Six years ago my graphic novel Salmon Doubts was published by Alternative Comics.

For over a year I shed blood, sweat and tears making this comic, and yet it made me less than 400 bucks. Financially, I would have done better moving to Indonesia and working at a sweatshop. For a long time I chocked up my failure (it’s currently ranked 1,736,726th in sales by Amazon) to the fact I was an unknown, independent comics don’t sell well, and a story about a bunch of fish that all look the same is like giving the middle finger to commercial viability.

Turns out, it’s actually the Internet’s fault, not mine. Someone scanned my comic and put it online for anyone to download and read provided they know how to unpack RAR files and also install Comical, a comic book reader available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. What’s worse, whoever stole my work really did a stellar job, it looks fantastic, which is why you never bothered to buy it! All you free loaders were stealing my hard work and reading it, not caring that you were take food from the mouths of my non-existent children. How can you live with yourself? Stealing and reading my work is a crime! Steal it. Read it.

It’s not all bad though. This finally gives me a way to monetize Salmon Doubts. Lawsuits!

Last year a Minnesota woman was fined 1.9 million dollars for illegally downloading 24 songs. That comes out to almost 80,000 dollars per song. My graphic novel Salmon Doubts has 128 pages, which at 80,000 dollars per page means anyone who downloads and reads my comic owes me 10.25 million dollars. Certainly, a fair price for one year of my work.

I beg you, please download and read Salmon Doubts. Just make sure you get caught (and have 10.25 million dollars) so I can finally quit my day job.

Related posts:

1. Salmon Doubts Profit