Category: Insurgent Creative

Very cool — the World’s Greatest Science Adventure Comic, Atomic Robo, is transitioning to webcomic. They’ve done nine miniseries over the past seven years as traditional monthly comics and collected trade paperbacks, but starting this year, new issues will be freely available online, and then collected into for-sale printed trade paperbacks for distribution.

They’re putting the existing nine volumes up on their site for free, starting this week, are opening a webstore for trade collections and merchandise, and have also launched a Patreon for fans to support them. Welcome to 21st century creative business models, folks.

The digital-then-print-for-those-who-want-it thing is a solid plan for comics creators — but the combination of an existing fan base, and a Patreon to help contribute, allowing them to release new digital material for free, while still maintaining collections for traditional distribution? That’s a great example of tailoring your business model to your specific situation — an absolutely essential hallmark of being an Insurgent Creative.

Here is co-creator Scott Wegener talking about their plans, from their blog:

January 1st, 2015.

That’s the date when the European Union fucks independent creators out of business.

Rather than just repeat the info, I’m going to direct you to this thorough and extremely important post by Tim Gray: “New EU VAT Rules Change the Game for Digital Businesses.” He’s assembled a bunch of links — you should read and bookmark all of them.

Short version — businesses (including sole proprietors) are now liable for charging Value Added Tax on EU purchases based on *where the customer lives*, not where the business is based. This is obviously insane, as it requires registering for VAT ID in each separate country (which charge different rates).

The other insanity: ebooks, PDF and music are covered under a vague category, “electronic services”, which basically includes any form of automated sales delivery. A webinar, for example, isn’t covered because it’s being done by a person. A recording of that webinar, delivered automatically to a consumer? That’s covered.

If you sell B2B, and the business sells to a consumer (for example, you sell wholesale, and somebody else sells retail), then you’re not charged, but the other business is, when they sell to the consumer. So, in other words, this decision will penalize independent creators who sell direct, but not those who use “established channels.”

Yet again, the internet being regulated by people who don’t understand how it works.

More on this as I learn more.

Odd. CreateSpace (owned by Amazon, and which I first covered in the original Insurgent Creative posts here ) is discontuing distribution of MP3 albums through Amazon. Not a huge problem, since TuneCore, which Adamant is also signed up for (and handles our iTunes distribution) also does Amazon, but it’s really fucking strange.

The only information coming from CreateSpace about it, via email and in the “help” section of their website, is:

“We are constantly evaluating our service catalog and have decided to discontinue support for MP3 as we work to provide our customers with the most cost effective and valuable services.

Only the MP3 offering will be discontinued. We’ll continue to support the programs for:
• CDs
• DVDs
• Amazon Instant Video
• Paperback books”

Like I said — strange, because putting digital files up for sale requires less work on their part than CDs, DVDs, and Books. It’s like: “You know that store that we’re owned by? You won’t be available there any more.” Makes me wonder what’s up… and what’s coming.