Best of Webcomics.com: Sept. 2013

If you're not a member of Webcomics.com, here's some of the great stuff you missed out on last month.

Usually, I tell you to join today and stop missing. But now, for the first time ever, you can read some of the actual content from this site without a membership. The Webcomics Handbook, my sequel to the seminal How To Make Webcomics, is available as a digital download. It's entirely based on my posts from Webcomics.com and guest posts from members. You can get yours here. For that matter, you can finally get How To Make Webcomics as a digital download, too.

Site posts

The Social-Media Hot Seat critique series concluded and the Hitch It / Ditch It Hot Seat was announced.

Tips to avoid convention theft

Indiegogo's two funding options

How to send a mass e-mail from a spreadsheet

No more excuses. If your Kickstarter / Comic / Book failed, learn from it and move on

How could we improve 24-Hour Comics Day?

How to create a halftone pattern for print *and* the Web

Creating character tags in Comic Easel (and ComicsPress v4)

Time to start planning Christmas cards. Here's what you need to know...

Q&A: InkOutbreak for a beginning webcomic

Exclusive Member Benefit

Members of Webcomics.com can buy the PDF of Webcomics Handbook for 50% off.

Private Forum

Yoast SEO

Your character's name has already been taken. Now what?

Are webcomic strips male-dominated?

Using Google's Author meta tags

What do you do if you feel as if your comic/story has been ripped off

Color flat plug-ins?

What's YOUR origin story? (What brought you to webcomics?)

Bristol board recommendations

Using galleries to increase pageviews

Has anyone ever paid to boost a Facebook post?

Do webcomics *have* to be funny?

Creating a PDF version of a webcomic

October To-Do List

This is a time when creativity seems to be at an all-time high everywhere you look. From carved pumpkins to costumes to haunted houses to the really scary stuff like, well...

Q&A: InkOutBreak for beginning webcomics?

Q: I started reading webcomics about 5 months ago with ink outbreak.com, and have been keeping up to date with them since. As I am switching my idea of making a printed comic to now making a comic that I would post online I wanted to ask, What do you think of websites like inkoutbreak.com? Do you think they are a good stepping stone for getting people into webcomics? I only found them through a friends link on Facebook, and before that I only really read comics on imgur or 9gag type sites. I would say my concern as an artist is telling someone to go to someone else's site to view my site. What's your thoughts?

I read about 30 webcomics, and have now started backing projects and buying webcomic "merch". I also ended up backing the indiegogo for inkoutbreak but was a bit thrown back that there were no reader rewards that were any good. I guess the site is its own reward?  Do you think its better or worse that people read so many webcomics?

Saturday Deep Dive: Writing numbers in word balloons

Today's dive into the deeper archive of Webcomics.com dates back to Sept. 2, 2009, when I shared my (surprisingly controversial) opinions on presenting numbers in word balloons.

Whenever possible, avoid using numerals in your word balloons; write out the word instead.

For example, don't use "25;" write "twenty five" instead.

There are a couple reasons, the most important of which is that in hand-lettering (and fonts that mimic hand-lettering) certain numbers can look an awful lot like letters. A 5 can look like an S, for example.  A 1 looks like an I or a lowercase l. And then there's 0s and Os, 2s and Zs. Heck, sometimes a 3 can even read like an E.

So, you're much better off writing the word out unless it's a very complicated number.

Ten thousand is easy to write out. So is thirty-three. Heck two-hundred-seven is pretty doable.

5,358 would probably be better off left as numerals. And, yes, I'd use the comma -- if for no other reason than it helps distinguish it as a number.

With complicated numbers, there are no hard-and-fast rules. Oddly enough, I'd leave 256.7 as a number, but I'd write out two-and-a-half (complete with hyphens, please).

Why? It's about enabling your reader to zip through your word balloons without being tripped up. This is especially crucial for humor comics -- where so much effort is put into timing. Anything that causes your reader to pause brings him or her out of the moment. And that's bad for your comic.

Here's an example from someone whose work I really admire.

Read the entire post and comment there.

Friday Archive Dive: DriveThruComics

Today's Archive Dive comes from Sept. 20, 2012, when I discussed the part DriveThruComics plays in my digital distribution plan.

I've been sharing my experiences in creating digital downloads for tablets throughout the year.

Having spent the summer establishing a monthly digital comic, I've decided to try to extend my reach.

Drive-Thru Comics

The first has been to sell my downloadable products through a third-party seller, Drive-Thru Comics. I think I've done a good job of making Evil Inc readers aware of the availablility of these downloads -- through blog posts, above-the-comic announcements, and house ads. Now I'm going to approach a wider pool of people who read comics on their tablets through Drive-Thru.

Read the entire post and comment there.