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[JorgeFabregas]

I don't think he's making another book. I gather that he's making one of these dealies: http://www.myspace.com/darkhosspresents?issuenum=14&storynum=3

[Death Ray]

Awww. He ate the toast all by himself.

[Death Ray]

Show of hands: Who else completely forgot LN was dead?

Happy Molly was pretty awesome, too.

Hells no. I've been waiting for that storyline!

[milhouse]

I don't think the strip gets neglected for the premium stuff. Have you seen it? I'm almost at the end of my 1st month and I recall maybe two things that were notable.

The book signings did take time from the strip, but I still think that's Onstad 'giving back' to the fans as well. I don't feel like I'm being neglected, he's just taking some time to tour and sign books.

Meh..

[wombat]

I think this was a bad month for the premium stuff too, with the book tour. I think there was more in previous months.

I wasn't crazy about it at first, but now I think it is a nice addition. One of the cool things about Achewood is that it is not just a strip but the other stuff - the blogs where you get the characters' first-person voices, a cookbook where even the recipes tell you things about the characters. At first I found the third-person writing about the characters a bit offputting, but now I like the different perspective.  And you know, he is just a good writer - I am often frustrated that there is no way for me to use some great phrase from the premium stuff for a thread title.

[colmore]

I'm just saying that the "give every piece of content away for free and sell some shirts" model of internet publishing doesn't actually support all that many people.  I'd like to give Onstad the benefit of the doubt in that, he's working every day to support a family by writing about stoned cats and has probably spent a great deal more time thinking about the specific details of doing this sort of thing than you or I have.  I'd like more strips too, but I don't want to jump to the conclusion, based on vague supposition, that "this is displeasing to me, therefor it has to be a bad idea for him."

We don't have any meaningful numbers.  We don't even know if the subscription service and the tour are the main causes of the infrequent strips.  Dude has a life, anything could be going on (and he's among the more private of internet celebs).  I don't think we should presume to tell the man how to run his business.

[jaydub]

But where's the sport in that?

[pmcd9]

To see how to be successful at this you have to look at how it was done when print ruled because comic strips have always been basically free, included in something that most people buy for another reason.  Or even if you were really into the comics it was just a tiny part of the whole.  But they didn't stay free.  To this end Onstad could just remove the archives.  Leave maybe the last 20 strips up or something like that.  Maybe a gallery of alltime great strips.  People who come to his site, would get a glimpse of the strip, develop a habit for it and get hooked.  When they want to remember a strip that played two months ago they will be forced to purchase one of the books.  Or maybe that is too old fashioned thinking.  You could pay for access to the strip and download it.  Hell I don't know, I just know that's sorta how it worked for me when I was little.  Sure I would read Charlie Brown every day in the paper, but my archive was the little paperback books my mother bought me.

To be really successful, I'm talking Garfield successful, you gotta get big enough that it becomes viable to market your product to things beyond tshirts and pins and little shit like that.  Achewood lunchboxes, achewood halloween costumes, achewood designer clothes, achewood soup.  The possibilities are endless.  You gotta be big to do these kinds of merchandising deals because there is a steep front end cost involved.  It's not worth it unless you move a lot of units.  I don't know how big achewood has really become, but if lines around the block for his book signing is any indication he's bound to be getting close to that level.

Also, Onstad has always been slow to deliver new content.  This is nothing new.  The only reason he's been particularly slow as of late can be attributed directly to his book tour.  But I'll bet he's used this time to come up with a lot of great new ideas he's going to share with us over the next few weeks and months.

Like how he's going to tell the Lil Nephew story so long in coming. 

[colmore]

Sorry to keep this going but... there's a BIG difference between newspaper and online comics that I think invalidates the comparison:

Even if it does take merchandizing to make the big bucks, newspapers and syndicates pay cartoonists directly to make their art.  Very few cartoonists would get to the point of being able to sell all that junk if they had to work dayjobs up until the point where some office lady wanted a stuffed animal and a calendar.  Most print comics through history didn't have those extra sources of revenue, and yet their creators lived decent middle class existences.  Sure not everyone gets to have the orbital Taj Mahal that Jim Davis has his checks forwarded to, but that kind of success is always the exception to the rule, not the case you base your expectations on.

One of these days I'm going to get around to actually inventing some characters so I can do more than aimlessly doodle all the time.  While I certainly don't count on being successful, I'd like to think that just maybe there is a path to success that doesn't involve selling ads or secondary merch.  I have this strange belief that artists should be able to get paid for their art, not just for consumer goods and promotional materials that surround their art.

All that said, micropayments are unpalatable, and I think will always remain a pipe-dream of the 90s, and the only thing people can be relied to subscribe to is porn.  I'm being such a stubborn defender of Chris here in part because I really want to see what he's doing work, it would be a big and important first.  The more ways there are for creators to support themselves online, the more online creativity we're going to see.

[theinevitable]

only thing people can be relied to subscribe to is porn.

Pay for porn?

HAH!

[wombat]

I have this strange belief that artists should be able to get paid for their art, not just for consumer goods and promotional materials that surround their art.

You and me both. But now that I have thought about the last two posts...

Paul is right that newspaper comics are essentially free in just the way online comics are. You're buying the newspaper or the internet access for a variety of reasons and you'd probably do so even if comics didn't exist. And in that sense, the daily comic from either source is like an advertisement for the book of comics that they want you to buy. And Colmore is right that the difference is that newspaper comics get paid even if you don't buy the book, whereas the webcomic has to pay to put itself out there on the internet.

BUT, the way things have changed is that it's almost impossible to break in as a new syndicated comic strip anymore. What's more, I think they also don't get paid much. I don't think you can make a living on it when you are first starting out.

Now, for new artists, the advantage of the web is that the artist can start selling books and merchandise almost immediately. He doesn't have to be successful enough to convince some company that a million people will buy the lunchbox.

So... why would anyone want to be a newspaper comic strip artist these days? You're eventually going to make the real money from books and merchandise anyway. Why not get your 'advertising' out there where everyone can potentially see it, instead of just the people who read a few newspapers? Especially when you could be dead long before a significant number of papers pick up your strip.

The conclusion seems to be that getting directly paid for a comic strip isn't all it at first seems to be cracked up to be, at least not nowadays. How does this apply to other arts? It works in principle for musicians, who can give away a song at a time. And it works for certain kinds of writers - if your blog gets popular and you get a book deal, you've basically done the same thing, giving away your writing a bit at a time and then getting people to pay for a chunk of it.

In contrast, I'm doing something exactly like the newspaper comic artist - getting paid by the piece for small chunks of writing, and hoping it leads to a deal where I can sell a big chunk of it. It's not working out like it's cracked up to, so far.

Damn, I think I finally understand the 21st century economy for creative work and I don't know what to do about it. I'm in too deep old-style.

[Choop]

i would pay untold amounts of money for an old-style metal lunchbox in an achewood theme. i would not even require a thermos.

[Dexter]

But I do spend *some* money on entertainment: [...] cable modem bill [...]

Dude!  That's not entertainment!  Internet access is almost as much of a necessity as indoor plumbing, or oxygen.

[colmore]

I lived for a year without internet access (I was about 4 or 5 blocks from a library and I had it at work) and honestly, it was fantastic.  It just means the thought "Well I have nothing to do... now what?" Takes a few moments longer, but I would occasionally wind up doing something I'd actually remember a few days later.

Anyway, yeah, an Achewood lunch box would be rad squared.  Chris Ware made one for his character Rusty Brown a few years ago, and it's where I keep my photos.