Comments on: Digital comics study: Most readers won’t pay same price as printed version

By: John Platt

John Platt — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:34:11 +0000

thanks jeff, i know some comics sell t shirts to 1in 1000 readers but i wondered if that ratio figure goes higher/ lower according to how popular the comic .
For example two comics both have 10000 regular visitors a day but one can sell 100 t shirts a month and the other 20 because the first one is more ‘funny’? Does that hold true with anybody out there?

By: Jeff Pert

Jeff Pert — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:04:11 +0000

John, I think that depends on the comic and its popularity. If you’ve already got a sizeable fan base of regular readers, you could sell quite a few tees or other merchandise. But starting out, not so much.

My Cafe Press page barely gets looked at even though I have a decent following but only because w/ a full time day job I can’t promote it, my blog and my Facebook page as much as I’d like.

By: John Platt

John Platt — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:21:39 +0000

If you use Cafepress to sell t hirts/merchandise of your webcomic , rooughly on average how many readers does it take to buy a product this way? 1 in a hundred, 1 in 200? I’m really curious to knon and any infomation would be really helpful and interesting thanks!

By: Kat Ruhl

Kat Ruhl — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:02:00 +0000

I’m 26 and it’s hard to justify digital books and comics for me personally for a number of reasons… such as physical books can’t crash on me, can be read with no fear of running out of battery life, provide a pleasing tactile and sensory experience, won’t break when dropped, and don’t have to be turned off when waiting to take off/land when flying. Not to mention if a digital reader gets stolen, there goes your whole library. That’s just a handful of reasons, I could go on for a while.

Digital downloads have a lot of perks but there are so many disadvantages to them that physical products just don’t have that it’s rather obvious people aren’t willing to pay as much for them.

By: Daniel Boris

Daniel Boris — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:36:35 +0000

I believe that it true,
People have recommended giving away your original work for free, online, and then make your money selling fans printed collections (and merchandise). My printed book project is evidence that can work. And I’m not even syndicated…yet!

http://www.indiegogo.com/Hoxwinder-Hall-a-printed-collection

By: Ben Carlsen

Ben Carlsen — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:35:34 +0000

I’d be willing to pay more for digital if there was no DRM. It’s a ridiculous idea. I like digital because it’s more portable and more convenient, but with DRM, it isn’t. Paper then becomes more convenient and more portable. It’s worthless anyway, because every Wednesday the scanned comics are still going to come out just like they always have. It’s not stopping piracy; it’s stopping honest people from getting a good product. DRM would probably increase piracy, because even if someone bought the print or digital version, they still might download a CBR/CBZ in order for them to do whatever they wanted with it. You couuld scan it yourself, but why do that when someone else (or several someone elses) have already done it for you?