Your webcomic... a good or bad thing for traditonal publishers?

[cgmiller89]

I have just recently uploaded my comic "Spoon." This is a comic I have all the intentions of turning into a 4-6 graphic short anthology that I'm going to send around and try to get published when totally complete. Do you think having these shorts up on tapastic and webtoons would look good to a publisher if it had a decent following or be sort of a deterrent for them, seeing as my comic is already out and seen for free. Just wanted some opinions on this. I have seen some of these publishers sites specify that they don't mind if its been published digitally, but not all of them mention it.

I want to know how a publisher would look at it, how it would affect their judgement when it comes to wanting to publish my stuff. Thanks in advance to any insight anyone would have!

Also here is my comic if anyone is interested.

Spoon | Tapas

[DiegoPalacios]

If you want to have the digital version free and sell the printed version you may need an incentive for your readers to buy the printed versions:

For the printed comics you can have some extra content not available in your webcomics. That can
encourage your online followers to buy it too. Not only for the love of paper.

You could also have exclusively printed stories, like a prequel.

[cgmiller89]

That's a good idea there. I could easily do that with an anthology by not including a story or two on the webcomic side

[bear1]

‘Sarah’s scribbles’, ‘Fowl Language’ and ‘Lunarbaboon’ have a big online following which probably helped them to get (a) book(s) published with Andrews McMeel
I think ‘Books of Adam’ and ‘Owlturd’ are getting a book by them as well.

Of course, I do not know the details how these authors got their contracts, neither do I know if they created some extra works for their books or if those were all comics they already published online.

However, I’m convinced that a large following is a selling point when you pitch to publishers. After all, it’s an indication that your work is appealing to a sizable audience and could do even better with a proper campaing behind it.

In other words, go ahead and self publish online first.
If you can’t successfully pitch it to publishers, self publishing is still an option

[cgmiller89]

Yeah I was kind of under that impression too that showing you have a successful webcomic is a proof of product so I would think it would only help. I just didn't know if any publishers looked down upon webcomics and wouldn't want to be associated with them. I think its because the graphic shorts I'm writing and producing are much more along the lines of "literary" work and aren't like traditional webcomics anyhow.

I didn't know if some more "highfalutin" publishers that work in the more literary realm look down their noses at such things as webcomics. I guess only time will tell.