Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence » Fleen Guest Column: Christopher Wright In, Threat And Menace

Fleen Guest Column: Christopher Wright In, Threat And Menace

Editor’s note: Today’s the first day of our two week festival of canned content; we at Fleen thank you for your patience in these trying times. To help make up for it, here’s a doozy: Christopher Wright took at look at the writeups of the Threat or Menace? panel and ideas started perkin’ around. Please enjoy.

I was thinking about your panel (Webcomics: Threat or Menace?) the other day — mostly musing about the crap that the professional webcartoonists have been taking from the professional justcartoonists — and it occurred to me that everyone is wrong.

Webcomics: Threat and Menace. There you are.

The fundamental point I think everyone is missing nowadays is that it’s harder for professionals to make money doing what they do because the barrier to entry in those fields has been drastically lowered, if not utterly obliterated, by advances in technology over the last twenty years.

Consider that it is possible, right now, for someone to spend about $1,000.00 and set up a studio in their home that is as good as or equal to the recording equipment that was used to record the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Of course in order to make an album as good as a Beatles album you still have to have the skill of the Beatles and George Martin, but the tools are there for a comparatively minimal investment. And you can spend less and still get something that sounds good depending on what you’re going for.

And that’s just in the music world. In terms of print publishing it’s even easier.

Once upon a time you needed complicated machines to mass publish. In the 80’s this started to change because the personal computer allowed you to do all the typesetting, which used to be something that required equipment that cost thousands of dollars — with PageMaker and other similar programs you only had to shell out $800-900 or so. And as time went on the software got cheaper (not PageMaker — I refer you to my general opinions about the Computer Industry as to why — but these days you can download a program called Scribus that will do most of that for free, and you can even alter and recompile the source code if you are so inclined).

But there were still two other barriers to entry: mass production and distribution. You still had to go to a printer, and you still had to get people to buy it — or at the very least, to read it — once you were
done. And the most effective ways of doing this were through publishers, because they had the capital to most efficiently create large volumes of hardcopy to market and sell.

Enter the World Wide Web.

Suddenly anyone who logs on and buys web hosting has a distribution medium comparatively equal to everyone else who logs on and buys web hosting. All that’s required is to get people to come to your site and look at your content. There it is. And while these days the main focus of that kind of publishing seems to be monetizing that content, at the very root of it, the content is a form of communication.

And the plain and simple fact of the matter is that any jackass can use the web to say their piece in whatever form they like. I am solidly, unflinchingly, unapologetically proof of that. I can’t draw, have never been able to draw, and don’t forsee any time in the future where I suddenly uncover hitherto untapped veins of drawing talent that spurs the quality of my art to unparalleled heights … and yet I am a webcartoonist and have been one for 12 years. I decided to start a webcomic because in my opinion the medium was better suited to what I wanted to say (the webzine already had funny editorials — I thought a comic would have more editorial punch) and it worked well enough to give me little reason to stop doing it.

Justcartoonists dislike webcartoonists because webcartoonists are doing more work to make less money and therefore devaluing their product. Some professional webcartoonists, in turn, are more than a little annoyed by us amateurs because we’re not really trying to make any money at all, which makes it harder for them because they’re competing with people who are saying “just come on and have a look!” And I know for a fact that there are people out there in the webcomicking community who fervently wish that a great swath of people doing webcomics would just STOP, so that some standard of quality control and self-respectability can be put in place.

But the sad and simple truth is that the internet is a communications medium, not a professional publishing for profit medium, which means that there’s not a damn thing any of them can do about it. The unwashed masses have a chance to have their say, show their drawings, record their music and film their movies, and the only effect it can have is to drag the professionals down due to saturation alone.

While I don’t begrudge people actually earning a living off of any of this — in fact, I’m very happy to know that people do, and I hope that they manage to continue doing it — there’s a bigger picture that makes that harder than it used to be. The idea of the “Web as the new public commons” is old hat and has been turned into one of those trite catchphrases spouted by people who want to appear like they know what they’re talking about, but it’s still fundamentally true: it is easier to access ideas, discussions, plans and collaborations on the web (and the internet as a whole) than in any other medium, and that is far more important to me than whether I can retire by 40 on t-shirt sales and ad revenue alone. Of course this new public commons is a treacherous place: along with the clear-sighted eloquent visionaries thoughtfully discussing serious and important ideas you also have weird-smelling twitchy guys with Tourette’s Syndrome who spout off about aliens injecting beetles into their ears at night while they sleep, and people who are trying to actually make money are going to have to fight through ALL of that noise, battle idealists and cranks and loud-mouthed know-it-alls, and then some in order to make a buck. There are professionals who consider this grossly unfair. Me, I consider it a necessary component of a healthy, functioning republic, which is probably why there’s so much resistance to the idea.

In short, the fundamental element of publishing is communication, and the web opens up communication to everyone. Therefore: Threat and Menace, with no apologies.

No comments yet? I guess everyone had the same reaction as me: “well, yeah”.

Well if everyone agrees with me, so much the better… just seemed like that was being overlooked in the conversation.

Cartooning is a story telling language, and those who speak it well will always survive, if they are flexible. Prosperity has given millions the leisure to indulge their cartoon whims, not the internet. Look at the massive proliferation of zines and comics circa 1990. In three years there will be more comics on the web per capita, not less. I suspect the t-shirt and ad model is already obsolete and failing. If this brings you to your knees, maybe you’re on the list of people who should give up — though I hate to see anyone give up a beloved hobby.

One thing you can count on: people do not listen to warnings.

“Justcartoonists dislike webcartoonists because webcartoonists are doing more work to make less money and therefore devaluing their product”

The value of their product has traditionally been inflated because of the barriers set up in traditional publishing to keep outsiders out. This subsequent devaluation is just an adjustment to the actual worth of what they do compared to what everyone else can do. There will be some that lose out, and they’ll complain, but on the whole they represent the sector that

[…] interesting to say about traditonal cartoonsists vs webcartoonists. You can see the full article here. This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 and is filed under News. You can follow any […]

[…] Fleen Guest Column: Christopher Wright In, Threat And Menace from Fleen: Your Favorite Faux-Muckrakers Since 2005 […]

I’ve done print comics and webcomics. And I had no idea of the animosity between the two camps.

While all good points, I think the thing is left out of the equation is quality. Several cartoonist on the web are making a semblance of a living because their stuff is so good. (I’m not saying I’m one of those). I find more interesting comics on the web than I EVER found in a comic shop, and I want those cartoonists to continue giving me that quality and am willing to buy books and other stuff simply to support them. The same cannot be said for half assed work.

Iâ€™ve never heard either of these two comments spoken nearly often enough to qualify as a â€œswath.â€

Well it comes in waves. It was swathish at one point. It may be less swathish at present.

Well, I believe your essay is flawed. I think you conflate a number of issues and, to be honest, some of them are strawman issues and at least one is a legitimate issue that’s combined with a strawman.
First off, your premise that the web can’t be a professional publishing for profit medium is just not true in the factual sense. Consider that any store showing merchandise on the web is using that web page to replace a printed catalogue. But really, just go look at talkingpointsmemo.com – they’ve got a money-making news organization there.
So, once that premise is disposed of, you’re kind of left with hearsay colored by old perceptions of what the internet means – the strawmen.
That print cartoonists or publishers are looking at the internet with a jaded eye is understandable, but if they criticize a cartoonist putting up their stuff on the web for free, it’s in the context of commerce – it’s not a business model that’s workable for them.
And this is the flaw in every proponent of “information must be free.” Information can be a particular product, and that product must be paid for in some way or that particular product will go away. The internet hasn’t changed the basics of economics yet – credit card companies aren’t going to stop sending bills just because you’ve decided to devote all your time to a website that doesn’t make money.
And by “you” I don’t me you in particular – that’s a generic “you.” I think it’s cool that you’ve been doing this for 12 years – I’ve been doing it for eight. But I have to point out that you have ads and a donation button on your website. That means you’re following a business model that works for you. That’s not necessarily the only business model out there.
And then the notion of professional webcartoonists being annoyed by amateur webcartoonists, We’re talking about what, a club that includes maybe 5 members?
I just don’t believe this at all.
When Moderntales started up and I went behind the subscription wall, there wasn’t talk about doing it because all those darn amateurs were ruining it for the rest of us. It was because we felt our work and time had value and we tried a commercial model that asked people to recognize that value. It wasn’t a judgement on anyone else, it was a judgement on ourselves. And we were attacked for it. Yes, there was criticism of the business model and I think that was legitimate. But the criticism that implied our work didn’t have monetary value, that was nuts. In my experience, these are usually young people who haven’t had to pay their own way in life yet.

And that judgement on ourselves, that idea of self-respect, that brings me to my last criticism. You said:
“And I know for a fact that there are people out there in the webcomicking community who fervently wish that a great swath of people doing webcomics would just STOP, so that some standard of quality control and self-respectability can be put in place.â€
OK, let’s differentiate the people who think somethings sucks so bad it should be destroyed, from people that encourage artists and other creative people to understand that their work has value.
Because this is important – nevermind how it affects everyone else – it’s important for every indvidual artist because people are trolling the web in the name of commerce. And these people know how to make money and aren’t afraid of the internet – it’s a valuable tool that extends their reach. They’re not evil, they’re business people.
If the web has done anything, it’s introduced the possibility of amateurs becoming pros overnight. And if that happens, you’ve got to be ready!
Look, do you know why there’s so many spam emails from Nigerian bankers? It’s because the scam works. There’s always someone stupid enough to send $15,000 to a total stranger on the off chance that they’ll make a million dollars.
Do you know why corporate comics continue to insist on owning – in perpetuity, for ever and ever and as far as the far reaches of this universe and the next – ideas that independent creators try to sell to them? Because there will always be independent creators who sell them all their rights for a pittance.
That’s not the internet revolution – that’s not information wanting to be free, that’s commerce. The internet will not replace the marketplace, it will only expand it.
Ever watch Antiques Roadshow? Ever see the people who paid 50 cents for something that just got valued at $500,000? Ever wonder what it feels like to be the guy who took the 50 cents?
Come up with an idea for a comic, publish it for free on the web to get interest, don’t believe in yourself or what you’re doing and then sell all rights in all mediums for all time for enough money to buy a medium latte everyday for about nine months – and then watch as that idea gets exploited in books, games, TV and films (delivered via the internet!) and makes a boatload of money for the people who bought your idea while you get coffee.
The first way to avoid being the guy who took the 50 cents is to understand that what you do, what you produce, has value.
I’m not talking about not having a critical eye toward your own work, I’m talking about being confident enough to walk into a publisher’s office and demanding a fair contract. And having the guts to walk away if the deal isn’t good enough.
There’s nothing wrong with having self-respect, and it’s an entirely different issue than strawman you associated it with.
Thanks for reading

First off, your premise that the web can’t be a professional publishing for profit medium is just not true in the factual sense.

First off, that isn’t my premise. I acknowledge that people can and do make a profit off the internet. My point is that this isn’t what the web “is” — it is a communication medium. It can be used as a publishing for profit medium but it has to work harder to do so than other mediums because of an incredibly low barrier to entry compared to other mediums.

Second, at no point in my essay did I make the point that “information wants to be free,” and for all your accusations that I’m engaging in strawman arguments I have to say that you’re doing the same thing here, and doing so rather heavily. You bring up that specific phrase very frequently, and it’s obvious that you disagree with that theory rather strongly, but it’s not clear how what I wrote falls in line with that idea. My essay deals with general accessibility for publishers — that more people can afford to create and distribute content than ever before in history. This has nothing to do with any kind of ethical imperative on how those publishers should distribute their work, simply that these days so very man can.

And a lot of people are publishing their work for free. This is simply a fact — there is no right or wrong associated with it. People are doing it, and that dilutes the ability of professionals to make money. But “dilute” is not the same thing as “prevent” and you are conflating the two in your rebuttal.

“–First off, your premise that the web canâ€™t be a professional publishing for profit medium is just not true in the factual sense.
First off, that isnâ€™t my premise. I acknowledge that people can and do make a profit off the internet. My point is that this isnâ€™t what the web â€œisâ€ â€” it is a communication medium. It can be used as a publishing for profit medium but it has to work harder to do so than other mediums because of an incredibly low barrier to entry compared to other mediums.”

Chris, you say that isn’t your premise but then turn around and essentially state that it is your premise. You acknowledge that people can use the web as a publishing medium for profit, then turn around and say that’s not what the web is. The web is what it’s users will make of it. Look, I’m only reacting to your words. You stated emphatically:

“But the sad and simple truth is that the internet is a communications medium, not a professional publishing for profit medium, …”
That’s a pretty definitive statement and I gave you specific examples that refute it.
I just don’t see how you can have it both ways – either the web can’t support a profitable publisher or it can. People are doing it – you say so yourself – so stating that’s not what the web is for is not true.

As for the phrase “information wants to be free,” if you don’t want your ideas associated with that, OK. I had to bring it up because your essay sounded like it was traveling down that path.

And lastly, this:

“My essay deals with general accessibility for publishers ”

Chris, you brought up webcartoonists who want to make some money from the product they put up on the web – something you’re doing with ads on your site. And the way you did it is to put those webcartoonists in the same sphere as print cartoonists. Not publishers, the artists themselves. These are your words:

“Justcartoonists dislike webcartoonists because webcartoonists are doing more work to make less money and therefore devaluing their product. Some professional webcartoonists, in turn, are more than a little annoyed by us amateurs because weâ€™re not really trying to make any money at all, which makes it harder for them because theyâ€™re competing with people who are saying â€œjust come on and have a look!â€”

The word publisher appears nowhere in that paragraph. That’s the one I cited and that’s the one I commented on. So I stand my my remarks.

I don’t, however, disagree with you on the notion that the web has opened up things for the average cartoonist – and I don’t make a distinction between justcartoonists and webcartoonists. We’re all cartoonists. But that’s already happened – you’ve taken advantage of it for more than 12 years, I’ve been doing it for eight.

I’m far more interested in what happens next. I’m far more interested in seeing developments that allow talented people to make a living from their talent. And that’s why I’m writing a column about submitting your work to publishers over at Comixtalk.com You should check it out.

Thanks for reading.

â€œBut the sad and simple truth is that the internet is a communications medium, not a professional publishing for profit medium, â€¦â€

Thatâ€™s a pretty definitive statement and I gave you specific examples that refute it.

I just donâ€™t see how you can have it both ways – either the web canâ€™t support a profitable publisher or it can. People are doing it – you say so yourself – so stating thatâ€™s not what the web is for is not true.

Tim, what I’m saying is that the web is designed in a way that works against for-profit publishing. I do not say it makes such a thing impossible, but I do believe it makes it more difficult, and that difficulty has nothing to do with finding a “magic formula” for making for-profit work. There is no magic formula.

So I’ll say this again: the web was designed for communication. For transmitting information. The way it has been designed makes it so that anyone who puts in a modicum of time and effort has roughly the same chance of attracting viewers as anyone else. And because of that incredible ease of access, especially in comparison to print media, people who want to make a living off their work have many more hurdles than they would otherwise, and that those hurdles are there because of what the web is and how it works.

This doesn’t mean the web has one use only. A lot of people are doing a lot of things on it that the original creators probably didn’t expect — but it’s still useful to keep in mind what it was designed for and how it works, because that helps to define your challenges.

The biggest challenge a webcartoonist has is convincing his or her audience to pay for content. Not necessarily the comics themselves, but something. Part of that challenge is that the web wasn’t built with doing business in mind — that part is tacked on, and that part has to figure out a way to entice a customer from going somewhere else. It is very easy to go somewhere else on the web, and there are a lot of places where users can waste hours and hours of time and not spend a dime, and webcomics are just a very small part of a much larger morass of content out there.

â€œJustcartoonists dislike webcartoonists because webcartoonists are doing more work to make less money and therefore devaluing their product. Some professional webcartoonists, in turn, are more than a little annoyed by us amateurs because weâ€™re not really trying to make any money at all, which makes it harder for them because theyâ€™re competing with people who are saying â€œjust come on and have a look!â€â€

The word publisher appears nowhere in that paragraph. Thatâ€™s the one I cited and thatâ€™s the one I commented on. So I stand my my remarks.

Tim, the entire essay is about publishing. What do you think these cartoonists are doing? I shouldn’t have to mention publishing in every paragraph in order to keep talking about publishing…

[…] been trying to reply to Chris Wright regarding his guest column over at Fleen, but there’s an overactive spam filter suddenly keeping me from […]

Readers of newspapers and magazines, listeners to radio, and viewers of television don’t pay for the content either, and mostly never have. Advertising and merchandising pay for it. (The purchase price of newspapers and magazines normally only cover the costs of distribution — ads have always carried most of the financial weight.)

The Web is a new medium that has somewhat different dynamics than print or broadcast but in broad terms it works the same way. There are specialty newsletters that convey high-value information that can charge high subscription fees, and there are websites that can do the same. But everyone else survives on ads and merchandising.

Yes, barriers to entry are lower on the Web, in a sense, but whether you’re starting up a website or a print magazine, attracting an audience large enough to support advertising is no small thing. It takes work, time, and quality content.

There is no Gresham’s Law of Web content. People will always gravitate towards content they find more valuable, in whatever sense valuable means to them. That there are 5,000 crapulent webcartoons out there doesn’t diminish the value of PvP, or Diesel Sweeties. But there would be no PvP or Diesel Sweeties without the environment that also allows those 5,000 crapulent webcartoons to be seen by their dozens of fans.

The Web is, in fact, creating a new golden age for cartoonists — at least those who are ready to embrace this new medium.

[…] Tim Broderick responds to Chris Wright’s notion that the ubiquity of online comics devalues […]

I’m working backwards through your posts Tim, so I’ll apologize in advance for that as my points seem travel in that direction.

I have to point out that you have ads and a donation button on your website. That means youâ€™re following a business model that works for you.

Since Chris hasn’t addressed this, I think I should point out that nearly everyone who does this for long enough will set up an Amazon Wishlist, a Paypal button, and something along the lines of Cafepress to sell merchandise like T-Shirts.

Chris, I’d be so bold to argue, and if not him then many of us, aren’t following a business model.

Chris has a day job as do many of us webcartoonists because we’d love to be Penny Arcade but the satisfaction of a few hundred or a few thousand visitors will do.

Those who don’t use free hosting pay a nominal fee to get our stuff out there and we do it just to do it. To express ourselves, to amuse ourselves, just to share. It’s not a business those buttons are there to recoup a little here and there or service any diehard fans or those like Clint H. who are altruistic enough to want to reward us.

Ever wonder what it feels like to be the guy who took the 50 cents?

No because those of us who don’t prioritize monetary value are in this because as Chris and Scott said this is the best way to self-publish that ever was. I’m in the red, but I’m not out thousands of dollars and I don’t have boxes of unsold books in my garage. On top of that, thanks to random photo blogs, message board sigs, and Google people have read my stuff while I haven’t invested dollar one in advertising.

When Moderntales started up and I went behind the subscription wall, there wasnâ€™t talk about doing it because all those darn amateurs were ruining it for the rest of us. It was because we felt our work and time had value and we tried a commercial model that asked people to recognize that value. It wasnâ€™t a judgement on anyone else, it was a judgement on ourselves. And we were attacked for it. Yes, there was criticism of the business model and I think that was legitimate. But the criticism that implied our work didnâ€™t have monetary value, that was nuts.

This, not Megaman Sprites, is what I consider the saddest thing about Webcomics. The residual bitterness over the Miscro-transaction debate. I am sorry if you prefer another term.

Some of you guys have different priorites (like making a living off a medium where no amount of security will stop the alt-print screen/Photobucket combo from pirating your material.

Some, like Scott McCloud and friends (including you), were trying to create a viable model to make money off of this.

But some were trying to recreate the syndicate system online and had dollar signs in their eyes.

On other side of the fence there were cynics, there were those like myself who think Democracy will have the cream (or the most savvy businessmen) rise to the top, and then there were readers who were either miffed or hurt that some strips/authors had been giving them something for free and now all of a sudden seemed to be demanding a payoff.

And nearly nobody recognized that the other side was comprised of various opinions/reasons they just declared the other side as the enemy.

And now, years afterwards, we’re still lobbing grenades at trenches on the other side of the line regardless of who’s in them.

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Fleen Guest Column: Christopher Wright In, Threat And Menace

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