers, are just the marks, to be exploited.<P>This works very well for TV, and advertisers are happy to pay vast sums for brief timeslots in the middle of popular programs. Presumably the companies footing the bill see a suitable return on their outlay to make it worthwhile; or at least that's what their marketing men tell them.<P>There are problems with this model, not the least of which is that control is wielded largely by the paymasters, the advertisers. Business pressures will drive the content towards the "lowest common denominator" - that which generates the largest, least critical, audience, most likely to click through the ads. Remember that the one consistent profit-maker in web content terms is porn, and think where this is leading. I found something called "Exploitation Now" which seemed to fit this description, I'm sure there are others, It wasn't something I wanted to look at more than once.
TV audiences are much larger than web audiences, and I don't think the ad agencies have put their best minds on to the problem of making really effective web-based ads yet. Have you seen a memorable banner ad? So there's some chicken and egg effect here.<P>So we have one answer to the "why pay" question ; - because you want direct influence over the quality of the product. The next problem has been mentioned already - what are you paying for?<P>Its difficult to see how pay-per-issue could be made to work, in a way analogous to printed works. The sums involved would be small, and the risk large, both to the buyer (credit card fraud) and seller (verifying payment). Infrequent, larger transactions are indicated. Possibly one could sell membership of (say) Keenspace. Annual fee gets you a years access to all comics on a particular "server channel", available to members only. Attract new customers with limited-number-of-pages-downloaded demo's (say, thirty pages max).<P>There are more questions than answers, it seems.<P>Muttley

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Muttley:
<B>Possibly one could sell membership of (say) Keenspace. Annual fee gets you a years access to all comics on a particular "server channel", available to members only. Attract new customers with limited-number-of-pages-downloaded demo's (say, thirty pages max).</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Reportedly, Keenspot is working on some sort of subscription model. The currently available comics will probably remain free, although membership may qualify a reader for ad-free viewing. There would probably also be additional content only available to members. I doubt that Keenspace will ever go to a subscription model...it sort of defeats the purpose of the whole "free webhosting" thing.<P>As to whether it will work or not, your guess is as good as mine.<P>------------------
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