Piracy and Indie Comics

A tweet went viral in the literary community a few weeks ago. It has since been deleted, but it was from an independent author that said, “Not every book sale benefits the author”. A fierce debate ensued, was she as an author right to complain about second-hand book sales? The debate reminded me that somewhere on the internet, there was a website where you could read my own work for free. So I decided to see if I was affected at all by piracy. The result is in the header image.

If you can see the header image for this article, you will see a few interesting pieces of information. In a way, I am flattered that whoever decided to put this up without permission on a comic sharing site classed it within the “leading lady” genre. But most importantly is the view count. Over 6,300 people have read Daughter of Titan illegally. As I gear up for the Kickstarter regarding issue #2, I find myself exploring the pros and cons of these actions. So read on to join me in examining the moral dilemma that faces indie creators in the face of an ever prevalent movement.

Online piracy costs the film industry over $31 billion a year (and rising). So you can see why they are so desperate to safeguard against it. The comic industry is not so heavily affected by piracy, but when discussing both the comic and film industry, we are talking about companies, institutions like Marvel or Universal Pictures, not the individual. For major companies, piracy affects their bottom line, even considering the staggering losses predicted in years to come, it still isn’t putting these companies in the red. Down here in the thriving, diverse and generally more interesting world of independent comics, however, every pirated copy of an indie comic takes that money directly out of a small team or individuals pocket. People who generally operate in the red, people who might very well rely on that sale to survive.

So drawing on my own experience with Daughter of Titan, it was successfully funded on Kickstarter and published in May 2017. It was only available to backers. But more on that in a bit.

I started promoting Daughter of Titan #2 on social media and growing the fanbase again a few months ago. Before that, I knew the comic was available online and at the time, about 300 people had viewed it online. Since I have been heavily promoting it, those figures have shot up exponentially.

This means 2 things:

1. More people are reading Daughter of Titan
2. I am losing potentially a lot of money

Thanks for reading so far, this article is part of my eBook “The Art of Conversation; Writing Comics and Surviving Kickstarter.” To read the rest of this article (and many others), you can purchase it here: (Full contents below)

Here is a peek at the contents

1. The Art of Conversation, Depicting dialogue in comics (You can read this for free on my blog)

2. The Art of Conversation Part 2, representing dialogue in comics

3. Black holes disguised as white lines; the power of the comic gutter

4. A Picture is Worth 1000 words – how to write a comic script that your artist can use Part 1

5. A Picture is Worth 1000 words – how to write a comic script that your artist can use Part 2

6. Write to the beat of your own drum – How to pace scenes in a comic

7. Piracy and Indie Comics

8. The Internal and External Drives of a Narrative.

9. The terrifying REAL cost of creating a comic issue

10. Lessons that turned a failed comic Kickstarter into a successful one.

11. No Snakes, Only Ladders: Kickstarter Reward structuring

12. Kickstarter Capitalism: the worth of debut and returning creators

13. Surviving your maiden Kickstarter Part 1 – Failure to prepare is preparing to fail

14. Surviving your maiden Kickstarter Part 2 – The Campaign Trail

15. Surviving your maiden Kickstarter Part 3 – Crossing that finishing line