Before I head out on my work hiatus next week, I am planning on leaving you with a world first. Never before in the history of editorial cartoons has this feat been done (and if you find an example, just keep it to your damn self).
I will attempt the first ever editorial cartoon story arc. Five to six cartoons in a row each containing its very own gag.
Oh and don’t worry, while I am out of pocket, I have gotten several great guest cartoons that I will be posting.
Let’s play the game “Spot the Differences” Can you spot the differences between these two shirts?>
Well if you said nothing except the seller and the price, you would be correct. No this isn’t a case of someone stealing another’s design, but rather an issue that my partners and I will have to decide whether or not to continue hosting our designs from WackSack.com on Cafepress.
First, an aside for those wondering what this shirt is all about. It is designed to promote the game cornhole. Cornhole is a popular game in Southwest Ohio that is essentially horseshoes with bean bags and a box with a hole in it. Considering the proximity to Kentucky, you would think horseshoes would not be in short supply. Anyway to get all the info you ever wanted on the game go here.
Back to my story. Cafepress is one of the largest Print on Demand companies for t-shirts on the web. It is a great service that for $6.95 a month, we can post as many different designs on as many products as we want. Typical screen printing companies make you order a minimum quantity but Print on Demand doesn’t fufill an order until someone actually buys something. Now the downside is that instead of my costs being a couple dollars and being able to mark up the price considerably, I must take a much smaller commission.
For example, the base price that Cafepress charges me on the above pictured ladies long sleeve is $19.99. I can then set the retail price based off that and earn the commission on the difference. My typical up-charge on t-shirts is $4, thus the $23.99 retail price that you can get on WackSack.com However, you can also find the same shirt on Cafepress’ Marketplace simply by doing a search on Cafepress.com. They had the same product at the same retail price we set and we got a $4 commission whether it was sold on our site or in the marketplace.
Everything was great and we made a small profit in 2008 and started out well in 2009. That was up until June when Cafepress decided to change how they ran and upcharged the marketplace.
So now they set the retail price of our designs in their marketplace and we only get 10% of the commission. So as you can see from the above example, they are charging $28 for the same shirt I charge $23.99. Now instead of a $4 commission I am only getting $2.80 and they are getting a $5.20 profit on top of their base $19.99. What’s more, they can undercut our retail price as well encouraging people to buy from the marketplace versus from us, thus causing a loss in commissions as well. In the beginning we figured it would be ok because we would make up the difference in volume as they were updating the search algorithm thus driving more sales. In fact the opposite happened. Sales since June have dropped off considerably in the marketplace.
We spend money on Google Ad Words to drive traffic directly to wacksack.com but being on a limited budget it’s not much and we certainly can’t compete with what a company the size of Cafepress can do. Besides their shear size means they will take up most if not all of the first page of search results. Even when I do a specific search on Google of “cornhole ‘got hole’ tshirt”, you have to go through four pages of mostly Cafepress links to get to one that has WackSack in it. The best analogy of the situation would be renting kiosk space from Walmart but they put you in the back of the store while promoting and selling your products in the front. It’s too hard to compete.
So now we have to make a decision. The first obvious response is to remove the ability of CP to sell our designs in their marketplace. This may move us up in the search rankings. The few sales the marketplace has been making won’t be missed, but we keep holding out hope that the algorithm will finally kick in.
The bigger and more drastic decision is whether or not to drop using Cafepress all together and go with a competitor like Spreadshirt or Zazzle. This is like a divorce because the decision will invariably mean a lot of time, effort and angst. Between work and trying to post a few times a week, my time is limited as it is. The thought of redoing all those countless hours to remake our site somewhere else is not something we are looking forward to.
I know there are webcomic writers that host their own stores. Do you use a Print on Demand service? Which one? Good and Bad?
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The other day I posted that the odds of flipping a coin heads every time weren’t necessarily 50%. In the comments I was harassed by YNB and the Friggin Loon to provide insight into the odds of winning at Rock, Paper, Scissors (or as FL likes to say Scissors, Paper, Rock for some reason). Well actually the timing of the request couldn’t be better because our cartoonist friend Robert Mateicek (don’t ask me how to pronounce it) of Spilled Ink just did this toon.
Well first a little background. Did you know RPS was also known as RPS. OK that was easy. But it is also known as Roshambo, Roshambow, Rochambeau (but funny enough not Sham WOW!). See the complete history at the Straight Dope.
Now some people would think their odds of winning RPS would be 33% since there are 3 choices. But you would be wrong since ties don’t count as a win or a loss but rather a do over (unless you play online or in Vegas where ties lose). So therefore, conventional wisdom would say you have a 50% chance of winning and if the choices were truly random, that would be right. However, much like with the toin coss there is the human element which can increase the odds.
According to my crack research, Rock is thrown 35% of the time, Paper 33% and Scissors 31%.
Now according to Graham Walker who actually wrote a book on the subject. Here is your intial strategy:
1 – Rock is for Rookies
In RPS circles a common mantra is “Rock is for Rookies” because males have a tendency to lead with Rock on their opening throw. It has a lot to do with idea that Rock is perceived as “strong” and forceful”, so guys tend to fall back on it. Use this knowledge to take an easy first win by playing Paper. This tactic is best done in pedestrian matches against someone who doesn’t play that much and generally won’t work in tournament play.
2 – Scissors on First
The second step in the ‘Rock is for Rookies’ line of thinking is to play scissors as your opening move against a more experienced player. Since you know they won’t come out with rock (since it is too obvious), scissors is your obvious safe move to win against paper or stalemate to itself.
Now I disagree with Grahams strategy but then again I don’t belong to the World RPS Society. I say whether you are playing an experienced player or a beginner, THROW Paper. If a player is experienced and knows your experienced, he may assume you will already know of Grahams trick and you will throw Scissors. Looking to beat you he is going to pick Rock but you have pulled the switch and won with paper.
There endeth the lesson.
If you answered 50%, you wouldn’t be as smart as 9 year old me. You see research has come out that essentially says that we all pretty much toss a coin the same way every time. So there is actually a 51% chance that the coin will turn up the same side that you initially have the coin.
But the metaphor of a coin flip for randomness remains unquestioned. We use coin tosses to settle disputes and decide outcomes because we believe they are unbiased with 50-50 odds.Yet recent research into coin flips has discovered that the laws of mechanics determine the outcome of coin tosses: The startling finding is they aren’t random. Instead, for natural flips, the chance of a coin coming up on the same side as it started is about 51 percent. Heads facing up predicts heads; tails facing up predicts tails.
Personally I noticed this phenomena as a kid and could land a coin that was tails up back to tails after a flip about 75% of the time. Naturally I used this to my advantage when doing coin tosses for playing football or other “who goes first” activity.
I would always start with tails up because more often than not when you flip a coin, people seem to always say “heads”.
MY BALL!
Too bad I wasn’t smart enough to publish my research.
Many of my cartoonist friends brag when their cartoon character ends up with a guest appearance in another artist’s cartoon. Well I don’t have characters (besides I could never draw the same one twice if I tried).
Then I realized that I am a character. And much like David Hasselhoff, my appeal is stronger overseas than in America. It became clearer when I got an email from DuncanR of UK who posts frequently at the Madhatters that he has immortalized me in a short story. In fact many of the regular posters of Madhatters are in it. Go read it here.
Now I don’t appear until page two but this is how I am introduced:
At this point, a big fellow, by the name of Bearman – braver or more foolish than most – spoke up.
‘Call yourselves men. You’se are just a bunch of Jessies. There’s no such thing as ghosts. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. And that’s that! It’s only imagination, or drink, that makes you see ghosts’
‘If you’re so hard’, said a voice from the crowd. ‘Why don’t you go into the Wailing Wood and bring us back the cap from that cattle thief we hanged today?’
‘Bugger the cap’, said Bearman. ‘I’ll bring back the firkin head!’ So saying, he pulled on a big pair of boots, tucked a bottle (to keep out the cold) into his pocket and strode from the castle.
“Braver or more foolish” would tend to be how many would describe me. Now I admit while I knew what bugger was, I had to pull out my English to English dictionary to figure out what a Jessie is.
So go check it out now so you can say you were one of the first as soon my popularity will increase to the point that they will be making movies about me.
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I am putting out a general call and a specific one to anyone with the desire to have their work seen here for all my tens of readers.
First the specific call. I am going to be doing a work project that will keep me busy as hell starting late August for about a month, so my own postings will be sporadic. There are those who get mad when I go two days without posting something so I thought I would put it out there as a challenge to all of you with a webcomic. You may have seen my post titled Bearman at 100 and I would like to put out a similar challenge.
You can either load them to your images and send me a URL to link to the image or email me the image. Either way send to BearmanCartoons (at) Yahoo.com. Also if you have a link to a web banner that you would like me to include with the post, send that as well. Make sure to include your name and a little description of your webcomic.
The second call is to anyone ongoing who wants to do a editorial guest cartoon. My focus is on politics and pop culture. While I am pretty open about what I will include, I won’t publish anything I deem inappropriate.
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Bear with me as I bare my bareless soul in this confession. It will be a long post but I guarantee both informative and entertaining.
A few days ago in my post about my guest cartoon at CockNBull Webcomic, I lamented that I unbeknowingly stole the the idea. Here is what I said:
Tonight or tomorrow, I will tell the story of shame that I have for not realizing until I looked at it again last week, that I had lifted the idea from someone who is bright, talented, good looking, and a hero to us all. I will put up my apology then.
Bonus points if you know who and what cartoon.
Well no one gathered to make a guess. Oh, I know George Ford (of Addanac City fame) was all aglow as he clicked on the link to the comic at CockNBull thinking he was the unfortunate soul who was robbed of his intellectual property. But of course he was wrong and never came back. It would not have been the first time Mr Ford has called me out because just a week ago after posting this cartoon:
He sent me the following email (I deleted all the nice things he wrote for effect):
Unh-huh. Plagiarism, scandal, and libel! I see how you roll, Mr. Man.
I was reading your cartoon on the newspaper industry and it reminded me of this:
http://addanaccity.com/wordpress/index.php/2009/04/12/in-the-news/
But you will be getting an email from my lawyer. 🙂
To which I responded:
Then again, I looked at the link and there were no comments. Now you might say you lost all your comments when you switched over to hosting on comicpress but I say if a cartoonists draws something and noone comments does it count?
Some have said that George has been rehashing jokes that were written as far back as the pyramids of Egypt. Don’t believe me, check out his site today (then check it out tomorrow, and again for about 200 days after that). Oh and make sure you leave a comment on the site….he really hates when people do that.
Anyway, I am digressing more than Brit at Blunt Delivery in trying to tell this story.
Comic Strip and editorial cartoonists have been doing the same bits as each other for decades. Bill of Comics I don’t Understand refers to two comic strip cartoonists doing the same gag in the same day as “Synchronicity” Daryl Cagle uses the term “Yahtzee” to refer to times when five or more editorial cartoonists draw the same gag. In this article he says:
Sometimes the symbols of current events are so obvious that a number of editorial cartoonists end up drawing roughly the same cartoon, Cagle said. For instance, in the wake of 9/11 many cartoonists drew the Statue of Liberty weeping. Several drew police and firemen raising an American flag on the smoldering pile of World Trade Center wreckage, with a profile evoking the Iwo Jima Memorial. Another gaggle of strikingly similar cartoons depicted a policeman and a fireman standing side by side as the “real twin towers of New York City.”
The similarities of “Yahtzee” cartoons also stem from the fact that “most cartoonists are liberal, 50-year-old white males,” said Cagle, noting that the newspaper industry hasn’t created any new cartoonist jobs in the past 20 years.
Thankfully I am a moderate not close to 50 so I don’t fall into that group. But as I started out my post, I have been both a culprit and a victim of gag theft. WHAT, you say? Yes, I stole the idea for my gag, FROM ME. When I drew the guest cartoon for CockNBull, I thought it was a funny original idea that played well with the characters. Here it is:
Last week Arnie at CockNBull.net asked me to reemail my guest cartoon because he misplaced it. Right after I did, I got a sinking feeling because it dawned on me that I had recently done almost the same exact gag for my Fallen Princesses post.
The really sad part is that I drew these two cartoons exactly 10 days apart…right down to the innocent eye roll of both Bull and Fiona. I am blaming early onset Alzheimers.
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Hat tip to Bill and a commenter at the Comics I Don’t Understand website for the link to this PC World article entitled, The Hidden Secrets of Online Quizzes.
If you or your friends on Facebook are prone to sending out those crappy little quizzes such as “What Disney Princess are You?” or “Which Character from Harry Potter are you?”, you should read the article first. On the mildly annoying side, the companies that put these out might mine the data on your profile in order to direct market or email market you things they want to sell. Or they can force you to click “No Thanks” on ad after ad before you can find out that your personality matches up such that you should marry Steven Baldwin, and not Alec.
From the article:
Remember, even if you don’t directly input data, it can be passed along. Such is the case with Facebook, where just opening an application automatically grants its developer access to your entire profile. And don’t assume that the developer isn’t going to use the information within.
“The very intimate and detailed nature of the information featured on Facebook profiles makes such a database very valuable to marketers,” says Guillaume Lovet, a senior manager with security company Fortinet.
So before you start talking about your dog (hmmm isn’t “what is your pet’s name?” one of the secure questions they use to reset passwords) or your mom’s maiden name, maybe think again.
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I have always been a fan of single panel gag cartoons. Don’t know if Gary Larson’s The Far Side was the first but he certainly set the bar high. Many times those who have picked up the Larson torch have left something to be desired. Well a few months ago I ran across someone who is on top of his game, Lonnie Easterling of Spud Comics.
Lonnie recently shared with his readers that he was laid off from his day job. Yes, he managed to do 5 toons a week and hold down a full time job. I am lucky to put out one new cartoon a week. Lonnie is looking to take Spud to the next level and the more followers he gets the better he will do. If you are inclined, buy a t-shirt or tip him so he can drown his sorrows in a glass of beer.
So take time and head over to Spud Comics and comment on his stuff or Follow Spud Comics on Twitter. Make sure to tell him I sent you…been trying to shame him into adding me to his blog roll for months..ha ha j/k.
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With only two days left in the Charity Challenge it is time to put up or shut up. Click the image below for all the details. But for the next two days only the next 5 people who don’t already have me on their blog roll, I will donate $20 instead of just $10 if you add me. Make sure to say so in the comment section if you do.
Sorry haven’t posted in the past few days…have something in mind but was at the Special Olympics. Very rewarding volunteer activity if you have not ever done it.
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Don’t forget your efforts cost me money… so spread the word about my charity challenge. Click the image below for details.
