July 9, 2007
More on DC’s Zudacomics.com Initiative
As noted yesterday, on Sunday DC
announced through their press partner the
New York Times either the entirety or a huge aspect of their long-rumored on-line program:
Zudacomics.com, through which creators can submit material and be selected for paid publication of that material through the DC-owned and operated site.
Also, as expected, there are initial think pieces and interviews with principals up at this hour:
Newsarama (Interview)CBR (Interview)
ICv2.com (News Article With Analysis)
Dirk Deppey (Analysis)
Publishers Weekly (News Article)
Alan David Doane (Analysis)
Two things jump out at me at this point. One is that the PR people obviously didn't sit down and work with Team Zuda on how to answer the question, "What makes Zudacomics.com different?" Because the answers have been kind of all over the place, and half of them are insulting (i.e.: we pay, quality) in a way that you probably shouldn't be if you're looking to eventually bring creators over from these sites to which they're already loyal.
The second and more important thing is that we're getting an idea of how the site will work. An initial pay out akin to the newspaper syndicates' pay-out when a strip goes into rotation, and then a more complex contract in terms of rights and participating after that. No royalties based on hit count. The site doesn't expect to pay for itself. A page rate that may be determined with an eye towards print page rates. The contracts to be posted on the site.
Basically, it's an intellectual property farm. Whether or not you believe in DC as a good farmer... well, that's going to be the decision some people are going to have to make as this moves forward.
One side thing that interests me is that by focusing on creator-generated comics they're going with a non-editor intrusive model. In other words, they're not going to hear from writers who will then be matched with artists by controlling editor-type folk. At least not yet. This seems to me a different kind of creator than DC usually works with, and a different way to work with them, which could be interesting.
posted 3:24 am PST |
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