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Posted by:

jmanley

Date:

March 11th, 2009 11:01 PM

Header:

Webcomics + Print Publishers = Oil + Water?

Bulletin:

When Rich Stevens, creator of the classic webcomic Diesel Sweeties, signed a syndication deal with United Media, a major newspaper syndicate, the news was heralded as the beginning of a new era in webcomics. When he decided a couple of years later to end the relationship, people wondered why. Here's what he had to say:

I did my taxes. I realized that I made less money than the last year that I wasn't syndicated. It's a hard business and it takes years and years to build up a client list and get paid. I just kinda thought to myself that I spent years and years learning how to make money off the internet. Why should I continue to injure myself, when I could just do what I'm good at?

Stevens is an extroverted guy with a very public persona, more even than most other popular webcartoonists, and has been quoted a lot on the break-up. I picked the above from Wired out of several dozen interviews and random off-the-cuff statements I found in a two second Googling session.

What I didn't find anywhere in Google was "the other side" -- what did the syndicate think about this development? I'm sure there's somewhere that they made a nice bland corporate comment (that's what they're supposed to do). But I'm also sure that at least a few people on that side of the business, the corporate side, think that, you know, maybe it was just a Rich Stevens issue, not evidence of a structural problem with the way they do business, and that there are plenty of other cartoonists who would be happy to have the deal he had.

There are plenty of other cartoonists who would be happy to have the deal Stevens had. But how long would they stay happy? We have to figure Stevens was happy with the deal he had when he signed on, or he wouldn't have done it. But it didn't take him long to change his mind, and the reasons he changed his mind don't seem, from my point of view anyway, to be emotional or egotistical. Dude wasn't making enough money! He was making less than he had made before! That's more than enough reason to shut down a business deal as quickly as possible.

So this isn't news or anything. It's been analyzed and discussed all over the place. The failed Diesel Sweeties/United relationship came to mind today when I read that Gina Biggs is reclaiming the book publishing rights to her popular webmanga Red String from Dark Horse. If I remember correctly, MegaTokyo also started out with a Dark Horse deal and left (for DC). And I believe that Penny Arcade started out with a Dark Horse deal and left (for Del Ray). In both of those cases, the creators went from one large publishing house to an even larger one. Biggs, on the other hand, like Stevens, has decided that self-publishing is the most efficient way for her to, as they say in the business, maximize her revenue potential:

This means they will only be available through the website and at conventions, but it also means that I will see more of the profit from these books which could be very beneficial to someone striving to make a living through art and webcomics.

So, to underline an important point: a newspaper syndicate gets you access to, you guessed it, the newspapers, and their millions of readers. A publisher like Dark Horse gets you access to comic book stores, plus Borders, Barnes & Noble, and every other bookstore in the world, plus a direct pipeline to Hollywood, plus ... well ... lots of other opportunities. And Biggs and Stevens both decided that they are better off without those access points and those opportunities, because the price, in the form of a lack of actual cash coming in the door on a day to day basis, was too high.

Either these cartoonists (and others with similarly failed relationships with mainstream publishers) are anal retentive control freaks and/or crazy egotistical jerks (and I have heard some people in the print comics business say that about some of the top webcartoonists), or the mainstream publishing model is too deeply flawed to provide meaningful benefit to them over and above what they are able to accomplish on their own despite all the natural and obvious advantages that a big company brings to the table.

I tend to believe the latter.

There are other examples.Sheldon. Boy on a Stick and Slither. Both ended their relationships with United.

But, yeah, there's plenty of counter-examples, too. Quite a few webcartoonists seem to be happy enough with their Dark Horse (or DC or Marvel or Oni or Top Shelf or Random House or Pantheon or whatever) deals. Achewood is also at Dark Horse, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Get Your War On guy never bitches about his print publisher, I'm pretty sure. Jon Rosenberg only has excited things to say about his new book, which is being published by one of the largest companies in the known universe. Even the Zuda guys, who were heckled and warned about the dire ramifications of the Zuda deal by snarky webcomics bloggers like, um, me, seem uniformly happy with the relationship they've got going on over there with the Time/Warner conglomerate (and, just to be clear here, I think that's a good thing!) When Penny Arcade and MegaTokyo left their publisher, as noted above, they didn't fall back to self-publishing books -- they moved onward and upward to even bigger publishers.

So I'm not trying to pretend that every example out there supports my thesis. Just sort of thinking out loud. There are enough failed deals -- deals that end up with the creator reverting all the way back to self-publishing and self-sufficiency -- that it seems to me that there's got to be something structural/endemic/systemic going on here.

What do you think?

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