13 | The Sustainability of Free Content: Learning from Webcomics Raphaël Plamondon, School of Information Studies The majority of webcomics are available for free to everyone, yet some of the most popular webcomic creators are able to make their work a full-time job. This paper explores how they can afford to do so using alternative sources of income and marketing. While the money made from these doesn’t compare to what traditional comics make, as a one-person operation, they reap all of the profits, and the unique content of their webcomic allows them to have a dedicated audience. This model is becoming prevalent in the digital economy, and traditional creative licenses could learn from it. Keywords: webcomics, comics, free content, self-publishing, digital content. Introduction As digital technologies and the internet evolved, so too did the mindset of the general population. The majority of content on the web is freely available to anyone with a connection. Digital games and songs are available for less than their physical counterparts, and even then, people find plenty of ways to access them for free, some of which are even more convenient than buying the product. This has led to a shared belief that web content should be free and that charging more than a couple dollars for content is considered overpricing. What is often overlooked in this line of argument is the livelihood of the content-creator: if people who create content want to make it a full-time job without having to also work a separate job to sustain themselves, they need their work to be profitable. Which begs the question: how are they supposed to earn anything from free content? This idea might have seemed absurd a couple decades ago, but the Copyright © 2018 Plamondon. Learning from Webcomics 120 rise of digital technologies has also made it a viable and crucial question today, and it touches on a number of creative domains, including webcomics. After defining the term, this chapter will explore in depth the roles of their creators, what their income is constituted of as well as their target audience. Webcomics show that it is possible, in fact, to profit from free content, maybe even more so than by charging for digital content. What are Webcomics? Webcomics are, in its simplest terms, comics that are created and published on the web. They “are not a genre. They are a medium… They’re everything you loved about long-form comics, short-form comics, sequential strips and single panels – transposed to a new means of distribution” (Guigar, Kellet, Kurtz, & Straub, 2008, p.13). However, this alternative medium does mean that there are a few differences between them and physical comics. Unlike most traditional comics, they are not managed and disseminated through a publisher; rather, they are posted by their creators on either social media such as Tumblr and DeviantArt, specialized webcomic platforms such as Webtoons or Taptastic, or through a website created by the author. Furthermore, as they are self-published work, they are not required to go through a printing process or a peer review process, which makes the process of creating them accessible to almost anyone with an internet connection and a drive to create. While the illustration process and construction of a narrative is similar to traditional comics, the medium of webcomics is generally more diverse, both in illustrations and narrative, than traditional ones, where the superhero genre dominates the medium. Webcomic Business Model Creators of webcomics are, first and foremost, persistent. The majority of popular full-time webcomics authors started posting their webcomic as a hobby, and a lot of them did not expect to make it a sustainable career out of it until later on. Even assuming that their creation is instantly popular at the start, Moving through the Grey: Publishing in Action The Publishing Business: Transformations and Opportunities (ISI6314 – Winter 2018) Learning from Webcomics 121 webcomics that are able to attract a following usually have to wait years before they’re financially stable. Bloggers and webcomic artists frequently develop and maintain their websites as side projects while working full time in another job. If the website becomes profitable, then it might turn into a full-time job. But building a large audience usually takes a while (Liming, 2012, p. 21). In order to get to that point, creators of these comics need to be willing to post regularly with little to no reward from their work other than praise from their followers and the self-satisfaction that comes with the completion of a project. Secondly, these webcomics artists tend to engage more with their audience than traditional creators, cultivating a community through their work (Walter, 2009) and are more open to criticism from their fans. By posting their comics online, one or a few pages at a time, they get instant feedback on their work, which lets them improve and adjust the direction of their comic and what is presented. Engaging with their audience is crucial in the world of webcomics, as word-of-mouth is their main and often only source of advertising in the medium. It is also crucial if the artist considers making their comic a full-time job and therefore needs ways of supporting themselves through their readers. Finally, in the event that these creators do become full-time artists, it’s important to be entrepreneurial. As the comic remains free to read, artists need to be creative in finding ways to profit from their work. For example, John Allison, a webcomic artist in the UK, the person behind webcomics such as Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery, “emphasizes the individual effort of the web cartoonist and implies, in suggesting that a cartoonist must be ‘Marks and Spencer’, that to succeed a lone cartoonist must become a one-person corporation” (Johnston, 2015, p. 9). A webcomic creator must be an artist, but also a publisher, an advertiser and a merchandise creator and distributor all at once in order to make his work marketable. Being a full time webcomic artist requires more business skills than artistic skills, as it is comparable to starting their own business. They have the freedom to do anything they want with their comic, but they are also responsible for everything concerning their success. Individuals who go in that industry need to be willing to put in the work necessary to make their comic first successful, then profitable, as well as being able to connect to their audience in order to advertise their sources of income. Moving through the Grey: Publishing in Action The Publishing Business: Transformations and Opportunities (ISI6314 – Winter 2018) Learning from Webcomics 122 While there exists some webcomics that require a subscription fee to access them and are therefore profitable on their own, the general rule in the medium is that webcomics are available in their entirety to everyone who knows where to find them for free. So how can full-time webcomic artists support themselves on free content? The answer is that there are a few alternative ways to earn their income, such as: • Donations • Advertising; • Commissioned work, and; • Merchandising (Johnston 2015). Advertising is one of the most commonly used as it is relatively easy to initiate; but in recent years, it has quickly become unsustainable as a mean to make money from webcomics. More and more users, tired of the overabundance of ads present on the web, navigate with an adblocker extension. If someone with an activated adblocker reads a webcomic on a webpage that is normally supposed to show ads, the artist makes no money from their visit. As such, the artist has to create their own source of revenue. Commissions and merchandising have become viable options for webcomic creators. Commissions are increasingly becoming an avenue for generating income, where an artist receives personal request from fans to create a specific artwork for a fee. This method can quickly become overwhelming however, as the artist has to draw these requests on top of making art for their free comic. Then there's merchandising, where the artist sells various objects such as keychains, mugs and the like with designs or logos related to their comic. This also includes physical editions of specific parts of the webcomic, much like traditional comics. The creator of Questionable Content, for example, has developed shirt designs that the characters in his comic wear, then creates actual shirts from these designs that readers can purchase online. While this type of approach relies heavily on branding and marketing skills, the process itself is simple once the artist is familiar with the process, and can make most of their earnings through it. The person behind the comic Cat & Girl, Dorothy Gambrell, reported making around seventy to seventy- five percent of her income from her comic merchandise (Kleefeld, 2010). Then there are fan Moving through the Grey: Publishing in Action The Publishing Business: Transformations and Opportunities (ISI6314 – Winter 2018) Learning from Webcomics 123 donations. Nowadays, when a webcomic creator wants to profit from their work, one of the first things they will do is set up a Patreon, or some other donation service, to accept fan donations. A popular webcomic such as Ava’s Demon, which makes around two thousand US dollars a month through its Patreon, can support the artist full time by itself (Farley 2017), even for webcomics with smaller audiences. While the creator can entice people to donate with rewards such as commissions or early access to the newest pages, donations are usually made by people who genuinely want to support the comic, and it is completely optional, as all other options covered.