Modern Tales: Call for Submissions

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Modern Tales: Call for Submissions

Post by Greg Stephens »

I decided to cross-post this topic from the Comicon.com message board:
Joey Manley wrote: Modern Tales: Call for Submissions
Effective May 22, 2002

About Modern Tales

Modern Tales is the leading publisher of professional comics on the web. Our cartoonists include some of the leading lights of the independent print comics world, such as James Kochalka, Lea Hernandez, and Tom Hart, as well as webcartooning giants, like cayetano garza, jr. and Scott Kurtz.

Modern Tales' flagship site, http://www.moderntales.com , launched March 2, 2002. In its first two months of existence, the site earned nearly $20,000 in revenues from paying subscribers -- proving for once and for all that people will, in fact, pay for webcomics, when the webcomics in question are of the highest possible quality. Modern Tales' success lies in its low-budget, indie-focused strategy: while other comics-related "dotcoms" were raising millions and millions of dollars in investment capital, Modern Tales' founder, Joey Manley, was plugging along quietly and carefully, spending his own money, and never risking more than he could afford to lose. As a result, Modern Tales is solid, and not subject to the whims of the public stock market, or the greed of VC's (aka "vulture capitalists"). That's also the reason Modern Tales enjoys unprecedented respect from the webcomics community.

Here's what webcomics guru Scott McCloud had to say about Modern Tales on launch day:
Scott McCloud wrote: Five Reasons Why I'll subscribe to Modern Tales

THE ARTISTS. Joey Manley did a great job of finding some of the best webcomics artists working today. And the list has tremendous range, including web comic strip artists like Scott Kurtz and r. stevens; independent print favorites like Tom Hart and James Kochalka; long form innovators like Cat Garza and Derek Kirk; and one-of-a-kind mad geniuses like Jason Shiga.

THE PRICE. Early birds could sign up for just $20.00 a year for full access to what promises to be a fast-growing archive and now that it's launching, the price is only going up a little (probably $29.99) That's barely a dollar per cartoonist. Best of all, if you're shy about a commitment that size, just $2 or $3 per month is a good introductory rate. And they use PayPal, which simplifies things for a lot of us. (Other methods too, I think, but maybe Joey can let us know details on that). And again the new stuff will be free, which is a price I think we can all go for.

THE WORK. With even a little monetary incentive, these artists are going to produce far more work than before. I've already seen Garza's first installment of his beautiful "Cuentos de la Fronteros" and it's his best work yet. I'd pay the sub price for that work alone.

THE EXPERIMENT. Subscription sites have their limitations, but getting something like this to work is a necessary step toward a maturing comics economy online. These guys have been giving it away (many of them for YEARS) and they really deserve some compensation. And Joey Manley deserves our support for taking a chance on what I'm sure will be a complicated and demanding job -- as well as some slack for any bugs in the first few weeks.

ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST. If paying for webcomics becomes a viable proposition, maybe I can devote more than an hour a day to my own. I don't know if I'll be joining MT myself in the future (obviously, this site can only expand so far) but something like it might someday help enable me and the hundreds like me (and you know who you are) to finally go full-time and produce far more of the kind of work that we care the most about.
The next phase: opportunities for cartoonists.

Thanks to the support of the community -- and our subscribers -- we are now prepared to expand the Modern Tales experiment. At a time when other commercial webcomics projects are cutting back or collapsing, Modern Tales is ready to build upon our past success and continue to lead this fledgling industry.

On September 1, 2002 (six months after our initial launch), we will be expanding our operations by launching several new subscription-based websites. While we are not accepting submissions for the flagship moderntales.com site, we are accepting submissions for these new websites. Modern Tales is interested in buying a six-month license to publish your work exclusively on the web. You will retain copyright and trademark and all other rights to your work. A sample contract is available for your perusal at http://www.moderntales.com/submissions/samplecontract.doc , though please be aware that each contract with each creator, and for each website, may be slightly different.

Note: due to our small staff and busy schedule, Modern Tales does not bring writers and artists together. You must either do it all yourself, or find your own team to help you out. We also cannot work with you to develop your concepts. We will not read scripts, or look at artist's portfolios. We only accept submissions of finished work.

We will be accepting submissions for the following sites:

Modern Tales Presents: short stories and long stories with a beginning, middle, and end -- any genre, any style. Full submissions info below.

Single-series websites: individual series which update substantially and frequently (one page a day or more). These are really for well-established creators with strong properties -- properties strong enough to attract subscription revenue all by themselves. Examples: Rumble Girls by Lea Hernandez and American Elf: the Sketchbook Diaries of James Kochalka. Full submissions info below.

Full submissions info for Modern Tales Presents

This is your best shot, if you are a relatively unknown talent looking to be published by Modern Tales. This new site will feature one-off's, short and long stories -- but not series. Anything with a beginning, middle, and end, whether it's one page or 128 pages, will be considered for Modern Tales Presents. Modern Tales Presents is open to works of all genres and styles, from the avant-garde to the traditional, from the least mainstream to the most. The only defining factors are that the comics must be of the highest possible quality, and they must have a beginning, middle, and end.

In order to be considered for inclusion in Modern Tales Presents, please follow these guidelines:

For short stories (1-32 pages): upload the entire story to your website (if you don't have a website, you can get a free one at Yahoo! Geocities. Then send the URL, along with a short (25 words or less) description of the content, to joey@moderntales.com with the following subject line: Modern Tales Presents Submission. (Note: if you do not use this exact subject line, your submission will be deleted). If the website is not working when we check it out, or if we cannot find the comics on your website, your submission will be deleted, and we will not contact you.

For anything longer than 32 pages, upload at least 32 pages to your website, as above, but also send an outline of the rest of the story along with your submission.

Full Submissions Info for Single-Series Sites

If you are an established cartoonist with a popular creator-owned series (print or web), we can help you build a solid business online, with a completely automated subscriptions-based website for your property. You will retain all rights to your creation -- we will provide the website, the e-commerce infrastructure for subscriptions, and cross-promote your series to our current subscribers (1200+ and growing). Contact joey@moderntales.com with details and a brief history of your series or work, and any ideas you have about how this series could work online, as a subscription-based product. If you have not been at the top of the industry for five years or more, please do not contact us for a single-series site (submit a short story idea to Modern Tales Presents instead).

We also encourage everyone to subscribe to Modern Tales: http://www.moderntales.com -- though this is not a requirement for submission.

Joey
www.moderntales.com
Good morning! That's a nice tnetennba.
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