TWCL

[drowemos]

So I make webcomics. And I have gotten pretty good at it. Now by it I mean the technical process of creating a webcomic. I am not making any statements about the quality of said webcomics I am just saying I am good at getting them made. I have built up some contacts with artist, developers and sundry other people need to get a webcomic done. I have experimented with almost every technique for getting money from webcomics with varying success. And most importantly I have the excess cash needed to get a webcomic jumpstarted. I am pretty good at making webcomics.

Right now I have 6 webcomics in various stages of production. 5 of which are written by me and the last one written by a good friend. And this is the problem.

Lets jump over the part of how incredibly narcissistic it is thing the world wants so many comics from one person. It’s fundamentally a bad business move. Diversity is strength. The more view points there are the more of an audience you can reach. Add to the basic fact that I am not that narcissistic and I know for a fact that there are many writers out there that are far more talented that I am.

Also on a personal level having so many comics means I don’t have the time to focus on any one of them very much. My writing suffers when my attention is divided like this.

So I took a step back and looked at my catalog. There are 3 projects that I could kill cutting my commitment down to 2 comics, which is about my level of narcissism. That would free up the resources to get a couple comics made by other people. I could ask the writers to work on spec with a 50/50 split of net profits. The artist has to be paid up front but that is the nature of the beast.

So I start work on this new business plan. Look at what the costs would be and consider how I will sort through applications. I figure I will post an open call for writers. Read through the proposals and pick the 2 best to be produced. Then I can do an artist search based on the scripts and within a couple of months get these new webcomics up and running.

And after that I can get my suit pressed for my court appearance when some @#$ that I rejected sues me for stealing his idea.

There’s the rub…

If I am collecting comic ideas from other people and judging the best of the best some of them are going to be similar to each other or something I was planning on doing. So I make a comic with people talking and doing things and next thing I know I get sued because it’s “just like” the Mr X’s comic “People talk and do things”. And Mr J is sueing me because while his comic doesn’t have people doing things it does use the letter “a” just like my comic.

Granted the litigation would be groundless but you don’t need grounds to file a law suit.

Now I could say “Well I have the best of intentions I am sure the people on the internet will see that and not cause a problem”. I could say that but frankly I would be too distracted by all the unicorns flying out of my butt.

And open call for submission is an open call for harassment by the most self absorbed and confrontational of the net. Ultimately I am setting my self up as some authority to judge the quality of people work. That’s going to hurt people feelings and people are going to feel wronged.

True the big publisher accept submission but they have a team of lawyers. Something I can’t afford. And you know what, even then, most of the big publishers have a lot of restriction on submissions.

So I am stuck. I could just go to my friends and make their comics but that undermines the diversity that I was looking for in the first place. I want to help people out but I am afraid to take that step because I know there are snakes out there waiting to strike.

Is there a way to accept open submissions and still protect myself legally?
If I force people to post their idea on a public forum would that cover me?

Any ideas?

[mooncity]

Well, two points come to mind.

First, I think you're too hung up on legalities, which vary by country, and you may have submissions from outside your own. A lawsuit is something that would be so far down the road (if ever) anyway, so you're kind of putting the cart well before the horse. Plus, I'm not sure it's a realistic thing to worry about unless you're blatantly pulling a Goldman.

Second, why not just concentrate on your one or two comics first, then branch out from there? Sounds like you're sort of spending your time thinking about how cool the castle will be. As a result, the castle isn't getting built because you don't have time, so you're still living in a stone hut.

Before you can get people interested in what you're doing, you sort of have to perfect what you're doing. You can tell everyone about your big dreams/plans/etc., and how awesome they are, but unless you have something to show them, most people will not share your vision.

There are no keys to instant overnight success, sadly.
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Mooncity
Reversing the polarity of the neutron flow since 1976!


The comic strip that never was.

[Lady Tygry]

Familiarize yourself with copyright laws and go from there. You're probably already aware that one can't copyright an idea but here's a decent article to get you started:

http://www.mbbp.com/resources/iptech/protecting_ideas.html

Here's the important bit:

A classic publishing case concerns a writer who delivered a detailed proposal to Billy Wilder’s secretary and told her he expected to be paid for his ideas. When Wilder eventually produced a film with similar incidents, the court found an implied contract and made Wilder pay. A recent non-publishing example concerned the “Psycho Chihuahua” cartoon character that was proposed to and rejected by Taco Bell. After Taco Bell’s advertising agency used a Chihuahua in a new ad campaign, the court found a contract breach. In short, if a publisher (or producer) agrees to pay, either by saying so expressly or by acting in a manner that implies such a promise—e.g., accepting and using an idea after the creator states that her disclosure is conditioned on payment for use—most courts will recognize and enforce this contract.

Two clarifications are needed. First, many courts have held that a business is excused from its promise to pay if the idea lacks novelty, or originality (some courts require “general novelty” others only novelty to the recipient). A classic case concerned Louis Soule, who told the Bon Ami company that he knew how it could increase its profits. After Bon Ami agreed to pay if the idea worked, he told them: Increase your prices. Bon Ami increased its prices, and profits, but refused to pay. Soule sued and lost, the court holding that implicit in a promise to pay for an idea is that the idea be something the recipient didn’t already know!

Second, several courts have held that when a company solicits an idea, there’s an implied promise to pay if the ideas are used. If a publisher expressly agrees to keep your ideas confidential or to pay for their use, or a publisher approaches you and invites you to submit ideas, or you tell a publisher before submitting that you expect to be paid for your ideas and the publisher invites or accepts your submission without objection, then there’s a good argument that the publisher must pay you to use your ideas (provided that there is enough “novelty” where the courts require this).

Your conditions would probably look a little something like this example:

http://www.owenscorning.com/submitanid/docs/IDEA%20SUBMISSION%20TERMS.pdf

If you want to be able to compensate someone for his/her idea upon use, I'd advise consulting a copyright lawyer.

As mooncity mentioned though, you're putting the cart before the horse. With nothing to represent your capabilities, these stand-alone terms will seem shady.

[LukeSurl]

Cart. Before. Horse.

No, that's an understatement. You're polishing and realigning the wheels of the cart before the horse has even been born. Actually I'm pretty sure the horse's mother hasn't even been born yet. There's an argument that the species we know as "horse" has not yet evolved in this metaphorical universe.

Webcomics don't make money as soon as they hit the internet. It takes years before they stop being loss making entities. And there are no lawsuits where there's no money involved. You could annoy people, and they might send you messages on Twitter, but no-ones going to drag you in front of a judge to try and take the $17.40 you made off PW ads in the first year.

Make sure you comfortable with why you're doing, and that you can defend yourself ethically. But legal problems? I very much doubt it.
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[Zoe Robinson]

As a law student with a very strong interest in copyright law, I'd like to make a couple of points based on English law. English law is the basis for most common law jurisdictions, so a lot of this will apply if you're in the US, Canada, New Zealand, etc.

First and foremost, you cannot copyright an idea. You can copyright the implementation of that idea but the buck stops there. If it didn't, I'd be getting my arse handed to me by Paramount pictures for my space opera stories and also by the BBC for the time I ran a strip about a time-travelling meddler in other peoples' business.

Secondly, in order to get anything more than a restraining order for alleged copyright infringement, you have to be able to show that you lost out somehow thanks to the infringer's actions. In webcomic terms this is likely to be a demonstration that the infringer made money specifically from the material that infringes your copyright. That's not going to happen in terms of webcomics, because most don't make money.

It's true that there's a writer out there who can't get one of their books published because a fanfiction writer made a big to-do about how the book infringed on ideas they introduced in a fan fiction but that's at the extreme fringe of the law and to be honest, unless the fanfiction writer really has a cut-and-dry case (in which case, boo hiss to the author for stealing a fan's ideas!) then the publisher is urging too far toward caution.

Just because you run a competition doesn't mean you should be too scared of 'stealing' ideas. Ideas are ten a penny and aren't copyrighted anyway. If you're that scared of fall-out, either don't run the competition or get independent volunteer judges to vet the entries for you.
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