Pay-per-view in webcomics
I love the fact that many of my favorite webcomics are free of charge. If I had to pay to access them, I would probably read far less of them. But that being said, I don’t necessarily think that all webcomics should be free.
“But webcomics don’t have any expenses, they don’t need to buy paper or print and distribute their comics, so it’s a sin to charge money for them!” No. Webcomic cartoonists need to buy food and pay rent, too. Of course, since webcomics is a market where everybody who wants to can publish their own comics, many of them are very amateurish, and would never make enough money to go around. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, I think — only the best comics manage to grow and get tons of readers, and those are the comics who deserve to survive.
Of course, charging readers is not the only way to make money. Most webcomics today use a quite different business model — they have advertisements on their websites, and they often have a store where they sell webcomic-related products (for instance, book collections of the webcomic). And that is clearly the model that works best today (I wrote more about this in my Master’s thesis two months ago… I promise, when the University Library actually gets around to publishing it, I’ll post a link here, but they’re slooooow).
But here’s a thought experiment: If a decent webcomic decided to start charging their readers for reading the comic, how should they do this to make it work?
I think that’s a tough question, but also an interesting one. So, here are my ideas:
- I prefer payment models based on how much you download over time-based subscription models. While I’m a big fan of subscribing to print comics, the difference between print and web is that when your print subscription expires, you get to keep all the comics. If I pay money for a graphic novel, I want to be able to pick it out and read it again in two years, and that goes for digital comics too. So when I pay for something, I should be able to access that specific comic for all eternity or until the website disappears.
- It is more interesting to pay for large chunks of content than small ones. I don’t want to input my credit card number every time a new strip updates, but if I got a package of strips every other month, that would be more interesting. So the product for sale should preferrably be either a collection of strips or a chapter of a longer story, say 20 pages or so. Of course, such a model would favor long-form comics, but it could work for comic strips too.
- The first part of the comic, at least the amount of comics one gets in a common comic book issue (20-24 pages, I think?) should be free of charge. Becuase, seriously, you don’t get any readers if you don’t have anything to tease them with. Give away the first issue for free, and you’ll at least have a chance of getting people to buy the next one. And if you’re running several different comics, you’ll have to give away the first issue of all of them for free.
- And for the upcoming issues: Give away a couple of pages from each of them for free. What, I have already read issue one for free and I still need more? Well, maybe I don’t, but I may be convinced that I don’t need to read more of this comic, and a few pages of the most current chapter could make me change my mind. Not more than a teaser, but still, it would show me exactly why I should buy this issue.1
- I generally don’t mind reading something on the screen in my browser. But as long as I’m paying for it, if it is possible, I would strongly prefer it if I also had the chance of downloading a high-resolution PDF file of the entire issue (and perhaps a CBR file as well). What I love about the web is the accessibility, not the low image resolution, so I may even want to print the comic and read it on paper.
- All the text in the comic, and textual descriptions of the images, should be searchable. That way I can easily find all the page numbers and issue numbers and storylines where my favorite character appears, or where the characters are talking about the last Batman movie, or anything else I could find through a search. Of course, this would also increase the chance that I bought more issues.
- I have no problem with licences telling me that I shouldn’t publish these comics anywhere. After all, I don’t own any royalties, I just bought an issue. However, if I want to share the comic with a friend, I should be able to do so. Whether said friend is reading it over my shoulder or I’m talking to him on an instant messaging program doesn’t matter. Nobody ever stopped me from lending my print comics to friends, the rules for digital comics shouldn’t be any different.
- The payment process should be easy and trustworthy. Preferrably so easy that I could pay for the comic with my cellphone.
These are of course all just fantasies, I have no idea if this could actually work financially. Probably not. Still, I think that if a webcomic filled these requirements, I would be more interested in paying for it.
What do you think? What would a webcomic have to offer for you to be willing to pay for it?
- For that same reason, I’ve often thought that it would make a lot more sense if printed comic books skipped the fancy cover and instead showed the first page of comics on the cover (in addition to title, creators’ names and barcode, of course). [back]
Sad truth? Regardless of what they’d offer and do, they couldn’t make me interested to pay for it without offering it in print; which would of course sort of invalidate the web-part. I’m okay with reading comics on the screen, when the alternative is not to read them at all or go through a lot of trouble with printing every single little strip – but I don’t LIKE it. And printing them myself would be very expensive in the long run, an expense I’d get on top of buying the right to read them in the first place. Thus, I believe that every single webcomic I currently read I’d stop reading the second they’d start charging money for them. (Though I’d perhaps be more inclined to buy physical editions of the ones I’m already hooked on, if such were offered, so if they’d offer that, they could actually earn money off of my not wanting to pay…)
1@Loki:
But of course, such a comic would be a lot cheaper than a print comic of the same size. So printing it yourself would still be far from as expensive as buying it in the stores.
Still, of course that still wouldn’t mean that everybody would buy it. Free-to-read webcomics are popular for a reason, and they will stay popular even if someone manages to launch a successful payment model for webcomics. I think that it could be possible (I’m already paying for downloading *music*, why not comics too?), and of course, this post is just speculation and mentioning a couple of things I personally think could make such a service more popular. But no matter how popular one made it, it would still not be a perfect solution for everybody, of course.
2Joey Manley made or makes (as far as I know) a living from selling subscriptions to webcomics on his Modern Tales family of websites, so it’s certainly possible. Don’t know how much the individualcartoonists made off that deal, though.
As for me, I haven’t ever paid for a webcomic subscription, and I doubt I ever will. Narbonic is one of my favourite comics, which was pay-only when I started reading it. Or, more accurately, I started reading it when the archive was briefly made available for free, when it was nominated for some award. Once it went back under the subscription wall, I just followed day by day, since the latest strip was always available. (Narbonic is free now, all subscription restrictions gone.)
The only other pay comic I ever really felt like I was missing, was Fans, but then that dropped out from behind the subscription wall fora while too, and I found out I wasn’t really missing anything after all.
3Yes, but printing it yourself is hassle. I’m much too lazy to work for my entertainment. (I’m also not sure it’d be cheaper than buying it pre-printed – toner is expensive shit, especially if you read comics that actually use colours.) The point is that if I paid for it, I’d want to be able to read it in a way I’d get the most out of it and my money’s worth, which would cause work and inconvenience, which would make me lose interest. If I don’t pay for it, I don’t feel I’ve wasted anything but a few seconds of my time, and feel more inclined to just read it on the monitor and go on with my day.
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