King Features Syndicate is launching a new interactive feature called “Captionary” for it’s Comics Kingdom product. The new feature allows readers to write the captions of cartoons drawn by Dan Piraro, Mike Peters, Hilary Price, Vic Lee and Rina Piccolo.
“In the same way people are attracted to The New Yorker CaptionIt contests, news sites will be able to have local competitions where the audience rates the captions `a la ‘American Idol’, sasy John Soppe, Managing Director of King Digital, “If sites want to run a promotional contest, ‘Captionary’ gives them a built-in mechanism to drive traffic and engage their users.”
Last year 82 million people in the United States created user-generated content and that number is expected to grow to approximately 115 million by 2013.
Comics Kingdom runs on about 40 online newspaper editions in North America.
great, just great. yet another way to take money from the pockets of the professionals. I scrape by, barely, and they want to give work away for free.
Phil, who’s giving work away for free? My understanding of this service is websites will pay for Captionary, and the comics creators will share in the revenue generated.
who is Phil Tography?
Pho’s brother.
I think it makes perfect sense and is a smart move. We were actually toying with the idea of doing something with a separate online version of my Baldo strip. You can’t be afraid of venturing in new directions.
Like J Read, I would most certainly assume that websites will pay for the feature.
Phil, with all due respect no one is taking money from you sir. If you “barely scrape by” then I would suggest you take a closer look at how you do business and how what you offer fits the needs of the marketplace.
Perhaps you could consider targeting new markets, reposition what you do and to whom you do it for, etc. Just say’in.
There are plenty of opportunities for creative folks, it’s up to us to find them. That is what King Features Syndicate is doing.
Not willing to look at our industry differently in today’s economy is dangerous to your financial well being.
The entire Comics Kingdom project is designed to earn money for creators, syndicates, and papers. The creators are being paid and advertisers are providing the revenue so the comics aren’t being “given away for free”. This model is no different than the model non-satellite radio or network TV has used for decades.