A few nights ago, after we were done talking about Project Wonderful business, Ryan and I got to talking about the Fleen thread that exploded about the business of comics. (Ryan linked to it here)

This subject is dear to me because of the parallels with making money as an indie game developer – a perpetual source of stress. It seems like no thread about the state of the games industry can go more than a few posts before someone bemoans how hard it is to make a living making games. In this problem, neither games nor comics are unique. Pretty much every content industry including movies and music (especially music) are feeling the squeeze from the combined forces of hobbyists who are giving pretty good competing stuff away for free and pirates who are giving away YOUR stuff for free.

I think that there are lessons to be learned by games people who look at the online comics scene. Consider that by giving away their creative output and selling ’secondary’ things (t-shirts etc) many comics creators have managed to turn piracy into a FEATURE and a BENEFIT. We don’t even think of people re-posting their favourite Overcompensating comics as piracy at all, but if it was a movie or an MP3, you can bet that the **AA would be all over it.

Pining for the good old days

Not everyone is happy about this on the comics end of things. There are a number of complaints in the Fleen thread along the lines of “but I don’t want to be a t-shirt salesman, I want to be paid for making my comics”. Here’s the thing guys, you were never getting paid for making comics. You were getting paid for helping to sell advertising. Unless most of your income was coming from the sales of books (which could also happen to a web comics creator) then you were an advertising shill. You just didn’t have to get your hands as dirty.

The collapse of syndication has very little to do with the rise of online comics and everything to do with the collapse of newspapers. As newspapers stumble, advertising sales no longer subsidize the content and so cartoonists are having to find other sources of income. The model has shifted from (indirect) ad salesman to (direct) merchandise salesman. Jim Davis might be the patron saint of the web comics scene.

Beacons of hope

This is a topic that we games creators think about a lot, so I’ve collected a few articles here that people might find interesting.

First off is Kevin Kelly’s inspiring post about the idea of 1000 true fans. Summary: if you can get 1000 people to each pay you the equivalent of a days wages every year, you can live quite comfortably as a content creator.

Next, this excellent article aimed at game makers about learning from touring bands. Danc has a lot of really great stuff about the (small) business of making games.

Here is Chris “I wrote The Long Tail” Anderson’s article introducing us to the concepts that will be covered in his new book FREE.

Lastly, another one from Kevin Kelly called better than free which is a great way to start brainstorming ways to make money off of your content that works with instead of against the fact that the Internet is the best, cheapest copying machine ever made.