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Substack is investing in comics creators

Fresh off its investment into a podcasting network, Substack is making a bet on comics creators.

What’s happening: The subscription publishing company — valued at $650 million — said it’s made a “major investment” in comics, reinforcing its bet on the creator economy and commitment to transform publishing. Comics are valued at roughly $7 billion worldwide, according to Modern Gentleman.

Cash in comics: Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie said there’s tremendous latent potential for comics creators to earn 9-figure revenue on Substack.

“We can’t wait to see comics creators unleash their full potential and use this platform to bring to life new stories, concepts, and worlds that were never before possible.” —Hamish McKenzie

The comics: Substack’s newest comics creators include Eisner Award-winning writer Saladin Ahmed, author of Throne of the Crescent Moon, and Prism Award-winning graphic novelist Molly Knox Ostertag, author of The Witch Boy and The Girl from the Sea.

Not everyone's happy: Some artists feel that Substack is simply giving lip service to the creator economy. On Twitter, cartoonist Alex Schumacher writes "I'm neither impressed nor excited by the Substack announcements. They're just another company exploiting and catering only to established names while neglecting up-and-coming/independent creators.”

Substack Pro: Substack’s new comics creators and top publishers are part of its Substack Pro program, which aims to help creators go indie and remove risks of starting a publishing business. Substack provides a financial guarantee combined with access to its services, support, and community. The packages also offer grants, design and editing services, and monthly stipends to help out with the costs of health insurance.

Ownership: McKenzie vowed creators are their own publishers, retaining full ownership of their IP, content, and mailing lists. After finishing the Substack Pro program, creators are free to leave and take their audiences with them.

The cut: Substack didn’t indicate a specific commission it’d be taking from comics creators, but presumably it’s similar to its 10 percent cut on newsletters.

“To succeed with the Substack model, you don’t need millions of page views, you don’t need to play by the rules determined by an opaque social media algorithm, and you don’t have to submit to a corporate publisher’s conditions. Instead, you get rewarded for doing great work that you believe in.” —Hamish McKenzie

Backing podcasts: Substack recently made a substantial investment in a new podcast network dubbed Booksmart Studios, which received a 6-figure sum in advance to launch the project. The network, founded by public radio veterans Mike Vuolo and Matthew Schwartz, launched with five new podcasts to which people can subscribe for $7/month.

What it means: Substack is further expanding publishing opportunities for creators of all stripes. The investment aims to make Substack competitive against an ever-growing list of companies — most notably Twitter and Facebook — offering similar services like newsletters, tipping, exclusive tickets, and flashy creator funds.

Empowering creators: This is yet another example of how social media and other large companies are building ecosystems in which creators can thrive. Companies are racing to offer creators as many tools as possible to generate revenue on their platforms and retain their audiences.

Race to duplicate: As a result of this competition for creators, we’re seeing many social media companies copy each other’s features. The Information’s Kaya Yurieff pointed this out in a post on how “All Social Networks Look the Same.” Paul Skallas, the infamous Lindyman, refers to it as the "Media Monoculture.

What do you think of Substack’s investment in comics? Are you a graphic artist creator? Share your experience below!

  1. 3

    It's not surprising considering they want to create a business model for culture and their thesis is that media companies underpay their most prominent writers. Graphic novels and comic book writers were notoriously underpaid with the IP being stuck with the publisher (Alan Moore comes famously to mind).

    Based on that we can predict substack will also invest in web fiction/web serials.

    They are unbundling Patreon.

  2. 3

    There are some big sites for manga/comics online that are crushing it. For example, WEBTOON. I regularly read the fantasy series "Tower of God" on webtoon (link). Apparently I'm not alone, as this series alone has 2.8M subscribers on the site, and it's just one of hundreds.

    The business model is interesting. It's free to read, but once you catch up to where the author is currently at, you need to either wait 3 weeks for new issues, or pay to see the latest issues.

    1. 3

      Hi Courtland, fellow "Regular" of Tower of God here ;)

      Interesting how the comic medium changed to accommodate our reliance on mobiles.

      The business model is interesting. It's free to read, but once you catch up to where the author is currently at, you need to either wait 3 weeks for new issues, or pay to see the latest issues.

      You might enjoy this paper on Scrolling, swiping, selling: Understanding
      Webtoons and the data-driven participatory culture around comics
      . While innovative in some sense (premium + fast pass for comments), the business model sadly relies on collecting data, selling it and serving personalized ads.

  3. 2

    The traditional American Comic industry has been dying for some time now; a single Japanese Manga recently outsold the whole comic industry. I think this shows that graphic novels/comics/manga still has huge growth ahead, but the world is looking for newer ideas that have been untapped by the traditional comic industry. Substack may be on to something here...

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