Intro
1. Vigorous marketing
2. An invisible blockchain
3. A resale marketplace
4. Variant cover joy
5. The ability to easily read the comic you purchase. An App.
6. Community
7. More use cases
Conclusion
Transcript
Hey everyone, Greg here.
This week we are taking a quick detour from the read-through of “Comic NFTs - an Ethical Approach” to address a DM I received. It was a message that became even more relevant this week.
A while back, a very knowledgeable comic industry insider reached out to talk about my view of Comic NFTs. To paraphrase, he said, “Hey, I love your passion… but based on my experience, it's very hard to sell NFT Comics in the indie market.”
If I am being totally objective and data-driven, he is not wrong. This is especially true now during the general downturn in the economy, but the difficulty selling independent comic NFTs existed even in the midst of the NFT hype cycle. Even for mid-tier publishers, this was the case.
But why? How is it that we had yet another comic NFT provider, InterPop Comics, pull the plug on their project in the same week that VeVe instantly sold out 10,000 copies of a $20 Amazing Spider-Man #129 NFT? By my back-of-the-napkin calculations, both DC and VeVe (selling mostly Marvel and Disney digital collectibles) are on target to move well over a million dollars worth of digital comic collectibles this year. (1 And no, they aren’t faking things.) What are the big players doing right? And can it be replicated for independent artists?
In this episode, I want to explore a few of the characteristics of the most successful NFT sales platforms and discuss the implications for independent comic creators through the lens of a reality check for my own upcoming comic NFT project. For purposes of this comparison, we’ll assume that the actual quality of the comics offered is excellent to remove this very subjective variable from the equation.
So what are the best platforms doing right?
1) They market vigorously to the correct audience.
Sadly, the electronic-pitchfork-wielding NFT mob in the comics community has ruined the digital collectible experience for the traditional comic collector. A comic fan could show off a pet rock with Ironman painted on it, and they’d be met with the equivalent of digital high-fives, but mention you just bought a comic NFT on Twitter, and you’ll be met with courses of “ick,” “You’re an idiot,” or worse. I found this unwarranted product bigotry so frustrating I wrote a book. But education takes time, and when every article in the industry press about NFT comics is accompanied by digital side-eye, it is hard to expect regular comic collectors to push past the peer pressure and go out of their way to try and buy something new.
There are exceptions, but the current buyer of comic NFTs is not the usual Wednesday warrior you’ll find in a comic shop, but rather much more likely to be an NFT collector first.
This is both an opportunity and a curse for comic publishers.
On the bright side, it means most comic NFT purchasers represent those new comic readers the industry has been seeking for years. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a collector say something like “I wasn’t really a comic reader until I discovered comic NFTs.”
The hard part of this is that the usual sales triggers are very, very different. For example, big comic industry names mean very little. You’ll get “Todd McWho?” or “Alex ‘what was his name again’ - that’s really great art.” Creator name recognition only goes so far.
This is where the big two have a huge advantage. The most popular comic NFTs tend to involve characters and/or plot lines that have either been on TV or in a movie. If a character has appeared on Underoos, it will likely do well as an NFT.
Given that your project is going to be a tiny fish in a huge pool of NFTs[], you need to market the heck out of each and every NFT you drop. If you’ve ever run a Kickstarter campaign, you are well-trained to promote your NFT project. You just need to do that in the right places.
Consider the aforementioned Spider-man drop. Over a period of about a week, VeVe hyped the drop of this single digital collectible with:
An extensive blog post.
Five Twitter posts (all echoed by their Discord server bot)
A Discord “drop Information” post with links and data specifically formatted for Discord.
A YouTube video specifically talking about this one drop
and a live 43-minute long drop party on Discord on the day of the drop that included prizes.
There may have been more, but these are the ones that got my attention. All of this for one comic!
This campaign was not specifically targeted at comic fans. Their Twitter posts only include the non-comics-specific hashtag #CollectorsAtHeart. Almost every NFT project of note has an accompanying Discord server, a familiar home for NFT fans, and VeVe uses theirs extensively. And until very recently, they posted their blog posts on Medium, another platform used extensively by NFT projects and collectors.
This sort of effort should sound familiar to comic creators who’ve run Kickstarter campaigns, as it is very similar. Creators need to know who is likely to buy their product and then make sure those potential buyers have multiple opportunities to hear why their comic is awesome over a fixed period of time. Each Comic NFT drop needs to be an event and the successful NFT platforms are great at making that happen.
As an independent comic creator of a series that was never intended for television or movies, I need to acknowledge that The Lump Sum Saga will never ever be as successful as an NFT as Spider-Man or Batman. Fortunately, it doesn’t need to be. The benefit of NFTs for independent creators is the ability to take existing content and create a new high-margin product that adds incrementally to the bottom line without costing much to produce.
I also know that I can emulate much of the marketing behaviour exhibited by successful comic NFT platforms. Running a Kickstarter has been great training.
2. An invisible blockchain
Imagine for a moment that you go into your local North American comic shop, pick up the latest issue of your favourite comic and go to pay.
The shop owner says, “That will be 1400 rubles, please… and, let me see… that will be 318 additional rubles for me to accept this sale.” Ridiculous, right? But this is what many comic NFT projects are asking non-crypto natives to endure when they need to purchase anything with cryptocurrency. The actual sale and, depending on the blockchain used, the gas fees involved are complicated for customers used to purchasing physical comics with cash or a credit card.
The best comic NFT projects make sure that there is a way to purchase comics using FIAT currency, typically US dollars, by way of a credit card.
Nft.DCcomics.com presents everything in US dollars and expects payments via credit card. And while they do take a transaction fee per sale, it is presented on the invoice, much like the service fees users see when they buy concert tickets.
VeVe takes a slightly different approach using in-app gems to pay for comics, and purchasing gems is very similar to in-game purchases for Candy Crush or Duolingo. These gems are purchased in the app, and then the gems themselves are used to purchase comics. Since most users have a credit card or bank transfer system that recognizes the Apple app store, this has the added benefit of reducing the likelihood of a credit card purchase being declined.
On both of these platforms, unless you were told there was a blockchain involved, a casual user would not know it was.
As an independent creator, this is currently much harder to implement, further limiting your potential customers to crypto natives. The available financial tools and how intrusive gas fees are vary widely per the blockchain involved. For example, several chains, including Flow, Polygon, and Ethereum, are supported by plug-ins on Shopify. This makes it technically possible to sell NFTs on that platform using traditional currency, although it looks like this would only be viable for high-value sales as the overhead is high.
For my own project, to keep my project expenses to a minimum, I have to surrender on this one. I will be selling to a crypto-native audience which, admittedly, will limit my potential audience.
3. A resale marketplace
One of the key differences between Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, versus your local comic shop is the ability to bring in a comic and potentially sell it to the owner of the shop. This resale aspect of the collector experience is critical, and as such, the best comic NFT platforms include a marketplace.
Unlike a local comic shop where you can only sell to the owner, on an NFT marketplace, you post your comic for sale at your asking price, and other users willing to purchase at that price will buy it.
The availability of an active marketplace can make or break an NFT project. Once again, this is a place where the choice of Blockchain can make a huge difference. DC and VeVe both have their own marketplaces is built-in to their sites, and I believe this is the ideal situation. For independent creators, having a resale marketplace for their comic NFTs usually means relying on an external, generalist NFT trading marketplace.
Selecting a Blockchain that actually has a lot of people trading on it is critical. Currently, Ethereum continues to host the most active trading community. Over the last 24 hours, analytics show there have been 21,931 buyers on Ethereum, 9964 on Solana, & 9646 on Polygon. And on Tezos, the chain that hosted InterPop Comics? 295. It doesn’t matter how awesome your comic shop is, if the mall it is in gets no traffic, it’s tough to make a go of it.
So where am I likely to launch my comic NFT project? Likely on WAX, even though the 24-hour total for that blockchain was only 4849 buyers. Why? It comes down to available tools (one of which will allow me to set up a marketplace on my own website) and the type of buyers on that chain. This is where Funko sells. Ya… selecting the correct blockchain is complicated and a bit of a leap of faith.
In summary, the best comic NFT projects have a way for collectors to sell what they buy.
This is also probably the best place to talk about taking money back out of the system. It’s no good to sell a comic for $1000 if you can’t get that money into your bank account. The best sites provide a way to do this that makes any cryptocurrency “foreign exchange” transparent in the background. For an independent comic NFT creator, you will likely have to rely on your customers being able to get money out in their local currency via a crypto exchange. That said, the backend technology for this is constantly advancing as the crypto and traditional financial systems continue to merge.
4. Variant cover joy
If you have ever collected trading cards, you know the joy of ripping open a pack and finding that extra special holo card or that player that you’re missing from your set. The best NFT platforms tap into this source of joy by selling their comics with variant covers of different rarities, either in a blind box format (where you buy a comic but don’t know what you have until it is revealed) or in packs of multiple cards that are revealed after you “rip” the pack (usually shown with animation).
Thankfully tools to do these kinds of drops are available to independent creators on several chains, so this is something I will definitely be doing with my own comic NFT drop.
This “you don’t know what variant cover you are buying until you own it” feature works synergistically with a collection’s marketplace. It provides a place for collectors to sell the variant covers they don’t need and buy the covers they didn’t get.
5. The ability to easily read the comic you purchase. An App.
Many people unfamiliar with NFTs assume they are just JPEG images but in actuality, they can be used to distribute many kinds of digital content. Comic NFTs are just a distribution vehicle for actual readable comics.
VeVe has an app, and DC gives owners the ability to read their comic NFTs on their website. For my own collection, I will be distributing PDFs and providing an online way to download the PDFs. I wish I could create my own iOS or Android app for this purpose, but I just do not have the resources.
If you’ll allow me to be a tad salty for a moment, this is one of the places where I’m super frustrated with the peer pressure around NFTs because there’s absolutely nothing technically stopping an app like Panels, Omnibus, or the new GlobalComix app from incorporating the ability to read comics delivered as NFT‘s. The only reason someone hasn’t already done this is because of the potential anti-NFT peer pressure backlash. Ironically, this gives the advantage to the big two when independent comic creators could be leading the way.
6. Community
The best comic NFT platforms build community. Once a core group of NFT enthusiasts is on board, their support can offer a safe haven for traditional comic collectors interested in NFT digital collectibles. The core of this community is usually a Discord server.
The best example of this has to be the ODDKey.com discord, where Todd McFarlane and other Spawn artists are frequent guests in a rich and supportive “small venue” type environment.
The community is the best place to build hype for upcoming Drops. Both VeVe and DC have a pretty regular drop schedule (Usually 9 am PDT, Tuesdays and Thursdays for me), and there is always anticipation in the servers around these drops. It provides a place for collectors to ask, “Whatcha get?” and celebrate getting a unique variant cover.
Fortunately, it doesn’t cost much, depending on how you do it, to launch a Discord server, so setting one up is well within the reach of independent NFT creators like me.
7. More use cases
One of the unique features of comic NFTs is their ability to be used for unexpected purposes - the proverbial “But wait. There’s more!”
Have a look in my book for more details, but a few examples include:
Tickets. Todd McFarlane held a small group pizza party at San Diego Comic-Con for holders of a particular ODDkey comic NFT.
The ability to tie specific discord roles and private sections to holders of specific NFTs
Discounted and/or gated online shopping experiences.
Profile pictures (e.g. Jim Lee’s cowl profile image on Twitter is an NFT)
Most of these sorts of extra uses are well within the reach of independent creators, and I will definitely be investigating options for my own comic NFTs.
Conclusion
So I started this episode with the question, “So what are the best platforms doing right?” The long answer is all of these things and more.
However, I should point out that even projects that check off all of these boxes are susceptible to unforeseen market forces and competition. I remember when IBM dominated the PC market, and Kodak was the camera company. There are no guarantees; it just takes one bad decision to torpedo a company. Ask Blockbuster.
When I think about my own comic NFT aspirations it’s encouraging to know that I have control over at least half of these points. I know I will not be able to compete with the big two, but in the end, that doesn’t really matter. All I am looking for is a way to make just a little bit more money from each comic I create so that I can pay my collaborators to make the next comic. I am confident that, done thoughtfully, I can make that happen.
So that’s it for this week. I am calling this the end of season one of “Comic NFTs - An Ethical Approach.”
I’m gonna take the month of May off from regularly posting publicly to Substack in order to concentrate on a number of important things, not the least of which is my 40th wedding anniversary on May 14.
So I’ll talk to you again in June. Thank you so much for listening.
Why is Selling an Independent Comic NFT So Hard?