Incorporating an oddly shaped panel into a vertical-scroll comic

Incorporating an oddly shaped panel into a vertical-scroll comic

Building an audience on the web means adapting to the vertical scroll. But that doesn't mean giving up innovative page...
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Webcomics Confidential: Draw larger

Webcomics Confidential: Draw larger

I took a question on Twitter recently: "Would it be wrong to draw my comics on A4 paper? I find...
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November To-Do List

November To-Do List

It's time to get started on (*choke*) the penultimate month of 2024.If you plan to offer new merchandise for the...
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ComicLab Ep 359 — Should your readers be your writers?

ComicLab Ep 359 — Should your readers be your writers?

BlueSky is beginning to feel like Twitter did ten years ago! Engagement is up, conversations are genuine, and follower counts...
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Understanding social media

Understanding social media

Social media is among an independent artist's most frustrating elements. We struggle for engagement, wage constant battles with "The Algorithm,"...
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Writing humor

Writing humor

Writing comedy is a challenge that is made even more daunting by the fact that humor itself is completely subjective...
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CMYK vs RGB

CMYK vs RGB

If you're saving your comics in RGB mode, you may be making a potentially expensive mistake. The content you are...
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ComicLab Ep 358 — “Help! I’m not funny anymore!”

ComicLab Ep 358 — “Help! I’m not funny anymore!”

Cartoonists Dave and Brad share some thoughts with a young humor writer trying to find their Funny. Also: Is BlueSky...
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ISBN — a beginner’s guide

ISBN — a beginner’s guide

An ISBN is a 10- or 13-digit number used to identify a book from a specific publisher. Once your book...
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How to write a Halloween joke

How to write a Halloween joke

On Substack, a cartoonist was struggling with writing a Halloween joke. He was experiencing a common problem. He was stuck...
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Ingram’s “Spark” — Book distribution for POD

Ingram Content Group, a major book distributor, recently announced a new platform to enable Print-On-Demand (POD) book publishers to distribute through Ingram. The announcement was made during a recent Independent Book Publishers of America (IBPA) keynote address. Spark goes live on May 28.

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by on May 21, 2013
Posted In: Print publishing
└ Tags: ,
2 Comments

Creating a Great Banner Ad

Banner Advertising is one of the more challenging aspects of promoting your comic. You have to compete for attention in a very confinded space, knowing full well that mot of the eyes are going to move past that space rapidly (as they travel to their intended content).

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by on May 19, 2013
Posted In: Advertising
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22 Comments

Open Call: Banner Ad Hot Seat

In the recent member survey of potential Hot Seat topics, banner advertising came in second to Character Design, with 13%.

So, if you’d like to participate in the next Banner Ad Hot Seat, please give me the following in the Comments section below:

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by on May 16, 2013
Posted In: Uncategorized

In-Text Advertising

You have many options when you’re running ads from an ad network on your site. You can run straight-up banner ads, of course, but you may choose to include pop-up ads, pop-unders, and in-text ads.

Pop-ups and pop-unders are pretty universally reviled, and most publishers opt out of this kind of ad delivery instinctively. After all, we don’t like visiting sites with those kinds of ads, so we don’t want to force that on out readers.

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by on May 15, 2013
Posted In: Advertising
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3 Comments

Pay What You Want

This week, I released my monthly digital comic pre-release on a pay-what-you-want basis using Gumroad. The reader response has been good, but the creator response has been surprising.

I wanted to let my numbers mature a bit before discussing this, but when I saw that yesterday, I knew what today’s post had to be.

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by on May 7, 2013
Posted In: Digital publishing
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15 Comments

Self-Employed Mortgage Loan

Today’s post comes courtesy of Webcomics.com member John Bogenschutz:
For anybody who draws a comic they have thought about, at one point or another (if not all the time!), wanting to make it their full time job. That’s the goal right? Fortunately, I have been able to do my comic full time for the past year and a half, and I couldn’t be happier.
 
Well, except for the fact that when you are self-employed getting a mortgage loan is even tougher than if you have a “real” job.

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by on May 6, 2013
Posted In: Business
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3 Comments