Alchemy
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Advice for a potential webcomic writer
I got this question via email the other day:
I’m currently working on the script to my own original comic, and considering publishing it online. Can you give me advice on how to promote the site, and setting it up to take donations? I think online publishing would work best for me, since it can be hard to know what independent publishers are lookig for. Any advise you can give would be a huge help, thanks.
This was my response:
Heads up: there are some affiliate links I included in a craven attempt to get filthy lucre…
After my experience with Artifice, I definitely agree that releasing a comic as a webcomic is the best way for regular folks like us to build an audience (and to connect with them!) After my one year “experiment” in webcomics, there is no turning back. :) And of course, for better or for worse, it gives you complete editorial control over your content.
In terms of technical stuff, I recommend using Wordpress with a webcomic plugin for the most flexibility, security and ease of use. The plugin I use is called “Webcomic”. You can read about it here:
Wordpress Plugin Directory: Webcomic
and watch videos about how to set it up here
There’s also another plugin called ComicPress that’s also quite popular. So you might check that out to compare.
I’d recommend self-hosting your Wordpress install under your own domain name using a service like Dreamhost. The hosting is inexpensive and they have a “One-Click Install” that will set up Wordpress for you with, well, a single click. Very easy. And using your own domain name costs like $10 a year and gives you flexibility with your site you’ll almost certainly want in the future.
That said, it does require you to be willing and able to technically administer your site. It’s not as hard as it’s sounds, unless you’re looking to very heavily customize your look, most things are very straight-forward. But if that’s not your thing, there are other options.
You could set up a managed Wordpress site over at
Set up at a managed Wordpress webcomic site like
Or you could choose to skip Wordpress altogether and host with a webcomic hosting site like
In terms of donations, I use the Donation Can plugin for Wordpress. That was the only one out there that did everything I wanted and didn’t charge me some kind of additional transaction fee. Considering the success I had with my “donation bar”, I was quite happy to donate to the plugin’s creator later. :)
I use Project Wonderful to both advertise my comic and also to generate income. They specialize in webcomics and I’ve found they are good people. (They also were the only advertisers willing to give me the time of day when I launched my comic to which I am also grateful.) And because they specialize in webcomics, they gave me access to a world of other webcomic readers—so your ads will be targeted to the very people you’d want to see them. (And you’ll be offering them a “product” they would actually want to check out. Win-win.) I believe my PW ads were a huge factor in any success I had.
In terms of ad creation, it’s just like anything in comics—great art really helps. I suspected that showing a little skin in my ads would boost the number of clicks, but I underestimated how big a difference that would make—like 500% more. So if your comic has romance elements, even if romance isn’t its main focus, that’s something to keep in mind.
PW gives you all kinds of stats to monitor how well your ads are doing. IMHO, the most important one is the Cost-Per-Click—basically how much you’ve paid for the ad divided by the number of clicks that ad got. If you’re paying more than 3 cents a click, you’re probably doing something wrong. In that case, consider
- coming up with a more compelling image (probably the most important)
- coming up with better written “copy” (this is less important)
- choosing to place your ads on webcomic sites that actually would have audiences interested in your kind of story (this is rather important)
In terms of general advice, if you’re following what I tried to do, I’d say you should
- write the kind of story that you’ve always wanted to see but haven’t seen much of out there. (Trying to guess what other people might like is a losing game, IMHO.)
- I prep all my pages for print and then convert them for the web—because I always hoped to go to print. I’d recommend the same thing to you—it’s harder to go the other direction.
- And if you want to work with good artists, you’re going to have to pay them and pay them without delays—factor that into your budget. Good art takes hours and hours of work per page. (Yes, I know we as writers put in hours and hours of work too, but asking strangers to put in 10+ hours per page is a huge ask.) For anything more than a few pages, there’s really no getting around compensating an artist for their time and it’s the right thing to do. I’ve paid all my artists right from the start and have never regretted it. You can begin your search for artists using the Web sites I mention in this blog post (which is older but the links are still valid) on my somewhat NSFW blog.
Anyway, I hope that helps! Good luck!
Alex
UPDATE 5/1/13: A follow-up question via email has lead to another post: Last Minute Advice for a Webcomic Creator: Before You Launch that talks about the next steps.
How to Write a Cover Letter Someone Will Actually Read
Okay, so when applying for jobs, you’re generally going to need 4 things: 1) a completed application, 2) your resume, 3) a cover letter, and 4) a list of references. The application you need to do on your own and it’s just filling in boxes, you can handle that. Resumes I’ve already covered! Now, it’s on to the joy absolute gut-wrenching hell that is writing a cover letter.
My 3 Unfortunately-Secret Programs for Illustrators
There are a few programs I use on an almost daily basis as an artist and illustrator which I find invaluable, but that seem to be unfortunately more secret than they deserve to be. Which is too bad, because they solve a lot of small workflow problems that I think a number of people would find useful!
I’ll keep this list limited to my big three, but it is organized in order of usefulness. (And incidentally of compatibility, as the latter two are Windows-only. Sorry! Please do still check out PureRef though, Mac users.)
1. PureRef
PureRef is a program specifically designed to make it easier to view, sort, and work with your references. I actually put off downloading it initially because it seemed redundant– couldn’t I just paste the refs into my PSD files? Indeed, the only real barrier to working with PureRef is that learning the keyboard shortcuts and the clicks to move around the program takes a little while. But getting over that hump is well worth it, because it has some distinct advantages over trying to organize your refs in your actual art program.
Firstly, you’re no longer bogging down your actual PSD file with extra layers, nor having to fight with said layers at all– PureRef has no layer panel, so you never have to scramble to grab the right one. All images you paste into the program retain their original resolution data, so you can resize, rotate, crop, etc as needed without distortion. If you find yourself needing to adjust the values, color, etc of a ref image, you can just copy paste it into Photoshop, make your adjustments, and copy paste it back into PureRef.
The other great advantage is that you can toggle the program as ‘Stay On Top’ and keep it above Photoshop (or whatever else)– which was always a problem when trying to make a reference collage in a separate PSD file. I find that I just don’t look at my references as much as I should when they are on a second monitor, and this solves that problem.
I’ve used it religiously for about a year now, creating a new PureRef file for every illustration I do, as well as a few for specific characters, cultures, or settings in personal projects. As you can see in the example above, I like to sort my images into little clusters or ‘islands’ of specific content, so that I can easily scroll out to see the entire reference map, then zoom in to the relevant cluster easily.
There is one big tip I would suggest for using this program, if you have the harddrive space: As soon as you get it, turn on the ‘Embed local images in save file’ option. This will make your PureRef files bigger, but you’ll never have to deal with a ‘broken link’ if you move around the source files you originally dragged in.
2. Work Timer
This is such a simple little app that it doesn’t have a very formal name, though I think of it as ‘Work’ or ‘Work Work’ (for some reason.) It’s a timer that counts when your cursor is active in any (of up to 3) program you set it to count for, and stops counting when you change programs or idle. No starting, pausing, stopping, or forgetting to do any of those three things.
I use this one to accurately track my hours, both to inform myself and for commissions or other client work. At the end of a work session, I take the hours counted and add them to the hours I’ve already spent on that image in a spreadsheet.
I have it set to count my three art programs (Photoshop, Painter, and Manga Studio), so based on the settings I use, it doesn’t count time that I spend doing relevant work in my browser (such as looking up an email to double check character descriptions or ref hunting), so to counter that, I set the ‘Timeout’ option in it’s menu to 360. This means it will count to 360 seconds of cursor inactivity before it considers me idle and stops counting. Since it instantly stops counting if you switch to ‘non-work’ a program, I figure this extra time just about cancels out relevant time that it ignores in 'non-work’ programs by counting an extra minute or so when I walk away from the computer to grab some water or what-have-you.
3. Carapace
I use Carapace the least of these three, since my work doesn’t often have a need for creating perspective lines. But when there is architecture involved in something, this proves invaluable in simplifying that process.
Carapace lets you copy paste an image into it, and then drop in vanishing points and move them around to create perspective lines. (Though you’ll want to scale down your full res drawing or painting a bit to avoid lagging the program.) Like with PureRef, fighting the shortcuts is the worst part of it, though for myself it’s more of an issue in this program because I don’t use it often enough to remember them. Still, it gets the job done, and it’s easy to adjust the points to feel things out until you get them 'right’. Then you just copy and paste the grid back into your art program and you’ve got that information to use as need be on its own layer.
Of course, using Carapace isn’t a replacement for actually knowing how perspective works– you still have to have a sense of how far apart the vanishing points should be placed to keep things feeling believable. But it sure does save you a lot of trouble once you do have that knowledge.
So, there are my big three recommendations for programs to help your art workflow. I hope people find them useful– if you do, please share so that they climb a little higher out of their unwarranted obscurity! And if you’ve got a favorite tool like this that I didn’t cover, feel free to share it in the comments. I know I’m curious to see what else is out there, too. Also, if Mac users have any suggestions for programs that fill similar functions, feel free to share there as well!
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