Comic Sales Soar After Artist Engages 4chan Pirates 305
An anonymous reader writes "Steve Lieber, the artist behind the graphic novel Underground, discovered that someone on 4chan had scanned and posted the entire comic. Rather than complaining, he joined the conversation, chatting with the 4channers about the comic... and the next day he saw his sales jump to unheard-of levels, much higher than he'd seen even when the comic book was reviewed on popular sites like Boing Boing."
Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Engaging your customer base is good for business...
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Something the RIAA/MPAA will never learn.
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
They might... they just might. The fact is, they need to read the book "Raving Fans." When your customers are your fans, they will overlook higher prices, problems with delivery and all sorts of things with the exception of poor quality and/or poor service.
Example (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well you just contradicted yourself. They won't if it won't get their customers to overlook poor quality and/or poor service...
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Something the RIAA/MPAA will never learn.
> They might... they just might.
This depends entirely on what you think the RIAA is doing. I don't believe, based on their activities, that they are interested in merely increasing profit. They seem to be about _control_ of the content. Their long-term goal is increasing profit, sure, but I'm pretty sure they want to entirely control the content, end-to-end, for their long-term benefit.
You listen to a song on the radio, the ratio station pays, and you probably pay for the ability to listen to it digitally, too. You hear Happy Birthday at a birthday party, somebody's gotta pay. You want to use a 5 second snippet of a song on your kid's soccer game video, you gotta pay. You play grandma's favorite song at her wake, gotta pay. Can't read the lyrics online unless you pay. Want to cover someone else's song in a free video online? Show us the money. Sample a song with your smartphone so you can go buy it online - gotta pay for that sample before you can go buy the song. Sorry, buy the right to play the song for your own individual self on that particular device you downloaded it to. Gotta pay, can't move it to another device, no stripping the DRM off it so you can even MOVE it to another device. Gotta pay.
BITCH BETTER HAVE MY MONEY!
Harlan Ellison? (Score:3, Informative)
Is [youtube.com] that you? [youtube.com]
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or the forward to any of Cory Doctorow's books. From Makers: [craphound.com]
Emphasis mine. Oh, and BTW, the book is available for free at the linked page, in many ereader formats. It's a pretty good read, except he uses too many hyphens (parking-lot, shopping-center, etc)
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam / Valve is one of the best examples I can give. I would rather pay $5 more and get it from Steam than on the shelf.
Are you getting paid to spew this bullshit? I have non-Steam games which autoupdate, "automatic install" is a lie, automatic configure is too (and I speak from experience) and every game I own can be installed on multiple computers.
Steam is an attack on First Sale law.
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I'm not being paid either, and think Steam is the greatest thing since boiling water. I simply don't buy games unless they're released on steam. In your 20's you move so many times its difficult to keep track of all your physical game copies. When you finally settle down and Have A Life, its nice to know that when you click on a game, it'll load first time. I'm too busy to keep up with patches on my own.
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
They already use lawyers and Congress to "engage" their customer base. why do it directly?
Their true customers are the shareholders of the companies that are member of the MAFIAA, not consumers.
Cryptomnesia (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, but as shares concentrate into the hands of the few and powerful,but sales dwindle
Then the music publishers affiliated with the major record labels will likely start making accusations of cryptomnesia [wikipedia.org], or accidental infringement of copyright in a work published years ago, against indie songwriters and recording artists. See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music [vwh.net] for an example of how it could go down.
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Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Interesting)
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The RIAA/MPAA aren't artists, they're middlemen. Artists directly engaging their customers is the *AA's worst nightmare, since it makes them unnecessary. That's why they fight all alternative forms of distribution tooth and nail.
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Interesting)
Engaging your customer base is good for business...
People looking for entertainment spend more money when they have more fun. That's one of the main reasons actual losses due to piracy aren't calculatable.
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This is one of the reasons why I release all the music I make on last.fm and in a torrent...both of which will be freely available and supported by me when the time comes to put my stuff up for sale.
Granted, I'm not trying to make a living off it, but still...the more access people have to it...
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In the interest of giving them a lead, and letting us here your stuff, care to post a link to your own work?
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Interesting)
Here you go [last.fm]. Look in the "shout" section for a link to the torrent.
It's all a combination of spacey ambient ("Transient Unknown" project), drone ("Implied Reality" project), and chilled-out head nodding stuff ("Lost on the Way to the Laundry" project). I have a LOT more than what is on there, but that's what I've publicly released so far.
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One other thing: be sure to listen to it with headphones! It's been mixed with that intention...you can use "regular" speakers, but a lot of the dynamics are lost.
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For what I make, I'd take a crappy set of headphones over a nice set of speakers any day. The way textures are layered and placed, a LOT of the directional dynamics rely on having speakers strapped over or in your ears. You can listen to it through regular speakers just fine, but you'll be missing out on a LOT of the details...even on a high-end set (again, it's all about layering and positioning.)
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Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the reasons why I release all the music I make on last.fm and in a torrent...both of which will be freely available and supported by me when the time comes to put my stuff up for sale.
Granted, I'm not trying to make a living off it, but still...the more access people have to it...
The article had a quote by the author that he posted on the 4chan boards that really got to me:
As for putting all the pages up here. What can I say? I get that this is how things go, and I'm trying to live in the same decade as everyone else. If nothing else, I'm flattered that someone thought enough of the book to take the time to scan and post it.
From that quote, I noticed two things: he didn't expect that he would get a huge boost in sales from the event, he was just kinda resigned that you can't stop piracy. However, the most important part was the whole bit about being flattered that people liked his book. Sometimes you forget this caliber of artist still exists: the guy who cares about the work more than the money. The money is nice, and I'm happy when the artists can survive and even get rich off it. However, that shouldn't be the motivation for what they do.
So, thanks for what you do, keeping the real art alive. I went to your website, and found the links to last.fm to your music, and I will take a listen. Obviously I don't know if I'll enjoy it, but if I do, you can count me on your list of customers as soon as they go on sale.
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Thanks! That's basically why I do it...it's something that I really enjoy. I make music that I personally want to listen to. While there aren't many people that share my tastes, there are at least some out there :-)
I'd suggest starting with the "Lost on the Way to the Laundry" stuff (only two tracks up there at the moment)...it's the most accessible.
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Engaging customer base = good. However, simply because something works on the micro level doesn't mean it scales to the macro level. I somehow doubt that having hundreds of artists flood 4chan would result in all of them getting increases in sales.
It is kind of like "if i stand up at a baseball game I can see better, therefore if everyone stands up at the baseball game everyone can see better".
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Engaging customer base = good. However, simply because something works on the micro level doesn't mean it scales to the macro level. I somehow doubt that having hundreds of artists flood 4chan would result in all of them getting increases in sales.
If this were a new thing you might have a point. However, in Japan they have their own equivalent of comic-con and people make their own fan-zines and sell them for a profit. It's technically illegal but they never get shut down. The reason is that excitement over a franchise is still excitement over a franchise. This was known over 10 years ago but nobody over here is paying attention to it. It's amusing to me because the same country that's known for its $4 cups of coffee is under the impression people will go to extremes to avoid paying money for stuff.
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On the other hand, Japan has what we'd consider some rather draconian copyright laws. Copying data even for personal use has been ruled infringing, and folks have been arrested for sharing television shows on P2P networks. I can't help but wonder how this might have played out in 2chan.
Re:Imagine that! (Score:4, Interesting)
Baseball is an old boring game that is almost exactly not like cricket.
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It's not a customer base, it's a treasure island.
"Theft increases sales" (Score:2, Insightful)
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It may not be explicit, but it is the underlying message. Why else post it on Slashdot?
Because slashdot is not a monolithic belief system.
Here are the files (Score:2)
Apparently, he even posted the scans [undergroundthecomic.com] on his web site. On that note, can anyone recommend me a good comic viewer that will browse/open this type of .cbt files on Windows, or even better a comic viewer that could browse/open this type of .cbt files on my Evo (Android phone). There are so many manga/comic viewers out there, I'd rather not waste my time trying a different bunch of them.
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ComicRack [cyolito.com] is simply the best.
No, really, it is. But Comix [sourceforge.net] is passable if you want a leaner program.
Good? (Score:5, Funny)
Um... I just don't know how to process that information...
Re:Good? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good? (Score:5, Insightful)
4chan can use their powers for good?
Um... I just don't know how to process that information...
4chan strikes me a bit more like the classic greek gods, capricious, capable of granting blessings and curses on a whim.
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Not to mention, way too obsessed with sex and the human form[?].
You weren't reading the same greek myths I was reading. Beams of light, bulls, birds, everything but human.
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Gods appearing as non humans and copulating with humans.
Maybe your not reading the same 4chan that I am.
Re:Good? (Score:5, Funny)
Along with a steady dose of bestiality and incest.
Re:Good? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, he did say Greek gods, amirite?
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Along with a steady dose of bestiality and incest.
The classic greek gods got on with a lot of that anyway.
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4chan can use their powers for good?
Um... I just don't know how to process that information...
4chan strikes me a bit more like the classic greek gods, capricious, capable of granting blessings and curses on a whim.
Just don't tell them that.
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Quote-worthy.
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what if i sacrifice my goat?
will 4chan bless me with more rain if i sacrifice my goat?
Goat S(acrific)e (Score:4, Funny)
will 4chan bless me with more rain if i sacrifice my goat?
Start with "goat sacrifice", and then sacrifice the letters in the middle of the second word.
[the game]
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Re:Good? (Score:4, Insightful)
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4chan isn't just
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From the graph that got posted, it looks like they DDoSed his bank account.
Oh my, what dramatic neverbefore seen turn of even (Score:2)
I think exposure to piracy normalizes sales. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thus the resistance at the high end, and embracing at the lower end.
Physics (Score:2)
Thus the resistance at the high end, and embracing at the lower end.
Almost sounds like electronics.
Cheers,
Re:I think exposure to piracy normalizes sales. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you assuming this or do you have data to back this up?
"Piracy" (by which I mean copyright infringement) has many variables associated with the rate and amount of infringement activity. Some of these are ease of copying, price of legal content, restrictions on legal content and more.
Furthermore, it seems no one has ever produced any hard evidence that shows exactly what connections, if there are any, exist between piracy and sales "losses." Lost sales are a negative and it is pretty difficult to prove a negative. One would have to have access to alternate time lines to know for sure. Thus any estimated losses due to piracy is always a completely wild guess.
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At the risk of sounding pessimistic, I suspect this spike came because of the novelty of the situation. Should all comics try this, I suspect the effects would be analogous to webcomics. The very best and/or the best marketed comics will gain hits while the others will be mostly lost in the noise and the free publicity won't do much for them.
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Do you have any actual evidence that high sales have reduced because of "piracy"? Such a thing always seems assumed and never clearly documented (as this story documents the increase in sales following "piracy").
Nope. I'm just theorizing in a random comment on a message board.
It is, unfortunately, difficult to prove in an existing high sales environment.
I "dig" the "quotes" on ""piracy"", though.
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Joe Konrath did some experimenting earlier this year, and found evidence of correlation...if I remember right, he put all of his books on his site for free for a day or so and asked people to put them out on torrent sites, share with friends, etc. According to his analysis, his sales increased markedly shortly thereafter. Not proof, but pretty hard to ignore that there was probably some strong correlation there.
Fighting 4chan? (Score:2, Interesting)
Fighting 4Chan is a bad idea. But exploiting them for money? That's new! Will this trend extend to other vendors such as Doritos or Mr. Pibb? Maybe that infamous "Dollar Menu? I'd hit it!" ad that seems to advocation burgersex was actually aimed at 4Chan.
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Relevant self-pimping:
I published a book last summer about a 4chan-ish group called Amity (name of the book and name of the site where they congregate). In the book, a major soft drink corp tries to do just that: take advantage of the scale of the site users by pushing ads on them, thinking them an innocuous group of consumers. As one could imagine, it doesn't go so well for the soft drink company...
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Dear Steve Ballmer : Here's How to Increase (Score:2, Funny)
Windows sales: post to piratebay
Thanks in advance, although, a cashier's check in the amount of Euro 100,000,000 would help.
Yours In Krasnoyarsk,
Kilgore Trout
NOW you've gone too far! (Score:3, Funny)
piracy is better than obscurity (Score:3, Insightful)
As Cory Doctorow says "my biggest threat as an author isn't piracy, it's obscurity."
What better way to increase sales than making sure that everyone has heard of your work?
Re:piracy is better than obscurity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:piracy is better than obscurity (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me guess... (Score:3, Funny)
the other trend (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:the other trend (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you kidding? Do you know how much "pirated" tapes took for them to reach any kind success?
"Piracy", as they call it, existed before the 'net. "Home Taping is Killing Music", indeed.
What Monty Python Did (Score:5, Informative)
Just curious... (Score:2, Funny)
... how many of the sales were completed using credit card numbers that turned out to be stolen? (grin)
Good people skills (Score:4, Interesting)
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New graph in 3...2...1... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't wait to see his sales graph after he adds the /. effect. How do we stack up to 4chan in terms of economic power?
I'm ordering the TPB. I got back into comics about a year ago after dropping out for a decade. Wish I'd noticed this when it came out.
Re:New graph in 3...2...1... (Score:4, Interesting)
More importantly, how many of us would be ordering mainly because we want to read the book versus we want to reward the author for being a non-jerk, and hey this book looks neat too? I'd fall in the latter, if I were to read it.
On the other hand, that's exactly the reason I deliberately look for Baen-published books at the bookstore when I'm looking for something new. Read about their awesome policies, read Honor Harrington online, bought some (not enough!) novels in print later.
So that's what happens... (Score:4, Funny)
So that's what happens when you feed the trolls...
- RG>
Context (Score:2)
Somebody should mention (Score:4, Informative)
The B&W chapter 1 preview PDF on the author's site is NSFW.
A little perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Lieber is a nice guy and a talented artist, and his comics are worth reading, but let's put this scenario into a little perspective. This is not a case of Steve posting to 4chan and then all the little 4channers running out to buy his comics.
Point 1: Underground could already be downloaded for free [undergroundthecomic.com] from Lieber's Web site, so it being "pirated" on 4chan wasn't that big of a coup.
Point 2: Comic book companies do not track sales on a daily basis. The sales that went "through the roof" were sales of signed print editions from Lieber's Etsy store [etsy.com].
So rather than a massive vindication of 4chan, "engaging your audience," or anything else, I see this more as a case of: A.) creator makes a product available online; B.) author manages (if inadvertently) to find an effective marketing channel for said product; C.) people who spend most of their time online notice the marketing and buy the product.
Pretty simple, really. Engaging his audience helped, but he would have been happy to engage anybody that came his way to begin with. The problem is, "build it and they will come" doesn't really work on the Web. Lieber lucked out that someone else noticed him and chose to promote his product in a way that he couldn't on his own. He was smart enough to pounce on the opportunity.
Publisher get no % of royalties, or rights (Score:3, Interesting)
MARKETEERS TAKE NOTE (Score:4, Insightful)
Bah (Score:5, Funny)
These sales CANNOT compare to the BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of dollars he would have earned had these evil pirates not stolen his property.
(signed, the RIAA)
If anyone is listening... (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone in the industry is listening, hear this.
The last three video games I purchased were purchased after first torrenting them.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, will give me more incentive to buy something then a test drive--a test drive that ends with positive results.
You have nothing to fear if you create a worthy product.
And, in terms of reviews of a product, nothing speaks like seed/leech numbers...at least until someone starts gaming THAT as well.
Steve just reminds us that we all have a choice--you can keep paddling into that wave, or you can hop on your board and go for a ride. Either way, that wave is headed for the beach and it just might be the best one of the day.
Sage lesson (Score:4, Insightful)
People underestimate the power of not being a dick.
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Wow, the Slashdot piracy party is at it again (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because they got to see the artwork and read the story, and then engage with the author immediately afterward, as a surprise. If he just showed up out of the blue, a bunch of jerks would be all "who the hell are you, and why should we care", etc. Others would think he was an imposter, and a ton more would assume it's a crappy marketing ploy.
Re:Well I'll be (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't the free sharing of this book that boosted its sales. What boosted sales was that the artist got tipped off about it, and had a chance to introduce himself and interact with the pirates, and put a face on "the copyright holder" for them. He was no longer some non-person they could continue to not give a fuck about; he was a human being (and a pretty cool one) whose creativity should be rewarded. It's easy to rip off some anonymous corporation like "Disney" or "Sony" or even "Image Comics", but not so easy to rip off "Steve Lieber" and his co-creator "Jeff Parker". Lieber met them where they lived, and gently poked a hole in their disregard for him as a creator by being a real person. It's a good lesson for other creators... but it'd be nice if more consumers were willing to meet the creators on their own home field as well. If you like a person's work, don't just "share" it with 100,000 of your closest friends: bring them to the creator's web site or Facebook page or whatever, so he has a chance to interact with them like a human being. An artist shouldn't have to engage in detective work to ferret out the people who like his work; if they really like it, they should act like real fans (rather than leeches) and reach out to him.
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True
Not so,
What the artist did is called "good marketing".
If the artist had of run in and shouted "Pirates, ha, I'll sue you, and you and your grandma, I'll dig up her grandma and sue her after I finish having my sweet, sweet way with her corpse" the peopl
Re:goodie (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you’re missing the point. With a physical object, like a house, someone else moving in uninvited would detract from your ability to use the house. With information, it doesn’t, unless you’re a snob... somebody else having a copy of your painting doesn’t interfere with your ability to enjoy it, unless your enjoyment of it was partly based on the fact that nobody else had it in the first place.
It’s more like they copied the blueprint for your house and used it to design virtual houses in SecondLife, which became so popular that people who would otherwise never have known about you came and wanted to buy copies of your blueprint to build real houses.