Indie Publishing Via E-Bay?
Noticed via Comic Lifestyle, that Tim Danko ( a fine, fine Melbourne comic maker now in New Zealand ) is publishing his comics via ebay at 2.99$US a pop plus postage. His gorgeous comics are meticulously crafted and deserve a wider audience, hopefully this helps.
Micro-payment systems have long been sought after by online artists, and championed by comic artists such as prime evangelist Scott McCloud. Although criticised elsewhere ( Clay Shirky’s article & Sean Barrett’s visual essay), micro-payments remain a valid path for chasing income in the age of digital reproduction.
If it wasn’t for the massively popular success of itunes_etc, and the collective willingess to pay for downloading ephemeral mp3s and now videos, I’d once have argued that having physical products such as Tim’s print comic will always prove more successful in tempting people to spend money. On the physical front, both Lulu.com and Cafepress share interesting publishing models, where users can have their self-published books, t-shirts, coffee mugs etc ‘printed on demand’ and distributed by the sites for a slice of the profit. They seem to have huge databases of users, and are even being used by established authors to print books they think might be suited for a smaller print run. These can be delivered printed and bound to your door, or like Kevin Kelly’s review book of Documentary films, can also be bought as a digital PDF file for $3 US. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops alongside improvements in legibility on portable devices.
UPDATE : More info by Tim & John in the comments, it’s actually another person in the states who is distributing Tim’s comic this way ( and it is apparently up to $41 in the auctions! )
Thanks 4 the mention and musings. Should note it’s not Tim directly who is selling this, but an American (Ricko from poopsheetfoundation.com) who is selling batches of minicomics. Curious to see how it goes.
hiho! kind words! ….thank you jean! …as john mentioned it is rick bradford who is running this auction on ebay and a total surprise to me (even freakier that it is up to $41 u.s.!! jeepers!)… i have been toying with the idea of putting the comics up on the n.z. equivalent of ebay (www.trademe.co.nz) in that it doesn’t require credit cards and transactions done via bank deposits, but alas limited to n.z. folk. also its zine community is quite limited as yet,julie doucet and other alt comics i have put up have fallen flat so far… but the earth is slow and the ox patient. I will have new site up (deadxeroxpress) which i figure wont have a trade/paypal/wateva function, just links to the auctions on trademe or ebay…. i like that the web is generally free and intransient in this regard, not everything is a resource exploitable. And holding the object, skin on paper or tyexture of any kind… glory glory!! watch for http://www.deadxerox press.com in Feb 2006!! cheezels