T Campbell's Blog
Writer of Penny and Aggie, Fans (also called Faans), Rip & Teri, Search Engine Funnies and A History of Webcomics. Experienced webcomics editor, currently seeking full-time work and working on strange and interesting new things...Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Fabjob Fob-Jab.
The Fabjob Guide to Become a Cartoonist (whose title always seemed like improper grammar to me) is getting a divorce from my writing career.
When I wrote it, I was still fairly new at the whole webcomics thing, and the webcomics thing was still a fairly new business model. Comic-book sales had stabilized but the manga/bookstore market hadn't really taken off, and the perils of religious controversy hadn't gripped the market for editorial cartoons. In short, the business has changed, and the Guide hasn't. (I've also gotten smarter in the last five years, honestly... I understand markets better.) It's reached the point where both Fabjob and I feel the Guide's dangerously out of date.
I would like to revise or rewrite a Guide like this, but I simply don't have the time right now, and I definitely can't do it for the royalty share I accepted five years ago. For a while we thought Tyler Sticka and I would be able to rework the Guide together, but for various reasons that didn't pan out. So, after failing to fob it off and failing to take a jab at it myself, it's time to move on.
So Fabjob is buying out the rights to the Guide from me, and all in all I couldn't be happier... well, not without Fabjob deciding to offer me a fortune to update it instead. Let's keep it real, eh?
If you're interested in it as a historical curiosity, pick it up before FJ puts out a new edition. Otherwise, return to your lives!
When I wrote it, I was still fairly new at the whole webcomics thing, and the webcomics thing was still a fairly new business model. Comic-book sales had stabilized but the manga/bookstore market hadn't really taken off, and the perils of religious controversy hadn't gripped the market for editorial cartoons. In short, the business has changed, and the Guide hasn't. (I've also gotten smarter in the last five years, honestly... I understand markets better.) It's reached the point where both Fabjob and I feel the Guide's dangerously out of date.
I would like to revise or rewrite a Guide like this, but I simply don't have the time right now, and I definitely can't do it for the royalty share I accepted five years ago. For a while we thought Tyler Sticka and I would be able to rework the Guide together, but for various reasons that didn't pan out. So, after failing to fob it off and failing to take a jab at it myself, it's time to move on.
So Fabjob is buying out the rights to the Guide from me, and all in all I couldn't be happier... well, not without Fabjob deciding to offer me a fortune to update it instead. Let's keep it real, eh?
If you're interested in it as a historical curiosity, pick it up before FJ puts out a new edition. Otherwise, return to your lives!
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