Spotlight on John Kovalic and distribution strategies

John Kovalic is the hugely talented and popular artist and writer behind the gaming phenomena Dork Tower, the comic Doctor Blink Superhero Shrink and Steve Jackson Games’ series Munchkin.

Web comics were one of the first thriving internet communities. Long before Facebook or Bebo the internet housed bustling forums where artists, writers and fans discussed each new episode, blogged, linked and started to accrue significant traffic. Many of the communities which offered free or cut price hosting to web comics (often in exchange for banner displays) survived the dot-com crash and are still going today. Kovalic’s Dork Tower isn’t the only web comic that’s made it from online to the kudos reaping status of in print – this author still has copies of Tycho and Gabe’s Penny Arcade kicking around in his flat.

John Kovalic’s RSS strategy is driven by a genuine appreciation of the blogging fan base he enjoys and by the willingness to let gamers enjoy his insightful art for free – and it is also a very clever strategy.

Simply put, Kovalic allows the daily updates of Dork Tower to be given away for free. Fans do not even need to make the drip to Gamespy, who host the comic, to read it. The full comic strip is available via RSS and fans can read it in Google Reader, Bloglines or on blog communities like LiveJournal where users can add RSS feeds as ‘friends’. There is an element of honour in the ‘viral marketing’ strategy here (a strategy which keeps Dork Tower on most gamers’ lips) as each daily update as a call to honour in which gamers are asked to buy the book or simply shop at Warehouse 23 – Steve Jackson Games’ retailing website. John McHahon (FuzzFaze) the enthusiastic blogger who complies the RSS feed even gets a credit and a plug for his blog at fuzzface00.livejournal.com.

The music industry is beginning to copy this strategy. We have artists like Price and Radiohead who’ll give their music away free and concentrate on the more lucrative touring business. Just a quick scan of the web turns up insightful comments on the strategy, we’ve the PhD student Valentine Zacharias, the media students of We See The Light discussing the trend and even sites like the NY Daily News and Jose Martinez pointing out that Police’s reunion tour was 2007′s top earner.