БУ-принтер гораздо хуже БУ-бабы. БУ-бабе износу нет, опыт плюсом и картриджи сама меняет.
"Remove the Donate button off your site" is bullshit. Professionals in comics, by definition, are those who are earning their daily bread doing comics. Now, web comics are FREE. The options to extract income are (1) sell merch, including printed books, (2) place ads and (3) take donations.
I'd be sort of a hypocrite if I said I don't like merch. I love merch. This summer, I was kicked out of my apartment. The stuff I took barely fit into a car, and there's still a roomful left. Boardgames, books, action figures, videogames, music CDs. I miss my stuff, but it's a leg iron. For entertainment, I just need a PC, an ebook reader, and storage. I don't need more merch. I don't have a place to put moar boardgames.
Yes, I know you can slap a logo on everyday stuff like pens and notebooks and get a percentage of thusly stimulated sales. I bought a NaNoWriMo tote bag - and that's it with buying tote bags for the year. I have a drawer full of geek t-shirts which I don't wear, what with working for a government agency and all that.
It feels nice owning that stuff - no big surprise here, because merch *is* luxury. In a world where entertainment is essentially free (plus the price of an Internet connection), merch, being limited in supply, is the basis necessary to sustain the age-old habit of "keeping up with the Joneses". Life satisfaction reaches the top at $10000/month or so, when you run out of time. If you don't want to "see the real world", being satisfied with billions of virtual worlds offering experiences just as/more entertaining, the saturation happens even earlier. Merch is a status symbol, and the demand for it, like the demand for gold and diamonds, is based on hype. I've got a phianite ring that BLAZES LIKE A BILLION SUNS. Everyone knows it's not a diamond, because I don't look like a person who can afford that pretty a diamond. But who cares? Its functions are to be pretty, to BLAZE LIKE A BILLION SUNS and to stay on my finger and it performs them marvelously.
There are people who like the feel (look, smell) of a printed book. There will continue to be people who like the feel (look, smell) of a printed book, until there are no more people. I prefer my Opus for reading fiction. However, it's hard for me to study without a printed book, and at all impossible without handwritten notes. But over on the life-improvement blog, readers are asking while commenting on the best note-taking program, "who the hell uses paper these days?" Yes, only a small portion of the comic readers donates, but the portion of merch-buying readers is also not large, And it will continue to decrease.
Borrowing from my old article on the subject (it used music as a primary example, having been written for the benefit of my professional singer friend), the "merch" that would live the longest is live performances (conventions for comics). But even those will fade, as webinars, live cams, and online games merge. Donations, effected by good will, or a guilt trip, or plain forced by law, is *the* economic model of the future.
Ads. Ohgodtheads. It's one thing to be paid to endorse something that you actually like - this doesn't make my ethics sense tingle. But we all know this is rarely the case. People are fighting for a commercial-free education, try to kick ads out of schools, try to ban teachers from "politely insisting" that children ask parents to buy specific drinks "for the benefit of the school". Why not free culture? Art museums are often state-sponsored: that means we, as a people, decide to keep the "enlarge your weenie" banner away from the statue of David. Why I, being competent enough to block advertising, cannot contribute some money so that other, less competent people would see a crap-free webpage?
Sure, it'd be good if culturally significant ongoing works of living artists were sponsored by an ideal international council for culture - but let me tell you, the actual results will be ugly. They smelled suspiciously in the 20th century, what happens now in my country (I'm not American btw) is plain revolting. And really, why should we allow a council of dunces collect taxes from people in all the world to pay for Sonic the Hedgehog porn (extreme example)? Let the individual people pay for what they like, as much as they like! ...Wow, what a brilliant idea, I'm sure no one else has thought of it.
Bottom line: success in business does not mean you're universally right. Shut up Sohmer, and stick your plushies... (ahem) where the sun doesn't shine.
P.S. I don't have a good idea of "kid-friendliness", feel free to replace the words you consider naughty.
I'd be sort of a hypocrite if I said I don't like merch. I love merch. This summer, I was kicked out of my apartment. The stuff I took barely fit into a car, and there's still a roomful left. Boardgames, books, action figures, videogames, music CDs. I miss my stuff, but it's a leg iron. For entertainment, I just need a PC, an ebook reader, and storage. I don't need more merch. I don't have a place to put moar boardgames.
Yes, I know you can slap a logo on everyday stuff like pens and notebooks and get a percentage of thusly stimulated sales. I bought a NaNoWriMo tote bag - and that's it with buying tote bags for the year. I have a drawer full of geek t-shirts which I don't wear, what with working for a government agency and all that.
It feels nice owning that stuff - no big surprise here, because merch *is* luxury. In a world where entertainment is essentially free (plus the price of an Internet connection), merch, being limited in supply, is the basis necessary to sustain the age-old habit of "keeping up with the Joneses". Life satisfaction reaches the top at $10000/month or so, when you run out of time. If you don't want to "see the real world", being satisfied with billions of virtual worlds offering experiences just as/more entertaining, the saturation happens even earlier. Merch is a status symbol, and the demand for it, like the demand for gold and diamonds, is based on hype. I've got a phianite ring that BLAZES LIKE A BILLION SUNS. Everyone knows it's not a diamond, because I don't look like a person who can afford that pretty a diamond. But who cares? Its functions are to be pretty, to BLAZE LIKE A BILLION SUNS and to stay on my finger and it performs them marvelously.
There are people who like the feel (look, smell) of a printed book. There will continue to be people who like the feel (look, smell) of a printed book, until there are no more people. I prefer my Opus for reading fiction. However, it's hard for me to study without a printed book, and at all impossible without handwritten notes. But over on the life-improvement blog, readers are asking while commenting on the best note-taking program, "who the hell uses paper these days?" Yes, only a small portion of the comic readers donates, but the portion of merch-buying readers is also not large, And it will continue to decrease.
Borrowing from my old article on the subject (it used music as a primary example, having been written for the benefit of my professional singer friend), the "merch" that would live the longest is live performances (conventions for comics). But even those will fade, as webinars, live cams, and online games merge. Donations, effected by good will, or a guilt trip, or plain forced by law, is *the* economic model of the future.
Ads. Ohgodtheads. It's one thing to be paid to endorse something that you actually like - this doesn't make my ethics sense tingle. But we all know this is rarely the case. People are fighting for a commercial-free education, try to kick ads out of schools, try to ban teachers from "politely insisting" that children ask parents to buy specific drinks "for the benefit of the school". Why not free culture? Art museums are often state-sponsored: that means we, as a people, decide to keep the "enlarge your weenie" banner away from the statue of David. Why I, being competent enough to block advertising, cannot contribute some money so that other, less competent people would see a crap-free webpage?
Sure, it'd be good if culturally significant ongoing works of living artists were sponsored by an ideal international council for culture - but let me tell you, the actual results will be ugly. They smelled suspiciously in the 20th century, what happens now in my country (I'm not American btw) is plain revolting. And really, why should we allow a council of dunces collect taxes from people in all the world to pay for Sonic the Hedgehog porn (extreme example)? Let the individual people pay for what they like, as much as they like! ...Wow, what a brilliant idea, I'm sure no one else has thought of it.
Bottom line: success in business does not mean you're universally right. Shut up Sohmer, and stick your plushies... (ahem) where the sun doesn't shine.
P.S. I don't have a good idea of "kid-friendliness", feel free to replace the words you consider naughty.
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28.01.2011 в 00:13