Hello from thefabler.com

[TheFabler]

Hi Everyone,
I found this site through one of our members. He had just posted a comic on thefabler.com called Tales of the Big City. The story is pretty awesome! I just thought that I'd introduce myself. My name is Bruno Steppuhn and I'm the founder of a comic social networking site by my company, Fabler Comics, called The Fabler. If you haven't heard about it yet go check it out. My love of comics convinced me to dedicate my time to creating a place where creators could have a good chance of making a living from creating comics and all that's involved. So I spend my time poking around the net talking to people like you to find out what the challenges are and how we might be able to help overcome some of these challenges. Anyway looking forward to reading your posts, discovering new webcomics and creative people!

Oh, and I'm also a creator myself. I write the comic, The Sundry Seven, which we will be releasing soon.

[Rob]

Links? ;D

And can you explain a bit more what The Fabler is?

[JGray]

Yes, sales pitch, please!

[Gibson]

If this is the same Fabler, I was interviewed there a few months ago by Kevin. Welcome to the community.

[TheFabler]

Ha! Wow!

Hi Gibson! fancy meeting you here. Kevin's planning a follow up article soon. I'll let him know I ran into you.

Eh so sales pitch huh? Well to sum it up, thefabler.com is a social networking site for comics. Sort of like youtube meets threadless.com for comics.

It spawned from the multiple quota increases with Diamond, the massive inventory overstock that retailers still have in their back rooms, and conversations from talking with a few friends of mine in the industry. For a creator or indie/small press to go out on their own with new and interesting artwork or stories, it's almost next to near impossible to a)find your market, and b)make a living once you have. So what we proposed was to make a platform (website) that enables features, services, that don't detriment the ownership or control of IP by the creator(s), but rather allow for what I call creative feasibility.

We just launched a contest in June to help increase traffic to the site while we prepare and test the final features of our new product on demand/direct to market services. The service is free, we don't take or control ownership of any of the products that end up on the site. How it works is that, as a creator(s) you upload your print version comics. tell your fans about it or they discover you and they buy it (were also building a retailer network to buy larger volume), but once an order is made, the product is manufactured, and shipped directly to the customer(s). No inventory, no quotas, no admin fees, and you get paid for each unit sold. We handle product manufacturing, shipping, distribution, and passive marketing. That's the near future. But there's more.

We've big plans for the site, most of which I can't release yet, and were all about building it for you guys so you can make a living doing what you love to do. No catch, no hooks, just tell your stories.

Oh and the site is: www.thefabler.com and our blog is www.thefablerblog.com

[JGray]

Okay. Next question. :)

I'm looking to do a print edition of Mysteries of the Arcana. What's the benefit of to thefabler.com instead of Lulu or Kablam or another PoD service?

Also, do you do digitial distribution, too, ala Wowio?

[TheFabler]

1.0 The first benefit is that we are solely geared towards comics.

2.0 You also get paid more with us. More details to come.

3.0 The third benefit is actually a bit of a long-tail business development. We market directly to retailers. What our competitors don't do is mitigate the risk to retailers of a) buying indy comics, b) managing their inventory, and c)make informed product buying decisions. Those detail's I can't publicly disclose for obvious reasons. So not a right away thing, but to brick and mortar retailers we're on their side working with them to work with us so it works for you. You will then have a store front global market to cater to regardless of where you live, without the hooks of going through a publisher or one of the larger distributors. But keep in mind this development doesn't happen over night. Though our next launch includes some of the core functionality that supports the above mentioned.

4.0 we utilize social mechanics to help you identify your market and work with your fans. functionality is core and limited right now, but trust me there's more in our tickle trunk, and that's just what you see on the front end as a user.

As far as digital distribution goes, Wowio isn't what we would call a solution that makes you money. We do have plans currently in development but not something I can really get into yet.

In all of this we don't take ownership or control of ownership in anything unless in special cases specifically specified and agreed upon. Some of our competitors don't either but not all.

As for hosting comics on the site from a webcomic standpoint, our viewer is probably our prized possession. Works just like zuda or another comic viewer right? Sort of. But you can pull images from their DB. You can't with ours. which means that your images are 99% secure. 300dpi print ready file images? Yep piraters can't get at them. If they really wanted to they could screen shot but that was the first thing that we did was ensure security of your bread and butter.

For Example, Ka-blam (only digital).
You want to do a print comic, you choose your paper count and your ink type. They give you a price/unit. It's actually quite high because of their digital printing process. We own the infrastructure to both digital and offset processes. We will always be cheaper or comparible than them. Regardless if you want to host on indyplanet.com you then add I think it's 25% of that price which would equate to your cover price. On top of your unit price, if your buying bulk you pay shipping. So let's do math for a min.

a) BULK
100 units costs you roughly $7/unit = $700 USD + your 1 comic con costs averaging $300 USD = $1000 USD correct?
You sell 80% of your books at a 30%markup $10/book = $800.

b) indyplanet.com
100 units * 25% of your unit cost of $7 (1.75) = $175

How many hours did you spend on that issue? How much is that worth to you? Our deal is definitely better (and will always continue to get better). I'll put my rubber stamp on it.

Also on indyplanet.com or lulu, they don't use social mechanics to help you identify your market efficiently. Ka-blam's storefront doesn't even allow much of a preview to your story in most cases. How is a new shopper supposed to be converted into a buyer if they've never heard of you or your story? they'll pass buy it as internet traffic is as fickle as they come. From an end product standpoint we do both digital and offset. If your volume reaches a certain level, that triggers your product to be switched to offset, which has higher quality and cheaper manufacturing costs. Once your books go offset you get a bonus. Every unit that's ever distributed you always get paid. In fact, you are the first one's to get paid. Not the other way around like in a regular publishing deal.

PS. Oh and not only is our ear to the ground but we listen to all 3 of our primary users, creators, retailers and fans, if there's something that needs changing or adding to the site, we definitely hear you.

[Rob]

You know some of the people who work for Ka-Blam are members here and they are nice, good people. But I'll admit I've had problems getting them to talk to me about their business model. Specifically I wanted an article or interview regarding what they had to offer and I simply wasn't able to get the owner (who is not a member here) to respond.

What about you? You ready for some hard questions about what you guys do? You want the front page?

I mean, there is a great deal of confusion amongst webcomic folks regarding PoD, Order fulfillment and brick and mortar sales; the costs and benefits as well as the tax and copyright legalities are somewhat confusing.

Even your responses here are riddled with industry speak and although I understand some of it, I don't understand all of it and some people won't understand any of it.

So are you interested in dispelling some of the mystery? Because if you are you can expect me to hammer away at you until I get an answer that I feel is in laymen's terms enough for everyone to understand. Fair warning. But if people understand what you are offering I think you will find an informed consumer is far more likely to go with something they can understand/quantify than something they are unsure of.

Incidentally, I'm not sure if you are aware of this but recently Ka-Blam started offering hardcover books and they market to brick and mortar through their third business, Comics Monkey (in fact our member, Cary's "Fallen Justice" comic is on the front page there right now and Cary has some interesting things to say about the print world in an upcoming article).

If you are interested e-mail me.  The address is right under the image of the grinning idiot in my profile pic.  ;D

[TheFabler]

Hi Rob,
We're definitely not here to discredit any of our competitors by any stretch. That being said, from some of our initial research we're trying to offer a service that caters to the comic ecosystem. Not just one facet. Yes we were aware of the comicsmonkey.com service by Ka-blam and we think it's great! Far too long have some companies done the consignment deal which historically really works as a support revenue model for creators not a primary source. Not only that our upcoming service and Ka-blam's offers a 1 bill service to retailers. 1 bill to deal with as if they were dealing with a distributor like diamond. Ka-blam is also way ahead of the curve when it comes to POD and digital printing. Comixpress is another. We know we've big shoes to fill and some catching up to do if we want to play in the game.

I am definitely interested in answering some of the hard questions. Some of the mystery yes. What gives us an advantage, I need to be careful about disclosing. So I hope that I can inform as best as I can.

[Rob]

Competition between businesses is competition between businesses. I didn't say what I said about Ka-Blam to get you to backpeddle. I was just pointing out that some good folks were unable to quantify for the community what they do. Ultimately I feel they chose to leave the matter obfuscated for whatever reason.

As long as your criticisms of other services are factual and informative I think the comparison serves as a great benefit to the community to compare and contrast what varying services have to offer (including yours). I encourage that wholeheartedly. Obviously if it devolves into insults and name calling that is counter productive and somewhat besides the point.

For example I can tell you right now I do not know anyone who has ever had a good experience, as a creator I mean, with LuLu. I have an author friend who uses them as a distributor for an RPG manual he wrote and he and others I've spoken too are less than thrilled with the service and profit margins. As a customer I can tell you the service was ok and just ok. The thing I ordered from them took a little longer than expected to get to me. The price was pretty high for a 200 page book. Based upon those things they would not be my first choice.

But those are sort of allegorical examples. I heard from this person and so on. In this instance I'm interested in cold hard facts. If someone in PoD can look at the project I'm working on and say to me "we can do that but such and such site is better at it and may cost you less" then I'm going to be singing their praises for a long time to come. Because that's the kind of customer I am; old school. I stick with businesses that treat me well and the ones that mistreat me rarely get a second shot at my business. And if they have some sort of monopoly and they mistreat me... well there are other ways to make a company pay and I know most of them and can be a miserable bastard when I feel like I'm being taken advantage of. LOL.

For example, I've used the same car parts store for almost 18 years. He isn't the cheapest. He isn't a chain and a lot of times he has to order what I need instead of having it in stock. But he guarantees everything he sells and stands behind it even when the manufacturer doesn't. He isn't afraid to get his hands dirty and give me repair advice when I need it and one time when I was a bit short and needed a part he fronted it for me without hesitation and gave me zero crap about it. In fact he offered when I told him I couldn't afford the part at the time because he knew I needed the car for work. That's the kind of relationship my grandparents had with their local businesses and it's often what I'm looking for when I plan to spend a lot of money.

On the flipside, the last car I bought was from a dealer that bait and switched me over the phone. It was a three hour drive to their dealership but they had the exact car I wanted so I negotiated with them over the phone on my trade in and the cost of the car. I got my loan approved for the exact amount I needed and when I got up there the guy I negotiated with (the head of "phone sales") mysteriously wasn't around and the guy I did have to deal with basically tried to renege on everything. I raised holy hell. Customers were walking out of the dealership. I threatened to complain to the state AG and I suggested I might sue. In the end I got the car for the price I negotiated but they only gave me about half what I had negotiated on my trade in. Needless to say I was pissed. I had to redo all my loan documents and pay a bunch more cash out of pocket. And I had to come back on a different day to get the car after all the paperwork went through.

I made them remove EVERY mention of their dealership from the car. No decals, no license plate frame, nothng; I had all their salesmen kissing my ass the entire time I was there and to this day I badmouth them to anyone who mentions they are in the market for a car.

Obviously there are businesses I expect less from. I go to Home Depot for instance and I count myself lucky if an English speaking person can tel me what aisle the item I'm looking for is in. But if I don't know what I'm looking for, need advice or want quality wood for a large project I go to Rings End (which is a lot further away from me) where most things are a little more expensive but the quality is primo and the staff are practically experts in everything.

I don't know what this says about me as a consumer but I can tell you that when I recommend someone or something for business the people who know me tend to listen. The same goes for businesses that I warn people away from.

So feel free to compare and contrast. It only helps. Just keep it clean.  ;D

[JGray]

Maybe an example would be better. A line into the way your company works and thinks. For example, Mysteries of the Arcana is getting ready to print. We're looking at around 60-70 double sided, full color pages with a full color, wrap around cover. We don't have a huge fan base, perhaps 1500-2000 regular readers. Of course, not all of those would buy the book.

What would you suggest doing with it?

[Rob]

Just FYI since it wasn't mentioned here TheFabler has agreed to the Inquisition interview and I plan on making it as informative and comprehensive as I can. If you have specific questions you want asked in the interview feel free to post them here or PM me or whatever. Just because I'm going to do an article with TheFabler doesn't mean he can't answer questions here.  ;)

[TheFabler]

Well, to start off there isn't much that you can do with thefabler.com until we launch our POD service (again the service is free to use). That being said when we launch the functionality we will be starting off with is product on demand to fans/retailers. Bulk orders for creators will need to come shortly there after and or just send us an email to [email protected] and we will coordinate with you (backwoodsy until we sort out the details of creator owned inventory). On that note we will be launching with product manufacturing for saddle stitched (stapled) and perfect bound (wrap around cover as you put it), traditional comic book size only (for the moment).

It's simple. Upload your print-ready PDF files. We send you a digital proof. Once the proof is approved by you, the book goes live on the site. Once on the site, start spamming your favorite social networks to fans and creators, set up email campaigns, and banner campaigns through project wonderful, etc (services we will eventually offer). The algorithms of the platform will work to your advantage from a passive standpoint (which we are constantly architecting and optimizing).

Generally how it works in your favor is that every unit sold the creator gets what's called a royalty % of Gross revenue. That being said with the cost of setup and manpower we need to recover our initial investment of taking care of everything for you as again this is a FREE service. In comparison to even Image Comics, they give you royalty %'s based on Net (after taxes, distro fees, shipping, advertising, their cut, etc....). For the moment they have the advantage of having a large distribution network and a brand that people recognize. We will get there.

Back to it. So of gross revenue. Collectively you get paid 10% of cover price up to the first total 100 units sold. Between 100 and 250, you then get 20%. Between 250 and 500, you get 30%. Beyond 500 units you get 40% of cover price for each unit sold. This allows us to recover our investment, and you always get paid. Now in addition, if your book reaches a certain volume of orders you then gain an additional royalty bonus. It's pretty simple. You as the creator get paid on a monthly basis. There are a few more details around ISBN and ISSN numbers which we do handle at least on the Canadian side for the moment (we're corporately based in Canada, and have satellite offices globally). IF you decide that you'd like to give us controlling rights to the property through our ISBN number (which is to the product only not the property, there is a difference, we are a registered publisher), your percentages remain the same but you grant us the right to manufacture and distro that product at our discretion. Though you still get paid for every unit sold. You can acquire ISBN and ISSN numbers through US jurisdiction (US numbers cost money though). The benefit of adding an ISBN or ISSN number to your product is that retailers will be more likely to trust a product if they know where it's coming from. Those numbers if you haven't done your research yet is way of identifying a publishable book or periodical. We don't charge for any ISBN/ISSN services whatsoever. No one should, so be careful with that. You can however provide us with your own ISBN/ISSN number where then you then control your product. There will be more information regarding ISBN/ISSN and rights posted directly on the site. Again I want to stress that you ALWAYS control your IP rights.

We also standardize our prices so consumers know exactly what they are getting into. One thing we've noticed with some competitors is that the prices are all over the board. We based our prices on cost of materials (and industry influences, paper isn't always cheap). So based on page count and binding type, voila! You get a cover price and the consumer knows their getting a trade paperback for example.

I highly recommend doing the math with any of our competitors and through your own solo sales scenarios (doing a print run then selling/distro'ing on your own) just to check our research. We don't have any hidden fees, or agenda's to scoop up your IP and run with it leaving you in the dust. Burning bridges is not what I'm about and not what our company is about. As far as creator owned bulk units, we can definitely handle them but currently they are not a part of the integrated features on thefabler.com and won't be until after the initial POD launch. Our product line will also expand as well. From Paper type, Cover type, foils, embosses, you name it. It's all set up and ready to go, we just need to sort out the production legalities first. Keep in mind, the more fancy you make a book the longer production runs will take as well as order quota's may be a factor as well. Only because of a) the cost of production, and b) time to produce. But we're working on that so if your interested keep your ear to the ground or shoot us an email because we want to know what you guys need in order to maintain creative feasibility.

I'll take questions now....

Cheers!