Q. What’s the standard size for a comic strip?
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This is a re-post from the Webcomics.com archive. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good example.
If you’d like to join the site, you can get a 12-month subscription for $30 — or you can get a one-month Trial for $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire. For less than three bucks a month, you can get a steady flow of information, tutorials and advice targeted towards your webcomic business — plus a private forum to discuss issues with other professionally minded cartoonists.
There seems to be some misinformation going around about whether it’s legal to ship comics using the Media Mail service of the U.S. Postal Service.
Since misunderstanding this could cost you thousands, let’s get it straightened out now.
Here’s the passage on the USPO Web site regarding comics and Media Mail — with the pertinent passage in bold.
Media Mail packages may not contain advertising. Comic books do not meet this standard. Books may contain incidental announcements of other books and sound recordings may contain incidental announcements of other sound recordings. In accordance with standards in the Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), Section 170, Media Mail packages must have a delivery address and the sender’s return address and are subject to inspection by the Postal Service™. Upon such inspection, matter not eligible for the Media Mail rate may be assessed at the proper price and sent to the recipient postage due, or the sender may be contacted for additional postage.
So, if you’re shipping graphic novels that do not contain advertising, you can use Media Mail to do so — as long as those graphic novels don’t contain ads.
If you’re shipping floppies — i.e. monthly comics that contain advertising — then you may not use Media Mail.
As a result of the discussion around this thread, I’m going to launch the first-ever Webcomics.com Comics Event: Webcomics.com Halloween!
Create a Halloween-themed illustration or standalone comic and post it here. I will create a special Halloween page on this site for all of the participants. All participants will get a link back to their own site. We’ll promote the page together, and hopefully generate a little traffic along the way.
You can post on this site the same way you would post on your own WordPress-based website! All posts have to be reviewed and approved by a Webcomics.com moderator. And the site reserves the right to edit any submitted content.
Please use the Set Feature Image option (it’s in the right-hand column) to upload your comic.
Be sure to select the Halloween chapter tag (see image to the right).
You can even add a headline and text. In the text, you can link to your comic.
No explicit content (text or images) will be approved.
I will accept pieces right up until the 31st — but I can’t guarantee that submissions made past the 29th will be approved/published in time. There’s no page limit for people submitting multiple-page comics.
This one is an On the Spot critique. When you sign up, I visit your site on a random day and talk about what’s happening at that moment. We only had one taker for this round of critiques, so I’ll be announcing another Hot Seat series soon.
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When Creative Commons licensing came out, I was skeptical. I’m supposed to assume that the garden-variety user knows CC BY-NC-SA from CC BY-ND?! Heck, I’ve got to refer back to the post before I cover the topic for my students at Hussian College.
It doesn’t help when an organization tries to enforce a baffling interpretation of those concepts. From Arstechnica:
… Great Minds … has developed K-12 curriculum used by schools across the US. The materials developed from the Washington, DC-based nonprofit hold US copyrights but are made publicly available under a Creative Commons (CC) license, which theoretically allows them to be freely shared and reproduced for noncommercial uses as long as the original source is credited. That CC license is known as BY-NC-SA 4.0.
But … it’s suing Federal Express, claiming the Texas-based delivery-and-copying company is reproducing its materials for teachers and schools without paying royalties to Great Minds. The educational company says that because FedEx is making a profit from reproducing the materials, it’s violating the CC license. That’s according to a federal lawsuit (PDF) the company has lodged against FedEx.
According to Great Minds, although it’s legal for a school to reproduce its materials for use in their classrooms, if they make those copies at a FedEx copy center, then FedEx owes Great Minds a licensing fee because they made money on the deal!
Here’s what that means to you as a creator…
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Patreon seems to be rolling out yet another improvement in its creator-side user experience.
If you go to your Dashboard, you’ll see a Summary at the top. This is being updated on a daily basis — and possibly more frequently. There has been no official notification — and some creators may not see the change implemented yet — so stay tuned. But it’s definitely an improvement I’ve been hoping for.
Why?
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
You don’t need a subscription to read today’s post!
This is a re-post from the Webcomics.com archive. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good example.
If you’d like to join the site, you can get a 12-month subscription for $30 — or you can get a one-month Trial for $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire. For less than three bucks a month, you can get a steady flow of information, tutorials and advice targeted towards your webcomic business — plus a private forum to discuss issues with other professionally minded cartoonists.
I was lucky enough to get a generous review on io9.com a few years ago. And in the comments section under the review, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I was being tweeted, and e-mailed and Liked.
It was a really good weekend.
Until I read this.
I tried giving this comic a read, and it wasn’t funny at all.
What a waste of time.
My pageviews were astronomical. People were clearly pouring through the archives. And the positive comments were kind to say the least. Obviously, I was doing something right.
But you know which comment stayed with me: “What a waste of time.”
This is where I’m supposed to say something wise and relevant and maybe even witty — something that puts a lightbulb over your head… something to either make you see things my way or solidify your opposition. It’s what I do, right?
Well, guess what? I can’t.
Let’s face it. We do what we do because of love — every last one of us. We put a lot of love into our work. We put a lot of ourselves into our work.
And “What a waste of time” feels just like being laughed at when you ask your crush to the prom.
Or… ahem… so I’m told…
We talked about this on Webcomics Weekly a long time ago. I remember Dave Kellett saying that he always tries to consider the motivation for a trollish comment. “A lot of people lead very, very sad lives,” he said. “And, let’s face it, as webcartoonists, we’re living out our dreams.”
Nothing makes a sad, angry person more sad and more angry than seeing a happy person. And it’s only natural to lash out.
“What a waste of time.”
Nope. It still stings.
OK. Try this. Maybe the guy is naturally a jerk. The io9 Web site lets me see all of his recent comments, and it’s clear, the guy has a track record of being That Guy who likes to yell Boo when everyone else is cheering.
So, he’s just naturally a crank, right? Can’t take a crank seriously, can you?
“What a waste of time.”
That didn’t help either.
In that same podcast, Scott said that if you automatically discount the mean comments, then you have to automatically discount the praise.
But I really liked the praise. I liked getting Liked.
And if I accept that, I have to accept “What a waste of time.”
It’s time to face facts. This guy just did not like my comic, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It was unreasonable to think that 100% of any audience was going to be completely enthralled by my work, after all, and he was in the percentage that was decidedly un-enthralled.
So then I looked back on what I had been doing since the review was posted.
I was re-assuring myself with Web site stats, re-reading tweets, re-counting Like scores, using my stats to project tomorrow’s figures, re-reading the comments in the io9.com thread, researching the negative poster for insights to why he didn’t like my comic, re-re-reading tweets…
Whew.
WHAT A WASTE OF TIME!
Because while I was doing all of that, I neglected to update my store to include the newest Evil Inc book! So, when a bunch of those new readers ordered book packages, they ordered four when they could have ordered all five. Some people just ordered Volume 4 when they could have ordered Volume 5 — which I think is the stronger book for a new reader. Updating that storefront would have been — far and away — the better use of my time.
Some people don’t like my strip.
But if I allow myself to pay too much attention to those people, I run a serious risk of not paying enough attention to the people who do.
Step One: Do a good great comic.
Step Two: Don’t fool yourself about Step One
Step Three: Monetize. Gradually.
We’ve been talking a lot about the concept of Success* this week, so maybe it’s been on my mind a little more than usual. But it seems like everywhere I look, there’s a cartoonist who is scratching their heads wondering why Success isn’t happening for them — particularly financial success. And I look at their comic, and it’s…
…horrible.
Amateurish. Poorly drawn. Poorly written. Poorly executed. Fails at new-reader retention. Poor social-media outreach.
And I stare in my screen in amazement.
Do these people really expect others to pay for this? Do they even see the difference between their work and the work that is earning financial success?
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Just a reminder. If you file quarterly estimated tax payments, your Q3 payment is due today.
Just a quick reminder that if you’re planning to produce calendars to sell at the end of the year / beginning of next year, this is the time to start. Here’s what you need to get moving in the right direction…
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