Introduction
My two new e-comics (available for 99-cents each on the iBookstore) were experiments on a few levels:

1. I wanted to see if I could create a worthwhile comic quickly, rather than endlessly laboring over it (like I do with the images in my graphic novel Tonoharu.)
2. I wanted to see if reading a comic could be a pleasant experience on a smart phone-sized screen, if you took the limitations of the device into consideration when you created the art work.
3. And finally, I was curious to see what effect offering the work online for free would have on sales.

I’d like to think that all of these experiments have been relatively successful, but the one that I’ve been the most pleasantly surprised by is the third one.

I started selling the two e-comics on the same day. For one of them, The Kameoka Diaries, I put almost 90% of it online for free beforehand. For the other, Young Men of a Certain Mind, I’ve never put any of it online at all.

I sort of figured that Young Men of a Certain Mind would outsell The Kameoka Diaries, since the former was 100% new material whereas the latter only offered a bit of original content. Much to my surprise (and delight) the opposite has happened. The shared comic has always outsold the unshared one.

Now I’ll admit this is hardly a scientific experiment, and that “correlation does not imply causation” and all that. But the thing is, I like to share my work. And to know that doing so doesn’t kill sales, and in fact may help them, is great.

So I’ve decided to try sharing Young Men of a Certain Mind as well. I’m going to put the majority of it—80%—online for free, and see if that helps/hurts/doesn’t affect sales. I’ll be doing it in four parts which will go up every week, the first part of which is this one.

So without further ado, here’s the first 20% of Young Men of a Certain Mind:

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Part Two will be up next week sometime.

Or you can buy the whole thing right now!
It’s available on the iBookstore (in HD) for 99-cents:
[ Direct iBookstore Link ]

And for those that don’t have iPods and iPhones, it’s also available in print for $4.95 postpaid in my store (residents of North America only please):
[ MY STORE ] (Young Men of a Certain Mind is at the bottom of the page)

As always, you can follow me on twitter or subscribe to me on Facebook as I’ll announce any new comics there. Thanks!