Questionable Content

Many webcomic authors are devoted to the webcomic medium, but sell book versions of their webcomics at the request of their fans. Oftentimes, these are simple transitions with little change in content, yet are still successful in sales. The question then arises: why do customers pay for what they can largely get for free? Though seemingly odd, the precedent for paying for already-seen content exists in movie adaptations of books, where research shows that movie adaptations are more successful when they are more similar to their book predecessor [1]. Jeph Jacques, author of the webcomic Questionable Content, follows this precedent, and the book release of his webcomic includes all of his older strips. Though Jacques has taken the opportunity to redraw some of the oldest strips, as his art skills have improved since then, he has also included them in their original style. Even then, the redrawn strips change little in regards to narrative content. Clearly, it is not new content that motivates fans to purchase these books.

Some of the benefits of buying the book lies within the inherent properties of the print medium. Being able to hold the book and to physically interact with the story by turning the pages makes the reader feel a more intimate connection with what they are reading–one that is difficult to replicate online [2]. If anything, it ensures that even if the story is the same, the reader is paying for a reading experience is different and fresh.

Studying movie marketing offers a second explanation: that it is a way of expressing one’s love of the comic. Much as movies producers release merchandise primarily to promote the movie (with the extra revenue considered just an additional bonus), so too can we say that webcomics release merchandise to promote the webcomic and let fans show their support [3]. In this perspective, webcomic books are also merchandise–a token of franchise loyalty–often coming after a line of t-shirts, posters, and plushes, like in Questionable Content’s online store. In either case, the book plays a supporting role to the webcomic, as it does in many other webcomics.

1. Joshi, Amit and Huifang Mao. "Adapting to Succeed? Leveraging the Brand Equity of Best Sellers to Succeed at the Box Office." Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 40, no. 4 (07, 2012): 558-571. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11747-010-0241-2. http://prx.library.gatech.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1013825699?accountid=11107.

2. Kashtan, Aaron. “Click and Drag,” in Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the Future. The Ohio State University Press, 2018.

3. Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, Gianfranco Walsh, Oliver Wruck. "An Investigation into the Factors Determining the Success of Service Innovations: The Case of Motion Pictures." Academy of Marketing Science Review 2001, (2001): 1. http://prx.library.gatech.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/200800316?accountid=11107.