I finally sold some vector art on Shutterstock today. Right now I’ll only get 25 cents a download, but that will increase with sales, as I get more and more vector images up. So far I’ve sold a santa Claus:
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=20930314
It was not easy to get accepted, there are some technical requirements that you have to abide by that got me rejected twice. Granted I’ve only made a dollar in the last three days, but it adds up over time and I thought, why don’t Syndicates
offer high res downloads of comic strips/editorial cartoons to the public for a reasonable fee? If someone likes a comic, they can blow it up and frame it. Or is that cheapening the medium even further than it already has been?

You can even make pen and ink drawings into vector art, and lose almost none of the integrity of the original. To try it, go to live trace, set the res to 300, path fitting to 3 and minimum area to 1.
This isn’t so much a business model as it is another alternative to make some quick cash.

As a mom whose kids read the print comics everyday, and where they are all just laid out there and lumped together, I have always understood the sensibilities of folks who aren’t happy when their kid is exposed to something they don’t approve of or don’t want to have a discussion about. I may not agree with quite how g-rated they’d like the comics to be but I understand where they’re coming from.

That, my friend, is the big question.

In the current market, newspaper editors are afraid to run many of the new strips, citing the backlash they claim readers will rain upon them, in the form of nasty letters and lost subscriptions.

Would the same fear be applied to the online comic line-ups? I wonder how the demographic would change when considering strips online.

Think of the renewed excitement an “online syndicate” model could generate for the modern cartoonist. Those who wish to stick with the idea of a syndicate representing, selling and merchandising their strips could possibly have their wish, while keeping the creative freedom to produce edgier, ground breaking work, not viable in papers.

It certainly would make someone like myself feel much better about continuing to work in the comic strip medium.

It may be a pipe dream, but I like to dream. In pipes. And tubes. Afterall, the Internet is a series of them.

Should there be a separate roster of comics that are for online publications?

Syndicates have used their existing comics to try to make headway in online publications. In this beneficial to publications, cartoonists and syndicates? Is 60+ comics more valuable than a new roster of comics that are available online only? I don’t mean Comics Sherpa or stuff like that. But King put a lot of money into development of this new feature. Why not invest in new comics to create this new market everyone is looking for?

Everyone seems to be afraid to actually pay anything to the actual content creators. What would happen if the syndicates were actually willing to pay good cartoonists to develop good comics and pay them a living wage for a couple of years while this new, web-exclusive content is promoted through new technologies?

Cable TV companies, for example, got their start broadcasting movies and reruns. Eventually they started creating new content. Maybe this is what the syndicates need to do. Why keep offering tiny 3 panel comics that were intended for a tiny, ever-shrinking newspaper space? The same size restrictions don’t pertain to the web. Why not get cartoonists to create comics for the internet if they’re going to keep trying to sell comics on the internet?

The advantage I see this having is in the way it should appeal to newspaper websites. Rather than setting up a tricked-out syndicate site for the comic loving masses to flock to, King offers a tricked out comic page for the newspaper to put on their own site … and benefit from.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not holding my breath for the cash to start rolling in. It will probably have to catch on like wild fire to really be a financial success … but I think it’s the best strategy a syndicate has come up with so far.

I agree that it does seem like an exciting idea, but the same old problems will circulate if it means pennies a year for the creator.

Not trying to be a negative Sally, just curious.