My story is finally finished! You can check it out at Spot.Us. 4,000 words!? In its hugeness, it looks like the graphic might be breaking their site though — if you can’t get it to work, try this mirror. And let me know what you think! The project is finished, but we’re still looking for the last $70 in funding if we can get it — donations will be open through Friday.
I finally got my shit together and printed up a new batch of these suckers. These ones have slightly less awesome cover paper, and are a new black and white line art design instead of the old color painting… HOWEVER: I am hand-painting all of them. Still $5! And you can request colors on your order! Apologies for those of you who’ve ordered them in the last couple weeks — yours will be going out ASAP.
A week and a half after its debut and the glittery halo has faded a bit on McSweeney’s 320-page full-color San Francisco Panorama newspaper. While most have been quick to point out how lush and lovely the thing is, Choire Sicha at the Awl breaks down the actual logistics of such a project — and with some devastating results on the financial (read: reality) side of things. Basically? Even when charging $16 and paying writers 12 cents per word or less, McSweeney’s more or less breaks even on the paper, in the event that they pay their in-house staffers less than minimum wage. Still, and this is what continues to baffle me, the common reaction is: So? It’s pretty! (The color infographics, that is — not the future of journalism, ha-ha!) So thank god for this commenter.
Sure, when you gather a bunch of amazingly talented people and don’t pay them and charge a premium price you will have a great product. Don’t you think we already know that? The challenge is to produce a product with a variety of talent and employees that need to eat. And need medical insurance. Also, you have to get advertisers. And subscriptions.
Dave KNOWS that it is almost impossible and that’s why he ain’t gonna do it. It’s easy to have all the most talented people working for no pay and then saying “look at me look what we made why can’t you be like us?”
Yes, why can’t you? Where’s your trust fund, little reporter?
For their part, D. Eggers’ public comments lately have been considerably more humble than they were back in June, when he announced the project. Plus I think it’s interesting that McSweeney’s started off calling the Panorama a “prototype” and lately refers to it more often as an “experiment” — more forgiving of these sorts of problems, and with no expectation of a follow-up.
It’s been so long since I did one of these that I forgot to compensate for the Flickr wash-out with my watercolors, so it’s a little light ‘n bright. Two more on the drawing board, then I can finally get to some TIWCM updates.
You might know that for the last few months I’ve been hard at work on a big article for a big-ish publisher. This week I found out how much that publisher is going to be paying me… So, to make a long story short, I’m selling originals! All the pages from my minicomics are up for grabs (though some are less Photoshopped than others), as are the Israel diary comics originals (two to a page, or I can cut them down). Or if anyone wanted to commission something, I’d be more than happy to do that too. Get in touch for pricing, but I assure you that I’m pretty cheap. I’ll be posting a full list of pages available and prices soon on the Storefront page.
Also of note: Nine Gallons is temporarily sold out. Though I said I wouldn’t, I’m going to do a second run within the next couple weeks. These ones will still cost $5, but I’ll be painting each cover by hand. Yes, this is totally insane, but I can’t really afford to do another run with the color covers and I don’t want to just go black and white, so there you have it. You can still order them now and I’ll send them out as soon as I’ve got ‘em. If you just can’t wait, I think Microcosm still has a few of the old ones available. (And hey, while you’re over there, feel free to leave a nice comment about me! Or a mean one, whatever, measure it in inches and all that.)
Last three diary comics, plus a few deleted scenes are coming up within the next few days.
