I’ve had enough.
Enough of maintaining four websites, uploading comics to six different places and selling next to nothing. My first inclination was to end everything but the Elderberries and consider myself lucky to still have a cartooning job.
Fortunately, cooler heads have prevailed. There will be cuts, but not to any strips. We’re scaling back and getting rid of inventory… and some websites.
Here’s the current 411:
Websites
The four websites of the Fake Rockstar Universe are being scaled back to one. Only this blog and the pages of www.fakerockstar.com will remain after October of this year. What about all four FRS comics, you ask? One made up word: GoComics.com. As of this Monday, August 17th, the ONLY place you can read new Barkeater Lake, TOBY, Robot Satan and Greene With Envy will be at GoComics.com. The Elderberries is there as well, but also available in papers around the globe. The folks at GoComics have made great improvements to the navigation and interactive… uh, ness… to their site. Plus, I receive a percentage of ad revenue and subscriptions to their myComics service, a $.99 per month service that allows you to compile a home page of all your fav comics, view archives and receive daily emails of strips.
This will greatly reduce my workload, as I will no longer have to maintain the individual sites, blogs and updates. I’ll have one place to upload the strips and you’ll have one place you can read them. Win/win!
Store and Merchandise
These are terrible times for retail and the FRS shop is not immune. We still owe vendors, and have had little bite in our recent pre-sales. We have to stop and reduce inventory, before anything new can be added to the store. The two recent T-shirt pre-sales sold a total of 3 shirts, so we will NOT be printing the “Captain Procrastination” T, nor the “TOBY, Robot Celebrity” T.
We’re bummed about that.
The pre-sales of the now-two-years in CHPMNK Militia and one-year in third BL collections aren’t fairing much better. We need at least 100 more on each to pay for a decent run of books. We’ll keep them up as long as it takes, so no worries. Those who ordered will see their books at some point.
Beyond this, we have slashed prices shop-wide. All print (save the pre-orders) has been cut in half and we’ve upped the Barkeater grab bag of strips to 5 random strips for only $35. These actions are all in an effort to salvage a business and get rid of as much inventory as possible. There will be no new products for sale until we can greatly reduce our inventory to near-nothing. With the big move to NYC coming, we’ll have even less room to store books and shirts, so your future orders of these bargain basement deals will be helping us on several fronts.
Greene With Envy
The latest comic strip to grace the FRS.com pages will begin in it’s new home from the beginning. We’re completely rebooting the strip from start, for those in the GoComics world who aren’t familiar with the strip. (Re)launching on Monday, August 17th, we think Greene With Envy will soon join TOBY and Barkeater Lake as a fan favorite.
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Please know that we are trying to find a way to keep all the comics you love going in the face of financial adversity. Each sale, each donation and product out the door means one more step in the right direction. With the help of the GoComics community and our loyal fans from years past, we can make Fake Rockstar, LLC a comics and comedy juggernaut.
That said, I would like to personally thank everyone who has purchased something, sent an email and commented with support over the last few years. I’m very excited to join the ranks of GoComics and Universal Uclick on a full time basis and I know that this change will be good for us all in the future.
Cheers and cheap beers,
- Corey “FRS” Pandolph
