There’s this comic artist/author who I really like, named Scott McCloud, who wrote a totally kickass book,
Understanding Comics, which is a super awesome complete classic about graphic storytelling.
I was delighted to find out a few years later, he put out a sequel to that called “Reinventing Comics”. But I was horrified to find out that it was a complete and utter crapfest, full of pie-in-the-sky shitty ideas about how to incorporate computers into comics and into the business of comics. I recommend NOT reading it, cause I didn’t think there was a lick of worthwhile information in there. The only use for it I could conceivably see is to spark rage in readers to think of better ideas than the ones he lays out in this book.
One idea I particularly hate that he has become this big weird advocate of is “micropayments”. The idea behind it being that like, you set up a system so that people can pay to access a little piece on your site. Say, if you had an article, people could pay a quarter and read it.
I don’t know. To me, its just like, let them fucking read it. If you’re so concerned with getting your work out there, I think it’s worth giving it away. Sure, creative types want to be able to make money off their work, blah blah blah. My answer is, think of clever ways to do that, which don’t involve hiding your content behind irritating pay-for-play systems. This McCloud guy is all about some company called BitPass.
The only way this micropayment thing could be useful - hey wait! I just thought of a way it could actually work - was if some big company that everyone already uses got behind it, like Amazon.com. Cause then you could use your existing customer info to pay right there, rather than having to sign up with a bunch of cheesy little competing companies, who nobody uses, and nobody supports.
Alright, well, I just took a phone call and lost my train of thought. Oh well. It wasn’t horribly interesting anyway, I’m sure.
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