{"id":3501,"date":"2006-04-28T17:11:07","date_gmt":"2006-04-29T00:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2006\/04\/28\/3501.html"},"modified":"2006-04-28T17:11:07","modified_gmt":"2006-04-29T00:11:07","slug":"naked-swearing-cartoon-lesbian-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2006\/04\/28\/naked-swearing-cartoon-lesbian-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Naked swearing cartoon lesbians, $24\/year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

No, I haven't entered the porn business. This is a post about the economics of publishing. Really. Well, okay, and cartoon nudity, I guess.<\/p>\n

It turns out that PlanetOut<\/cite> has decided to stop publishing Alison Bechdel's long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For<\/cite>. (See Bechdel's 24 February posting<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So in a post a few days ago, Bechdel floated the idea of offering an email subscription<\/a> to the strip, then posting the strips a month or so later for free. So everyone would get to see them eventually, but only people who paid would get to see them immediately. She suggested $1 per strip, which comes to $24\/year.<\/p>\n

So far, sounds like following in the footsteps of various other micropayment\/subscription systems. Sounds plausible, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for the idea in comments on that entry. I hope it works out.<\/p>\n

But in addition to the subscription system, she added a twist that I haven't seen before, one that I think is especially likely to make it work:<\/p>\n

\n

Hey, and what about this? The email version could be like HBO. I could leave all the swear words in, and perhaps even have occasional frontal nudity. Instead of the #@&*'s and artful drapery that I employ in the newspaper version.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To which one of the commenters responded, \"i would totally pay $24 a year for naked swearing cartoon lesbians.\"<\/p>\n

I think that's a sentiment that a lot of people can get behind.<\/p>\n

And it'll be mildly entertaining to see what kind of comment spam this entry of mine gets.<\/p>\n

P.S.: When I say \"long-running\": according to the FAQ<\/a>, the first strip appeared in 1983, and the first collection in 1986. Twenty years! Zowie!<\/p>\n

P.P.S.: The FAQ also reveals that at least one volume of the series has been published in Finnish, under the title Lepakkoelämää<\/cite>, which apparently literally means \"bat life\" but is slang for \"promiscuous lesbian.\" In case anyone was wondering.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, I haven’t entered the porn business. This is a post about the economics of publishing. Really. Well, okay, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}