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[theinevitable]

But as I have said many times before, it is a totally bizarre modern phenomenon that we expect creative people to give their stuff away for free.

I mean, it is also a pretty weird modern phenomenon to think that creative people will make money by selling their product to the masses.

[wombat]

Well, I dunno, people have been buying books and newspapers for over a hundred years now... cursory Googling reveals facts like, the first paperback novel in the US was published in 1840, if you believe what you read on the internet. Music is technologically different of course but before people could buy recorded music they bought sheet music. So I'd say that paying money for creative works has been working for a pretty good while now. But perhaps you have a different definition of modern.

[Doc]

1.  After the staredown, Dan asks Paul, "What's the frequency, Leroy?"; or

A can for having my idea before I did.

[theinevitable]

I guess instead of Modern I meant Recent.

I don't know. I have a lot of contradictory beliefs about intellectual property and all of that stuff. And this is one area where the more I think about it, the more I am inclined towards extreme positions.

I just started talking to my roommate about this, and he stated that he believes that (visual) art should be unbelievably expensive. But also, he thinks everyone should have art.

[littlefallsmets]

I'm not so much underestimating the amount of work that goes into the blogs or any other part of the strip and more saying...

That it is kind of slitting the neck of a goose that lays eggs of a precious metal to take the material that you could be using as a stop-gap in situations like this and charging three bucks a month for it... and then having the mainstream of your site, that actually builds your fanbase and drives merch sales and might build the kind of people that would cough up the bread for a subscription service, basically go all but dark for weeks at a time.

It doesn't make any sense.

It's not that I'm saying "dude! create more!"

I'm saying... that it just seems kind of crazy to let the main thrust of your business model flounder for the sake of a much-smaller-though-steadier corner of how you're making your bread.

It seems really short sighted.

[theinevitable]

like, whatEVER man!

you sound like my roommate! "daniel, stop putting habanero hot sauce on that jumbalaya! it's already really spicy and you're going to regret it!"
like,
who are you to use facts to tell me what might happen in the future!? I am so OVER that crap. I totally love doing content only for paying subscribers while ignoring my loyal fan base burning my mouth with habanero hot sauce.

[wombat]

LFM, if you and I had book signings with lines around the block maybe we'd be qualified to criticize his approach to his business model, but until then...  I mean, I am the kind of person who, if I was in that business, I'd have strips done a week in advance. I write blog posts in advance for a blog no one reads and submit things five days in advance to an editor who I know never reads anything until like twenty minutes before it has to go out on the wire. So on one level it drives me crazy that he doesn't just have more rational-seeming work habits. How hard can it be to give me my free comic every day - hey, all those other guys I read do it!  But he's the one who's supporting his whole family on a comic strip whereas I'd be happy just to get my agent to answer my danged email more than once in a while... so who are we to talk about what makes sense?

[Ruta Bagas]

Besides, it's not like he's obliged to make any kind of sense, is it? Maybe he'd prefer to keep the last-minute process even if it meant losing a spot of cash here and there.

Being savvy is all well and good but it'd be horrible to become successful doing something you love and then turn it into a grind in the name of business models.

[colmore]

rant {

I subscribe to the PPV part because, honestly, it's really really cheap.  If there were more new content in the books, I'd buy them.  I really don't make much money.  Like, less than $10 / hr working less than 40 hours a week.  But I do spend *some* money on entertainment: books, movie tickets, cable modem bill, restaurant meals with friends, live music.  It seems we expect our pixels to be free because so many of them are.

It has to be majorly frustrating to be getting millions of page views a day (or hundreds of thousands or whatever) and selling a few dozen shirts and books a day.  If I owned

a shop where fewer than one in a thousand people who perused the merchandise actually made a purchase, I'd probably burn the place down for insurance money no matter how well I was doing off those one in a thousand.

People have been paying for art and entertainment since ancient Athens.  There are maybe 20 or 30 people in the world making an actual living off of their webcomics, so the correct way of doing so is hardly set in stone.  If the new practice drives off half of the viewers who were disinclined to buy shirts and books in the first place, then honestly all Chris has done is saved himself some money on his servers.

It's kind of cruel to expect webcomics to have to make indirect money only.  I don't care for themed shot glasses.  I don't really cook.  I don't wear T-Shirts with logos or text on them.  So should the years of enjoyment I've gotten out of Achewood net its creator nothing plus some bandwidth? 

And even if we do start getting a free weekly instead of a free tri-weekly, then we still have a nice free comic.  Perry Bible Fellowship was slighly less than weekly before it closed shop, and it was fantastic.  We aren't entitled to crap.  I'm also a bit worried that this scheme could backfire, but I'm sure he has his numbers and can change course if it does.

I also believe that culture should in a sense be available for free.  But more like public library free than Napster free.  It should all be there to be browsed and borrowed with a bit of inconvenience.  If it's going to sit on your shelf or harddrive forever, it should cost something.  The 20th century saw such an incredible explosion of culture and creativity in almost every possible medium, and it was nearly always done by pros or people who aspired to be pros.  DIY and amateurism are nice and cool and should be encouraged, but they aren't sufficient for our entire culture.  As long as we live in a capitalist society, then art is going to need to position itself to succeed within the bounds of capitalism or it will just die.

}

[herofix]

That it is kind of slitting the neck of a goose that lays eggs abloo abloo abloo

The guy gets a lot of my money so he doesn't have to care about you.  I am the guy ruining your Achewood experience.

[theinevitable]

If I owned a shop where fewer than one in a thousand people who perused the merchandise actually made a purchase, I'd probably burn the place down for insurance money no matter how well I was doing off those one in a thousand.

Well, then you wouldn't be a very good businessman.

[littlefallsmets]

Oh, don't get me wrong. I like the strip a lot, when it is actually happening... and I've bought more than my fair share of merch, both for myself and for the one non-online friend I have who is also a fan. I'm just saying.

Thousands of people never getting into it enough to buy hundreds of dollars of books and posters and whatnot > a few hundred people throwing down three bones a month.

A growing fanbase over years > maybe a car payment every month after taxes and administrative fees.

Don't make no sense.

[KeithHernandez]

I don't know, man, I also have never bought a shirt (don't really like advertising on my shirt and try not to), but I subscribe to achewood premium or whatever it is called.  I have always meant to buy a shot glass or pint glass or the books but never have.  I did subscribe to this.

Also, I would guess instead of "hundreds" there are somewhere between 1 and 5,000 subscribers.  Also. Administration fees?  WTF?  You know about the internet right?  It can't be that much more (any more?) than the site without it.

[wombat]

Drew of toothpastefordinner.com says that 99.9 percent of their readers never buy anything, and they've got 850,000 readers, so it's not like they don't have a fanbase. Assuming that's typical, and comparing that to the lines of people I saw who had put down cold hard cash for the GOF book, it actually makes perfect sense to me for Onstad to write only a couple of free strips a week because he's working on another book.

Rather than it not making sense, he'd be crazy not to prioritize that way. I doubt the premium stuff is really what takes that much time away from the strip. It's kind of like a gussied-up Twitter feed with pictures.... Hey! I missed a bunch of posts. He met Jon Stewart!

[pmcd9]

And if something as lame as toothpastefordinner has 850k readers Achewood must number in the millions.