Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Sorry to post another non-verse block of text, and my apologies to James for bumping his poem down.

This is just a bit of an addendum to the previous 'house-cleaning/keeping' post, where I mentioned something about us trying to expand and whatnot. We've been offered a domain name and free hosting from Horatio, the founder and head honcho of the Rampage Network (www.rampagenetwork.com), a growing webcomics community. Horatio's interested in digital publishing in general (unless I'm mistaken), so it's not as awkward a fit as it may appear.

Bottom line, someone's offering to host Pedestrian Protection and more or less give it the royal treatment. Right now, we'd be the first of our kind over 'there' (the Rampage Network), but with a decent chance to gather more of our ilk as time goes on (again, unless I'm mistaken). Excellent chance for some more exposure/recruitment, and I don't see anything wrong with escaping the mire of Blogspot's multitude of blogs.

I'm for the move. What do you guys think?

3 comments:

J P M said...

um

YES

please

Gunter Heidrich said...

I'd have no problem with that and I don't deny the benefits of it, but I don't want to jump ship so hastily either.

First I'd like to know what this guy's angle is, what he stands to gain at this point from us.

Second, I'm not sure if it's the right sort of venue for something like this in terms of audience/those that would be interested in poetry to be stumbled upon as easily or frequently even (I have no idea what his internet traffic is like compared to blogspot which while it gives us a chance of catching more varied eyes from a much larger pool does have the drawback of not being dedicated or taken as seriously).

So at the very least I think we ought to keep the blogspot address for awhile since it's costing us nothing as well, to at least see how it goes before totally abandoning it.

It also strikes me that if for nothing else we could use Horatio's site for this digitally published project to dress it up nicely in the fashion of a book similar to something like this:

http://www.fakeproject.com/you_are_not_dead/

sovietturkey said...

It's free. It's philanthropy, essentially. All we need to do is to update and hide a link or logo to the Network somewhere on our site.

No restrictions. No censorship. No requirements of any sort other than the agreement to produce new material with some sort of frequency.

From what I understand, he's willing to host Pedestrian Protection itself. But he's also mentioned the possibility of creating a blogosphere (his words) environment; a network of poetic publications that Pedestrian Protection would be a part of, but which we would also maintain. I still need to clarify things with him, but it would allow us to do what Chris suggested-- host a side project as mirror/affiliate site without just taking it on to the Pedestrian Protection core.

I don't know. I love the Blogspot interface, but it doesn't change the fact that it's hard to find us, here. In regards to venue, we're not going to be lumped in with a bunch of webcomics. We're going to be expanding the 'Rampage Network', evolving it from a comic community to more of a digital publishing company. We're the cliched first step in that direction.

At least that's how I envision it. I told him we're interested (everyone was at least slightly in favor of it, with the exception of Matt, who currently has no voice), so it's going to happen as soon as we work the details out, etc..

I apologize if I'm getting overly noble or idealistic. I feel like this is a significant opportunity. Personally, and I don't know who else here is trying to make a career out of words, I consider this a legitimate chance to establish myself, even if the slightest bit. Being able to found our own brand of mostly, if not entirely independent publication/digital printing press/whatever, is big, as I see it. And that's not to forget or to ignore that the primary purpose of this group is to hone our craft.

So, yeah. Apologies if this comes off as retarded, short-sighted, juvenile, foolish, etc., etc..