I recommend Manga Studio EX quite strongly. Right now, Smith Micro is having a sale in which the software is about 50% off. Sale ends June 30.
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This post originally ran June 23, 2011. 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.
Comic scraper sites (and apps) pop up at the rate of every other month or so. Typically, they use a webcomic’s RSS feed to “scrape” the comic and use it for their own purposes — whether it’s a collection of their favorite comics in one site or an app that allows a reader to easily surf all of their favorite comics in one, easy place. In general, comic scrapers take only the comic, leaving behind the other elements of the webcomic site — like the blog …and the site’s advertising
Scrapers tend to present a heck of a dilemma for webcartoonists.
On one hand, they’re having a negative effect on your ads. If they’re taking your comic out of the RSS feed and displaying it on their own site/app, they’re stealing ad views outright. Some of them even go so far as to place their own ads above your content — in a sense, helping themselves to the ad views that you’re helping to generate.
On the other hand, they’re presenting your comic to new readers who may not have discovered your work otherwise. And, some will argue, these new readers just might one day support the comic by purchasing merchandise, etc. So those nickels you’re losing in ad revenue might just come back dressed up like dollars.
I think I finally put my finger on an important aspect of comic scrapers. Here’s my response to someone who discovered the site when he tracked an uptick in Web traffic to their site.
You found out about this scraper when you found that they had sent you some traffic.
You hadn’t advertised and gotten the surge. You hadn’t gotten the extra traffic as a result of your readers spreading the word about your great work. You hadn’t done a comic that had gone viral and garnered new looks from people on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.
You hadn’t earned it. It was just given to you.
You got something for nothing.
When was the last time you got something for nothing? And how many times have you realized later that it really wasn’t for nothing… there was actually a hidden cost that you hadn’t been able to see originally?
I’m suggesting that maybe— maybe — these kinds of sites offer exactly that kind of deal.
So if you do participate, do so with your eyes wide open. Know your risks and know what you stand to lose if this doesn’t exactly work out. If you can accept the risks, you’re entitled to any rewards.
Speaking only for myself, I’m not willing to give up my ad revenue in exchange for new readers. I can find new readers. New readers are everywhere. And there are lots of ways to direct them to my site.
Ad revenue isn’t so easy to come by. Just ask all of the webcartoonists who were scuttled by ContextWeb (back when they were called ADSDAQ*). Ask anyone who fights to see his or her Project Wonderful slot to be filled by anything but “YOUR AD COULD BE HERE!”
Comic scrapers take away something that is scarce (ad money) and offer to replace it with something that is plentiful (new readers).
But there’s another piece to the equation…
“Anything that exposes new readers to my comic is a good thing.”
That’s another one of those sentences that makes me cringe a little.
Mostly because it misses an important point.
There are two types of readers. Active and passive.
Active readers are the ones you count on to support your comic. They tweet, they “like,” they upvote… and they buy.
Passive readers are people who read the comic, enjoy it, and do little else. They’re the ones who come up to you at a convention and say, “I just want to say thanks for doing a great comic.” And that’s just what they do. They’re not bad people — they’re actually wonderful. And they’re a crucial part of your business. Where active readers give you money overtly, passive readers generate income for you passively — through ad views.
Now, it’s completely possible that you will find a certain number of active readers through a comic-scraper site. But, the odds are overwhelming that you’re much more likely to accumulate passive ones. And if they’re not being exposed to your blog or any other method you may use to communicate with readers, you’ve got an uphill battle in converting those readers into active ones.
This is particularly bad news if these are passive readers that you are blocked from collecting revenue from in the form of ad views. It’s worse yet if the scraper is collecting that passive money — based on the traffic that your work is helping to generate.
With that in mind, here’s what I want you to understand when it comes to comic scrapers. You’re not getting free traffic/exposure. You’re not getting something for nothing. You’re paying — maybe not much, but paying nonetheless — for that site to accumulate readers that you have a slim chance of ever profiting from.
If you understand the hidden cost, then you can make the choice that’s best for you.
For me, I tend to disallow my comics to be used on comic-scraper sites. However, when I’m drafting my cease-and-desist e-mail, I always bend over backwards to be as polite and non-aggressive as possible.
Because, in my experience, I’ve yet to find a malicious comic scraper.
Every last one of them have been somewhat shocked that I wouldn’t want to participate because every last one of them was convinced that what they were doing something that would help both webcartoonists and readers. Every scraper I’ve ever e-mailed with had nothing but the best intentions.
So, if this is something that you decide doesn’t work to your best interests, be firm but be nice. Scrapers need love, too.
——–
* Now, they’re called PulsePoint.
You may have seen news of Google’s Chrome browser “eavesdropping” on users lately. From the Guardian:
“Privacy campaigners and open source developers are up in arms over the secret installing of Google software which is capable of listening in on conversations held in front of a computer.
First spotted by open source developers, the Chromium browser – the open source basis for Google’s Chrome – began remotely installing audio-snooping code that was capable of listening to users.
It was designed to support Chrome’s new “OK, Google” hotword detection – which makes the computer respond when you talk to it – but was installed, and, some users have claimed, it is activated on computers without their permission.”
Of course, the story is a little more complicated than that. Here’s what you need to know:
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
This critique series is called the “On The Spot” Hot Seat. I will visit participants’ sites on a random day and talk about how their comic/site/social media is on that day. No archive-diving and no overview. The point is to try to reinforce the importance of making every update significant.
For those of you who are interested in the craft of comics and cartooning, this is your opportunity to talk about the subject in a Real World setting — “workshopping” one another’s comics, if you will.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
When (and if) you update to the current version of Adobe Photoshop (Creative Cloud 2015), you’ll notice the absence of a command you probably use constantly — Save for Web.
It has a lot of Web designers pretty angry. Here’s what you need to know.
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As news circulates about the hacking of one of Microsoft’s Web sites (a site dedicated to fighting US Web surveillance), it’s a good time to revisit some handy tips from Webcomics.com regarding the protection of your Web site(s).
According to ZDnet:
The site’s code suggests it is running WordPress 4.0.5, an older version of the popular blogging software released in early May. The latest WordPress version is currently at 4.2.2.
Of course, we regularly recommend keeping your WordPress up-to-date.
If you run multiple sites, use this handy trick to update WordPress (along with all of your plug-ins) at one handy dashboard.
It’s safe to say that GooglePlus is not going to be the Facebook killer that many people hoped for. (But, to be honest, I’ve never understood the need to “kill” Facebook.)
But it’s not enough to say, “Well, *I* don’t ever visit GooglePlus, so no one else must be doing so, either.” After all, that’s not market research; that’s mirror research. So, I decided to gauge how GooglePlus has performed for me over the past six months. What do the numbers say?
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You don’t need a subscription to read today’s post!
This post originally ran last year. 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.
 This post has been submitted by Webcomics.com Member, Jules Faulkner, creator of Promises, Promises. |
For the last few months, I’ve been struggling with a big ol’ case of Writers’ Block. Not making excuses, just having a hard time shaking it off, so I signed up for a humour writing class in hopes of getting my groove back. There wasn’t a lot of new information offered, but there were some old exercises that turned out to be just the ticket.
My instructor posted a dozen simple ideas: “Rowing down the Amazon, getting ready for the prom, my teacher’s tap shoes”, etc. The objective was to write one or two sentences for each one and/or mix and match them to see what you can come up with.
“My, rowing down the Amazon safari is being disrupted by my teacher’s tap shoes. The noise scares the interesting wildlife away and large predators are attracted to the shiny objects.”
Easy-peasy and gets the brain-juice rolling on to more productive writing. Great! But what do I do when I run out of topics; come up with more? If I could do that at the moment, I wouldn’t need them.
As luck would have it, I found a box of old board games in the basement. BINGO! Stacks of cards loaded with completely impartial ideas to build on. So far, Apples to Apples has been the most useful. If you’re unfamiliar with the game, it’s the same idea as Cards Against Humanity, but with a more all-ages leaning. The red cards are nouns and the green are adjectives. I like to deal out eight to start with and there are two methods I’ve found most effective:
1) Single adjective, seven nouns.
In this draw, the first combo that jumps out at me is Chunky Gang Members.
Or I could go with more of an Al Capone style gangster/gang member:
I could go on. (Chunky Jodie Foster in, Silence of the Hams!)
2) Seven Adjectives, Seven nouns – Free for all!
In this case, it’s actually two of the adjectives that first caught my eye: Chunky and Charming. Like if Prince Charming really let himself go. Too fat for his horse, can’t climb the tower to get to the princess, only goes to the ball for the buffet, even the dragon won’t eat him because he’s watching his dragon cholesterol… maybe he’s afraid of an internal grease fire.
Arrogant Junk Mail makes me think of those fliers people put on your windshield. You must really think a lot of your lawn mowing to risk me catching you touching my car.
Addictive Junk Mail – I think that’s called “extreme couponing”, these days.
Cosmopolitan Hangnails – why not? I’ve seen more ridiculous trends in fashion. Maybe get them bedazzled… Oh, hangnail piercing! Now that’s something I could dovetail into a story for one of my characters, (if it’s in a women’s magazine, she’d probably try it).
Trivial Pursuit is also great for this kind of exercise, particularly if you don’t know the answer.
“Who was the sixteenth Grand Poobah of North Zanzabar?”
Roy! And his third wife, Urilla was the first Lady Poobah. I bet he had a mustache, wore bolo ties and a really big belt buckle with a chunk of petrified mango peel mounted in the center.
Once you get going, it’s hard to stop. So pillage your parents’ basements for the old games; there’s comedy gold in them thar boxes! And if your Mum threw them out with your old Star Wars figures, go check out the consignment shops. There’s usually a bunch of games, super cheap and who cares if there are pieces missing?
This critique series is called the “On The Spot” Hot Seat. I will visit participants’ sites on a random day and talk about how their comic/site/social media is on that day. No archive-diving and no overview. The point is to try to reinforce the importance of making every update significant.
For those of you who are interested in the craft of comics and cartooning, this is your opportunity to talk about the subject in a Real World setting — “workshopping” one another’s comics, if you will.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
Adobe launched its new versions of Creative Cloud apps and services. As you may know, Creative Cloud provides subscription-based access to Adobe apps (and more) for about $50/month.
Among the upgrades:
• Better integration between desktop and mobile
• Android support
• Stock, a stock-photo service featuring one-time or subscription pricing plans
• Linked assets — meaning you can make a change to, say, a Photoshop image in your Creative Cloud library, and every InDesign or Illustrator document that uses that image will receive the updated version.
Is this enough to warrant at $50 monthly subscription? I’m not sure. Since switching to MangaStudio for my digital art, I find fewer and fewer reasons to launch Photoshop. Having drawn in each, I find the responsiveness in MangaStudio to be far superior. (Although, to be fair… the implementation of the CC Library does attempt to replicate MangaStudio’s advantage in saving/reusing images).
One of the strongest aspects of a Creative Cloud membership is the access to (and ease-of-use of) the Adobe Font Library. Well-organized and full of great typefaces, I find it a go-to for any design-related projects than need a little something extra.
And if freelance design were a bigger part of my revenue, I guess that would be a lock. But it isn’t, so it’s not.
So, is Creative Cloud worth $50 a month??
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