Catching Up
Things that have happened since we last ran current news:
- Dave Roman did some walking around at NYCC, did some panels, and did some thinking on the future of [web]comics and how digital future media will be. Good reads, and well worth your time.
- While at NYCC, I got to speak to Scott Kurtz and Meredith Gran about their recent pushes into premium content — both have seen a modest take-up amongst their readers (although Kurtz’s jumped when he announced the first three months of net profits would go to the Ringo Scholarship at SCAD), and are pretty much playing it by ear.
The big questions in this experiment (and this year of economic turmoil is nothing if not a test-bed for new approaches to making a living online) is how many people will carry over from the first month to the second, and whether or not people will even sign up for that first month, believing themselves to be locked into an automatically-renewing subscription that keeps charging them (they aren’t).
Similarly, I was contacted recently by Israel L’Heureux (what a great name), one of the founders of Assetbar. To clarify some of my initial descriptions of the Fanflow program, it was built by L’Heureux and his compatriots to meet Chris Onstad‘s needs, and has been generalized as a tool for the community since. The commenting/rating interface at Achewood (aka acheworld), while powered by the first iteration of the AssetBar technology, is not part of the premium feature set, and remains free to use. Fleen thanks L’Heureux for the clarification and regrets the incorrect description.
- In the less-than-a-week since the webcomics team at Kiva launched, membership has swelled (as of this writing) to 132 and total lending to $4500, placing Team Webcomics 42nd out of 481 teams in terms of membership, and somewhere around 127th in terms of money lent (placing well above teams in existence for many months). Take that, Team Harvard!
- Yep, it’s true. Gotta love the commenters taking it seriously.
- Finally, check what popped into my inbox a few minutes ago — the long-anticipated exhibitor registration for MoCCA Art Fest ’09 is now available:
Exhibitor Applications & Guidelines for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s 2009 MoCCA Festival are now available for download on the museum’s website [PDF].
Artists, writers, and publishers wishing to have a table at the 2009 Festival are encouraged to get in their applications and payment as early as possible, as well over half of vendor space has already been sold to returning exhibitors and MoCCA members.
The 2009 MoCCA Festival will take place the weekend of June 6-7 at the 69th Regiment Armory at Lexington Avenue and 25th Street in New York City. As the 69th Regiment Armory is a much larger venue, nearly 100 more exhibitors will be attending, and arranged in a more democratic manner than in previous years.
MoCCA will begin accepting and processing new 2009 MAF Exhibitor Applications on Thursday, February 12th. Exhibitor applications arriving at the Museum before that date will be processed as if postmarked at 11:59pm on February 11th.
We have an inquiry in with MoCCA to see if the new venue allows the webcomics creators to a) be clustered together as at the Puck Building, and b) to have some newcomers join the party. Answers as we receive them.
[…] future vitality of a planned graphic novel line. * the generally webcomics-focused Gary Tyrrell provides more information about the Assetbar method of creating exclusive site content, how its billing works, and who’s had […]
By ZEITGEIST / And They Will All Live Like Cartoonists: The US Economy And Comics, Post #20 on 02.12.09 6:29 pm
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