In Defense of Giving your Work Away:

(a.k.a. "The edge Cartoonists have over the RIAA")

This post is a glorified response to an interview over at kottke with Cory Doctorow, who apparently has some fairly strong opinions about giving away your work. Naturally, there're a few hecklers in the comments who don't "get it". This would be a fine argument to sit on the fence of, except I know of at least one stable business model that basically thrives on 'Giving Work Away', and since I'm reposting my remarks (more or less), you can take a guess what I'm referring to: Comics, comics, and more comics.

For years, people only paid for their newspaper comics as an incidental part of the newspaper; to children and adults alike, such work was essentially 'free' for them, because newspapers were a given and the news content of the paper was what was truly 'paid for', and not the comics, except when they bought the books and merchandise. The system had hiccups, the way any general monopoly does, but for several decades this model worked out fairly well for cartoonists (at least the ones that "made it", anyway).

The internet equivalent is in webcomics, with several key differences; no editorial process, no risk of a risque strip being yanked, no pre-payment from newspapers to publish and carry the work. One would expect that, if comics worked the way books and music work, they would charge people just to see the pages.

Yet they don't. All their work is free to view, and in most cases, so are the archives, making it harder to justify book sales. And yet there are probably just as many (if not more) people profiting off of webcomics, even if these profits are not as big (yet) as the average person appearing in newspapers. These cartoonists are just as niche, just as specialized, have just as much to lose, and yet they thrive, even when the majority of their work is just 'given' away.

Why? Because cartoonists work constantly. There is always 'another day' to cover, another page in the story, another advancement of the tale, and thus each individual page is cheap and worthless without the rest of the story. That commitment to the work's creator (and NOT their work itself) is the most important vector for profit. Nobody 'cares' about DMFA; they like it, sure, maybe even love it, but they care about Amber far more. Schlock Mercenary is good, but Howard Tayler is better.

The comics are an elaborate lure designed to make you want more, and recognize the hand that feeds; the person behind the comics becomes center stage. And it's not just comics; the whole "2.0" revolution is based around this idea. Jonathan Coulton's songs and Hugh MacLeod's cartoons are proof that stable models can be built around people, and not just items. The work is worthless without the creator, and so giving away the work is exactly what they WANT to happen, because as long as people can follow the lure back to the hook, everyone gets what they want.

The way songs (and other media) are done now, though, there's no lure past the song itself; the song IS the hook, so to speak. So . . . perhaps the reason big, foreboding, faceless companies are afraid of giving away their work is because they know that there's no person behind the work, and so they're subconsciously afraid that once people have it, they won't want anything more from their 'creators'.

No wonder they're scared of file-sharing; it actually forces people to care about something other than material items for a change.

Wikipedia, Notability, and Webcomics

Those of you who follow more than just this comic may be familiar with the WikiDrama back in January where over 50 webcomics were deleted from wikipedia, with several more speedily deleted or otherwise nominated for deletion thanks to 'lack of notability', as determined by a few zealous mods.

It's about time someone told them what they accomplished. Namely, a lot of ill will from the people who SHOULD be making Wikipedia better. Since I can only edit the article itself so much, I wanted to post my opinions here.

Disclaimer: I create Last Resort, a weekly webcomic. You're probably reading this from the webcomic's page, but if you're someone random who's probably here because you have nothing better to do than argue with me about this, you might be coming here from the blog's permalink or just looking for an excuse to ignore everything I have to say past this point, so there it is.

If you think this makes my opinion invalid . . . you're part of the problem.

Wikipedia was intended as a site anyone can edit, with information on whatever people find appropriate. For the longest time, I even had my default search engine in Firefox set to Wikipedia, because whenever I googled anything for my classes I ended up going there anyway. But Wikipedia isn't for everyone anymore, Google's my default search engine again, and "Deletionist" drama like this is part of the reason why.

Creating articles is daunting, but adding edits to them is easy once started. Deleting them is apparently easier for mods and admins than editing, tagging it for cleanup and letting someone else do your work for you, or even, y'know, leaving it alone because it's probably fine as is. Then again, I suppose it's easier to just delete everything than to deal with the fact people have different opinions of what's worthwhile.

Yes, there are lots of webcomics out there, and quite frankly there are also a lot of bad webcomics too. By this same token, there are also lots of bad magazines, bad restaurants, bad small businesses, bad dot-coms . . . and not everyone is Mother Teresa when it comes to taking criticism either. We just happen to notice the drama surrounding webcomics more because it's all online and eventually if it gets bad enough it gets archived on Encyclopedia Dramatica for the non-involved to laugh at.

Comics in general (and webcomics in particular) get a lot of bullshit from people, even other artists, because it's either "not an art form", "not profitable", or it's "for children". Naturally, they have irrefutable proof in the inescapable fact that Japan is a third-world country. It's a growing medium, especially in places like the United States where there seems to be a corporate monopoly on creative content, and as such has only taken off with the internet.

Ten years ago if you wanted to be anything that involved creating stuff people actually enjoyed looking at, you either had to go to New York, Hollywood, or Florida and hope you landed a creative gig of some kind, or else you languished in obscurity on page 27X of your local newspaper. Maybe you submitted letters to publishers, and if they weren't immediately tossed onto the slush pile, you'd get a nice form letter back that said absolutely nothing of value beyond "Sorry, Play Again". Of course, all of this is said with the assumption that you already were a United States citizen with enough disposable income to take such risks.

I have seen beautiful works from far-flung places of the globe I never would have found otherwise. I have found stories with huge fandoms, profitable enterprises, and more creative energy expended collectively than any single publisher in the world could manage. I have found piles of absolute shit, and side-stepped the shit to find tales and art to die for. I have found people willing to persue the American Dream doing what they love and telling the stories in their heads to anyone who'll listen, and for a few of 'em it's even worked.

I'm getting flowery here, but hell, we're talking about a revolution in the creative process like nothing seen before, where anyone and everyone who thinks people want to listen to them can give it a shot, and the cream rises to the top one way or another. A lot like Wikipedia, really, except in Wiki-land the admins and moderators seem to think they're better than other users, and somehow this means they have the right to quash their work. If Webcomics worked the way Wikipedia works, Scott Kurtz, Fred Gallagher, and R.K. Milholland would be banding together to nuke ComicGenesis's servers from orbit.

Webcomics seem to putter along just fine with anyone and everyone getting involved in the process. Why can't Wikipedia be the same?

Trying out StumbleUpon

What it is: You sign up on their website, install a little browser plugin, and then trawl the internet. Rate sites up or down. If it's a site that's new to the system, you get to add a review in addition to this rating to help give people a better clue. If you get bored, Click 'Stumble' and rate whatever it is you just came across.

Why you care: 'cause it's another one of those "Web 2.0" gadgets and it's a good way to get attention for your work if other comics-minded people are checking you out.

My Attempts: Well, I'm not a fan of most 'Random Toolbar Gadgets', but I could see where this is useful. As a bonus, if you care about aesthetics, hitting Ctrl + F11 toggles the bar so you can shove it aside when you want.

There's not many comics in the system so far, so adding yours to the pot can't hurt you; as stated above, it takes a lot of people to affect a rating one way or the other, but once it's in the pot, it gets a pretty steady diet of hits.

After a few experimental clicks on Stumble ("Ooo! Jackson Pollack-style flash toy! Must Play!") It becomes clear the name of the game is to make a turing test out of the internet: You take a certain site, weigh the positive clicks against the negative, and come up with an individual profile for each user.

I've already added Last Resort into the system. Here's hoping it comes out all right.