egosideroad

So there's a dude out there who's made a Webcomic App for the iPhone/Ipad. It's essentially an rss feedreader, that lets you input the ones you want, or subscribe to "featured" webcomics. This is his second stab at it, as the first version he put out was quickly shouted down because it was essentially stealing webcomics with no credit to creators.

Now, I am not against any kind of Webcomics App. In fact, I'm greatly intrigued by it. My partner in crime summed it up nicely here, but the gist of it is this:

The bottom line is, something like this could be a boon to webcomics. If people could access all of their favorites in one place, and in turn drive more traffic to their sites, and Id love to be a part of it. The idea behind it is great but the execution is what needs work. If it were to resurface, and I do hope it does, it would need to cover a few basic things to ensure that the app doesnt infringe on individual creators rights.

There would need to be some assurance that any comics content that is drawn into the app would count toward statistics tracking. Because most of these sites rely on advertising, hits and people coming to their site, its important that those statistics are counted.
Creators would have to opt-in, and be able to opt-out. While this will make things less usable for those purchasing the application, creators need to have a certain amount of control over where their content is going. Some dont care, some do but there needs to be a way for them to be able to say so. That being said, if they opt in, and provision can be made in the terms and agreements so that the app developer can let users know which comics are available through the application
The app would need a few features one a limit to how many comics are viewable from one source at a time, (like control over the RSS), a way to implement advertising from the creators (be it from their own ads, or from whatever ad service they employ), and a link back to the site to drive traffic.
Revenue share I dont know how it would work, but if the developer is going to charge for the app, then I think a provision for the profits of it should be directed towards comic creators in some way. This would make the app unprofitable, Im sure but it would probably be the only way to make everyone happy.

So the person in question, Dale Zak has released a new version of the App that addresses NONE of these concerns. My Comic, No Reason is listed as one of the "Featured" comics in the app.

Part of me is really upset that someone is taking my work and is charging someone $1.99 to access it. Part of me is even more upset by the fact that he never once asked if we wanted to be one of his "Featured" comics.

...and part of me is wondering if this isn't a good way to get people to check out my website.

I can't say for sure until I know if the RSS feed he's pulling from us is giving us credit or not, but if it isn't it's stealing our work out from under us. It's one thing for Myself and my partner to offer our comic for free, but that means we need to get by on Ads. Every person that uses an app like this takes away a bit of ad revenue, and really, that's all we got. Coupled with the fact Mr. Zak want's to charge you $1.99 to do it, and I get a little bangry about the whole thing.

So at the risk of promoting an app that I'm really not comfortable with, I'm turning to you, the webcomic readers. Is this something that you would use to read comics? Is it better for a guy like me to just let this happen and hope that it increases the popularity of my strip? It's one thing for me to rant and rave about how I feel, but I want to know how you feel.