EDIT: I just wanted to point out that Megagear handles both domestic AND international orders!

First things first - we have posters up at Megagear! Please check out Hawk’s rants for more details. And a HUGE thank you to Fred and Sarah for helping us out with this opportunity to sell through their store.

Next on the agenda: that business from yesterday. Yeah, it sucked. Yeah, it put me in a bad mood - it would put you in a bad mood too. But … from here on out, that’s something we’ll be handling internally, so it’s doubtful you’ll hear anything about it in the rants. We’re here, after all, to add a smile or a bit of laughter to your day - so that’s what we’re going to do. I’ll return to shenanigans with the help of my good friend, Orly the Owl! Say hi, Orly! Or … you know … whatever it is you usually say …

I forgot to mention this in my previous rant. Right now, all we have up in the store are the Eve posters. We have been selling the posters at cons. So if you couldn’t make it to any of the cons we attended, now is your chance to purchase a poster.

Is that all we’re selling? Nope. We will start adding shirts and the power bandanas after we talk to the printer. But it will take time, so please have patience.

I want to give a HUGE THANK YOU to Fred and Sarah for letting us join their store. Together we will take over the world! Right Fred? eh eh eh?

EditOk, I admit, the money part was a bit of a stretch. However, the bottom line is he didn’t ask us for permission.
—————————————————-

So apparently a reader went ahead and printed our comics through LuLubecause he got tired of waiting for our book. Ananth basically sums uphow we feel about it, but I feel like clarifying a few things too.

Let me make something very clear. This reader didn’t have ourpermission to do this, and neither did LuLu.

Applegeeks is NOT released under GPL Licence.
They should NOT have printed without our permission.
They do NOT have the right to print our work.
They MADE MONEY from our work, even if it was ONE book.

Few people might think this is okay. So let me paint a picture foryou. Looking at Applegeeks Map, about 4400 people read our comics all over the world. Now what if each of those readers went ahead and printed a book through LuLu. What do we get in return? Nothing. LuLu ends up with the money. We’re not greedy, but we’re certainly not okay with someone else profiting off of our hard work.

Yes, I’m upset about this. A couple months ago Ananth and I found out a company in Greece used our wallpapers as covers for their notebooks (one of the reasons I cut back on creating wallpapers). A month ago I found a website that used an Alice picture as part of their webdesign - no credit was given on that website. Now I see this, this is getting ridiculous. Is this what we get for sharing our work online? It’s one thing to print stuff out on your printer. Hell, I printed a few ofother artists’ artwork on my own printer, but you don’t see mebragging about it online.

You know, I thought I would start the week with wonderful news. I wanted to create this wonderful news rant about how we’re reopening the Applegeeks Store through Megagear. We joined forces with Fred, andwill start selling our merchandise through his store. But what Ananth showed me was just a slap in the face. We try to do respectable work in order to make it available for our readers. We never ask for money without giving something in return, and we don’t try to rip people off by selling junk. We provide a lot of free entertainment by creating these comics. What publisher would be interested in Applegeeks if a bunch of people were just printing their own books by a company that doesn’t care is something has a copyright? Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sure they do care but only if they get any complaints. But I’m sure that wouldn’t matter since they already took the money, printed the book and gave it to the customer.

How about showing some fuckin’ respect. Kids these days. Sheesh.

So I stumbled across this a few minutes ago …

Reader blogs about Lulu printing up a copy of Applegeeks #1-141 in TPB format

(and in case the site goes down/is taken down: PDF of blog)

We are not happy at all. I’m going to be very clear right now - we’re not Little Gamers. They are very fucking cool to release their book for free, in a PDF format like they did a few months ago (and I admire them for it) - but we don’t do that. As much as Applegeeks is for fun, we take it very fucking seriously. We put a lot of work into this project. We provide it for free on the Internet. Printing them out at home, all of them, or putting them up in the office, we don’t have a problem with that. But this is different. At LEAST have the decency to ask us for permission before doing something like this - and if you do it, ask us before you use our material as an example on your site. But no … this person went ahead and printed a book through a publishing company. Which, of course, brings me to the next point.

What the fuck are you doing Lulu?

“Please note that Lulu is not a publisher, but instead provides users with tools to publish their own content. Because Lulu is not a publisher, we do not review work published through our site. We do expect all content to be consistent with our Member Agreement and reserve the right to remove content we deem to be illegal or inappropriate.”

Oh, yay, so no one has to take responsibility. Nice.

I am way too tired to put up with this crap. Good night everybody.

Make sure to check the website tomorrow for big news….rather the beginning of something new. =)

Ok back to work for me.

AIM 11:23 AM 11.12.05

Hawk: when i get the chance…which is never…i want to do a big color version of that batman and catwoman
Ananth: That image looks great .. I’d love to see it in color man.
Hawk: the idea was to put superman on the other side
Hawk: but he didn’t come out right
Hawk: so i drew catwoman instead
Ananth: … you mean … standing like Catwoman is … ?
Ananth: because …
Ananth: …
Hawk: …
Hawk: yes!
Hawk: you didn’t know
Hawk: superman has the hots for batman
Ananth: hahaha

So I missed Lost last night! But I managed to grab the episode and watch it during lunch today. No spoilers, don’t worry. All I can say is - god, FINALLY. The show got back on the fence … after a series of decidedly slow episodes, there was finally some action. I got that feeling of suspense and excitement that ran rampant during the first season.

The next episode is going to tell the story of the other survivors, and how they were picked off by The Others. I hope this doesn’t mean that we won’t see the main cast for a while, but I’m excited to see where this goes nonetheless.

Wikipedia has a fantastic article about Lost.