Longtime Idea - Unique Indie Hosting Business

[kokio]

Hey guys, nice forum you've got here. My name is Tobe, and I have an idea that I want to tell you about.

When I was small, I was perhaps obsessed with manga and American comics. I wanted nothing more than to start my own publishing company and take over from companies like Shonen Jump. But as you can imagine, that is a hard goal to accomplish.

Fast forward about 6 years. In this time, I have learned an enormous wealth about technology and programming, and am capable of creating robust websites that can really do anything under the Sun. Years of reading big-name comics like Naruto or Hunter x Hunter get me wondering how it is for independent authors and artists to build a following. In the strange world that is the Internet, there are so many costs and crazy terms involved with publishing a webcomic that many people might be discouraged.

Here I am now. My new and improved idea is, rather than starting a publishing company, start a webcomic hosting site. Beyond the usual capabilities of a hosting site, this one would provide facilities to sell subscriptions to your works, as well as publishing volumes, and perhaps even arrangements for ordering printed copies. I have the technical skills required to build this, as well as the motivation to push it through the roof. The various hosting sites I have seen are either old, unattractive or simply not as good as they could be.

Hypothetically, I could start working today. The only problem is, I don't know if anybody would use it. I'm not sure how popular webcomics are anymore, but I'm sure that if done well, they could become more relevant again. So I come here, asking the audience to help me make my decision.

Do you think I should start this business? Why or why not? Thanks in advance.

 

[DoctorApollo]

Well, inkblazers/mangamagazine.net and today tapastic are all sites that are unsuccessfully trying to do this. Well, Tapastic is still alive, so I can't attest whether or not they're successful. But inkblazers shut down.

the unfortunate fact is that there aren't enough people who care about amateur webcomics/manga for this to be viable.

of course it's possible that you have some revolutionary ideas for advertisement or getting extremely high quality content (like, you've got the next One Piece and it'll be exclusive on your site), and I'm not saying it's 100% a bad idea, but yeah historically these things have not worked out.

If you are seriously interested, perhaps you should look into inkblazers, see why it closed down, see if it's exactly the same kind of site you were intending to make yourself, and then decide if you can make a successful version yourself?

edit: I should note that I don't think this is an entirely hopeless ordeal -- like, I myself have thought of the idea of an online totally non-Japanese manga magazine, but even that kind of thing would only work if you invest enough money to be able to serialize professional artists, and they would all have to conform to the same manga style (black/white, inked, screentones, etc.) as legit manga, in order to sell the idea. I still think such an idea is possible, but paying professional artists is for a serialization is impossible without a hefty investment.

as for totally indie creators running rampant on the site (in other words, no true sense of quality control, no paying any artists), i think inkblazers have proven that this is not a viable business model. the site needs to have more readers than creators, and this -- in the current environment -- cannot happen for amateur webcomics. There is just literally no one interested in amateur webcomics outside of people that make amateur webcomics. (I'm talking about actual story-based comics, clearly something like xkcd can work)

in other words, I think this can work, but only if it's a platform that offers a limited number of high-quality series, and it's not just a inkblazers or deviantart-like platform where a bunch of artists host their shit, and most of the audience is just other artists. and my current opinion is that getting those limited high-quality series can only be achieved with a lot of money, but maybe you have some other idea.

 

[kokio]

Thanks for the response,.

I typed a much longer reply, but MH won't let me post it, apparently it sounds like spam.

Long story short, I was going to say that I was going to try anyways, and see if it works. If not, then no harm, no foul.

 

[DoctorApollo]

Good luck.

 

[Shadilay]

You probably haven't been here in a while, but I'm on board with the idea. Background in entrepreneurship, business, economics, etc. with some decent social media connections. If you were to do this, it's best to do it right by securing interest from a roster of artists, making sure there is enough work to semi-populate the site at launch (nobody wants to visit something at its inception to see one or two chapters at the most) and garnering social media support as much as possible in an ongoing process.

There needs to be some sort of commitment on the side of the artists to churn out content at least once every few months. That's how a bunch of these end up failing (that and lack of support as mentioned above). There are many many more facets to consider, but I have been doing lots of thinking and would be happy to have a conversation.

I've contacted several artists as of so-far, and if you'd like any kind of team-up arrangement, the more minds the better in my book.