Could Doonesbury Learn Anything From XKCD?
from the help,-I'm-trapped-in-a-newspaper-factory-with-no-business-model dept
Via Poynter Online, there's a recent interview with Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau where he talks about his post-newspaper media plans and what he sees as his future options while newspapers face significant declines in their circulation numbers.
Trudeau continues on, saying that he believes that e-readers are promising because so many people are happy to pay for iPhone apps and Kindle content. He also says that his livelihood doesn't seem to be threatened in the short-term because only "big newspapers" with loads of debt are really going under -- and most small newspapers are still getting by and can support his line of work for the foreseeable future. But, essentially, Trudeau sounds like he's given up on his own plans for making Doonesbury into a business outside of syndication. (Or he's being much too modest about the "little money" he earns from his website, and he doesn't want to offend his current newspaper benefactors.) In any case, he seems to envision a giant news consortium that will be able to retain subscribers due to a form of monopoly advantage. And if that's really the future of journalism, that doesn't sound too promising."Doonesbury" has been on the Web for 15 years, and the site actually makes a little money -- unheard-of for media sites. But it's not really a plan, just a presence. I don't believe there's anything I can do personally to prepare for a post-newspaper future, other than hope that the large media companies will come to their senses and form a gated Web collective along the lines of cable TV. They need to form a news utility, financed by subscription or micropayments because going it alone has been disastrous for all of them.
Additionally, though, Trudeau asserts that the "Web is a lost cause" because everyone thinks content on the web should be free. But that statement directly contradicts the work of online cartoonists such as Randall Munroe and his xkcd webcomic (which just happens to be one of my favorite examples of a "free" online comic strip). Munroe has a significant following for xkcd and has proven that "free" can be a sustainable way to promote and publish his work. So can we help enlighten Trudeau? Munroe sells prints, t-shirts, a book, and even sponsored comics. Is there a path to becoming the "Trent Reznor of webcomics" for Trudeau? Or is there something unique about Doonesbury that makes it impossible for it to take advantage of "free" distribution?
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Filed Under: business models, comics, doonesbury, garry trudeau, online, russell munroe, xkcd
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Simple
Doonesbury was/is not funny. Ever. I doubt you could make much of a business with it or Family Circus or Drabble or any of the horrible, wretched, unfunny wastes of ink which populate most of current newsprint.
The only newsaper comics in recent memory that were funny were written by realists - Gary Larson, Sam Watterson, Berke Breathed - people who got in, made funny and got out while people were still laughing.
Garfield should be taken out and drowned.
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Re: Simple
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Yeah, him too.
:)
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Re: Simple
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damn, beaten
The problem is the creator is an old, old guy, and change for him is like fear of death. He's had the easy life, and he doesn't want to have to put in more work now to have an easy rest of his life.
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Re: damn, beaten
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Other Examples
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Re: Other Examples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-sufficient_webcomics
There's "only" about 40 comics in that list....
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Re: Re: Other Examples
I'd call 40 a lot, honestly. It's not like you can expect to automatically be successful or to have an audience just by nature of drawing a comic. Oh, and all the ones mentioned have their own website - shouldn't dilbert be on that list (or not?)
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Re: Other Examples
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Chump change
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Re: Chump change
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Re: Chump change
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This goes back to the whole question of "value" and the end of super-stardom.
Technology has made it so that anyone can put out a movie/comic/song/etc. It is now truly up to the market which will survive and how much they will make.
To put it another way, is Sylvester Stallone's acting ability worth millions of dollars?
Is anyone's acting ability worth millions in a world where anyone can put out a movie and get it seen without the whole studio structure behind it?
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No, I don't think thats the question brought up. I was just trying to define what we mean by self sufficient. I am wondering if Michael is saying that webcomics are now a hobby due to the market change, and not someone does for a living. Or he means self sufficient to include the artist and not just the comic.
I think it's an important distinction. Neither one is necessarily right or wrong, but we have to understand that if the former, a comic with a new "free" business model, can only support the comic and not the artist, the artist loses some value in return for his work. If great comics are still being produced this way, thats great for the readers, but it removes a lot of the potential value for an artist outside of loving what they do; you have people being comic artists as a hobby instead of a living.
Like I said none of this is bad if it's what the market dictates, but you can't ignore the impact.
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I believe many of the artists in the article you link to have jobs outside of their online media.
to mean that exactly. In that, perhaps nowadays just being "published" is not enough for a cartoonist anymore, he/she may also need to find other work.
And because of that reality, the true "value" of many things we have come to believe are worth "millions" may be discovered.
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Bad Commercialization.
Recently, I decided I wanted to read the entire archive from the beginning, but I discovered that, unlike most online comics, one cannot buy a convenient dead-tree version of the entire opus. The best one can get are selected excerpts, so he never got my money because I couldn't find any way to pay him to get what I wanted.
If he can't even manage to commercialize himself in the most obvious of manners, I'm not surprised his web site makes only a modest amount of money.
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Re: Bad Commercialization.
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Trudeau's plan would completely screw us over, we'd get less news, we'd get less diverse news, we'd get highly filtered news, and it would cost us more.
One question for Garry Trudeau: What the frick do we get out of this deal besides an ass reaming?!
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The cable TV cartel/monopoly needs to be dismantled, its' overpriced and these anarchists shouldn't be allowed to use the government to monopolize cable TV and subject the public to overpriced nonsense.
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penny arcade
penny arcade is the best example of how to leverage a community to support your work. PA doesn't have a fanbase, it has a standing army of soldiers who will click on and buy pretty much anything tycho and gabe endorse. talk about money for the taking.
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Re: penny arcade
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Is that because their content is so good? Or is it because they are really good at building a community?
This is an important distinction. Doonesbury may be that bee's knees, but if the author can't build and capitalize off of a dedicated fan a base, then he is truly just a slave to the "old way".
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Once again, not a bad thing at all if thats what the market decides. But it's always good to reflect on possible impacts.
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I don't think Mike really cares about who succeeds and fails, at least on an individual basis (though I'm sure he'd get some pleasure from seeing certain businesses collapse).
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Clearly if it were up to this person news would turn into the overpriced nonsense that cable T.V. has become. That's why people must resist this sort of thing.
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He gets it...
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Re: He gets it...
Being in a gated community does not add credibility to news. If anything, it takes away from it.
You know what would give credibility to the news? Actual journalism, which is something very few corporate news sources engage in, and even then, they do it rarely.
People aren't flocking to alternate news sources because that news is free -- they're flocking to alternate sources because they are looking for real journalism.
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http://xkcd.com/635/
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XKCD guy makes his real money at NASA
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Re: XKCD guy makes his real money at NASA
I bought the XKCD book.. and in the foreword, Munroe says he quit his job at NASA to do XKCD full time. He's got a friend to help him administer the website, and it doesn't say how much he makes, but apparently enough for him to live comfortably in California....?
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Rule #1: Don't Suck
etc. etc.
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First, the list of 40 self supporting web comics only lists English language web comics. I wouldn't be surprised if there were an equal, or even larger, number of non-English web comics that are self supporting.
Second, historically the vast majority of "comic" type artists never made a living off of a single title. For example most comic book artists, including writers, pencilers, letterers and inkers worked on multiple books. Only the hottest creators worked on only a single title, and that wasn't at all common until the 90's.
Web comics are still in their infancy and have yet to become anywhere near as "mainstream", and thus as profitable, as the newspaper comics strip industry which has been around for 80+ years. Give it another 10-15 years and I am sure we will see hundreds if not thousands of artists making a living off of online "comic" properties.
Oh yeah, did anyone mention that historically the majority of newspaper comic strips were done as works for hire and were never owned by the people that drew them?
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Trudeau's monetization
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