MODERN TALES LAUNCHES WEBCOMICSNATION.COM
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July 29, 2005
For Immediate Release

Joey Manley, publisher of the leading commercial webcomics site,
Modern Tales, announced today that WebcomicsNation.com, a premier
hosting and automation service for online cartoonists, has launched
today.

BUSINESS STRATEGY SHIFT

“Webcomics Nation is meant to do for online comics what services like
Blogger have done for personal journals, or Flickr for photo-sharing:
enable anybody and everybody to reach a large audience with his/her
ideas and creations — in this case, in comics form,” said Manley.
“WCN tames the latest and most complex online technologies (like, say,
XML, RSS, and ‘web services’) and puts them to work for you, easily,
invisibly, and in an automated way.”

Webcomics Nation represents a major turning point in the company’s
strategy, said Manley. In the past, Manley has acted more as a
traditional editor/publisher, pulling together online ‘publications’
which he sold to readers. That business is still viable, and Manley
says he has no intention of abandoning it. “The problem,” he said,
“is that we can’t grow fast enough, that way. We can’t grow as fast
as the web demands.” The idea was, he said, to get himself out of the
“middleman” position for this project. “With the Modern Tales model,
I’m more like Stan Lee or J. Jonah Jameson than I’d like to be,” says
Manley. “It’s unsustainable — there are too many cartoonists coming
onto the webcomics train every day, and the readership is growing
exponentially. The ‘middleman’ structure can’t bear the strain of that
kind of growth. There’s got to be this guy in there who touches
everything. It slows you down. That’s not the way the web works.”

WCN takes all the daily hassle of running a successful webcomics
service and automates it completely, so that any individual cartoonist
can easily and quickly run a top-of-the-line commercial webcomics
site. “The idea is that cartoonists will purchase Webcomics Nation
accounts — which cost roughly the same amount as the average web
hosting account — and use them to build their own online businesses.
And I’m not in their way, slowing them down.”

“With Webcomics Nation, I become more like Kinko’s, or Quebecor, or
the Post Office, or whatever — I provide the services that
cartoonists need to reach their own goals, rather than enlisting them
to help me reach mine.” He quickly added, “Um. Not that there’s
anything wrong with that.”

FEATURES

This service has been in development for two years, and has been
beta-tested by approximately 200 leading cartoonists from the Modern
Tales network of websites, including indie icons from the print world
like James Kochalka, Lea Hernandez, Roger Langridge and Tom Hart, as
well as cartoonists whose reputations have been made mostly online,
like cayetano garza jr., Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, and Spike. “This is
not a plaything for children,” said Manley. “It’s a serious tool for
real cartoonists.

FEATURE LIST

# Post an unlimited number of webcomics series, or one-shots. No need
to juggle multiple accounts for multiple comics!

# Take advantage of unmetered bandwidth and unlimited disk storage for
your account. We just keep adding servers and hard drives as needed,
and the risks are spread out across the entire community, so there’s
no need to worry about paying the “success tax” if you get
unexpectedly popular!

# Promote your comics with complimentary banner ads on the Modern
Tales network, which includes TalkAboutComics.com,
GraphicNovelReview.com, AdventureStrips.com, and many other popular
sites!

# Take advantage of all the very latest technological tricks to build
and keep an audience, including automatically-generated RSS feeds for
every comic on your site, and xml-rpc update pings to 12 major search
engines and aggregators every time you post something new, including
Yahoo! and Technorati!

# It should go without saying, but due to the sometimes predatory
nature of certain sort-of half-way similar services (like, you know,
the one owned by a big established newspaper syndicate), you retain
all rights to your work, online, in print, and otherwise. I mean:
obviously. Puh-leeze.

# Create your own webcomics subscription service, and lock some or all
of your comics behind a subscription wall, collecting money directly
from your subscribers (using PayPal or any other payment method).

# Sell ads on your own pages, and keep all the money for yourself!

# Sell your print comics and other real-world merchandise on Modern
Tales’ popular Small Press Swapmeet website!

# Make your webcomics available as Playstation Portable Download Packs!

# Use our “Tooncasting” feature to allow other websites to present the
latest strip from your series — readers will have to click through to
your site to get to the full story. It’s a great way to build your
audience!

# Run an automated email list that lets your readers know when your
comic has updated — you don’t have to remember to send it out! It
just works!

# Schedule your comics pages in advance, with no worries about your
readers “peeking ahead” by figuring out your file naming system (you
can name your files any old random name you want).

# Let our archive management system handle the linking and
cross-linking for you — no more bewilderment over connecting hundreds
and hundreds of past comic strips together in a manageable and
navigable archive!

# Use our automated systems for fan-art, artist sketchbooks, cast and
character pages, and more — the kinds of goodies that help build
interest and fan loyalty in your work among the most dedicated kinds
of readers.

“WCN is, without doubt, the most powerful webcomics hosting and
automation service around,” Manley said, “but hosting and automation
only represent a fraction of what WCN is all about. Hosting and
Automation? That’s where the other services stop. But it’s where we
get started. No other webcomics service offers the kinds of marketing
and business tools that WCN provides (like the ability to launch your
own subscription service, or the ability to sell your own ads); no
other webcomics service automates as many aspects of running a
webcomics site as WCN does (like the modules for fan-art, Playstation
Portable Download Packs, etc), no other webcomics service can give you
complimentary banner ads on the Modern Tales network of websites, and
no other webcomics service is as close to the cutting edge of
next-generation web technology as WCN, with its RSS and XML-based ‘web
services’ functionality. Most importantly, no other webcomics service
is as easy to use. All you have to know how to do is make comics.”

“Whether you’ve never posted a webcomic, or you’re an old hand with
other, first-generation automation services, or even if you’re a
tech-savvy ‘webcomics auteur’ with a mastery of all that it takes to
build a webcomics site — give us a try. After one month using the
service, you’ll never want to go back to the “old way” of doing things
(whatever your own individual “old way” happens to be). … Join us!”

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