I have been wrestling with issue for awhile now and I am still undecided. I have been tossing around the idea of cutting my comic Godlings off at the second to last chapter in order to stimulate my book sales. Godings is on www.lulu.com. So basically I am thinking of making the last chapter of my book only available through the book.
This idea does sound mean to me, but in the same sense I would like to make some compensation with my book. I mean videogames give demos to promotes sales of there full game and movies promote their pictures through trailers. So my Godlings run on Drunkduck could be seen as a long preview of the book. Also the last chapter of my book is almost three times as long as any other chapter in my book. i just don't know. Would anyone on these forums be inclined to buy a book version of a given webcomic...seeing as they most likely would of read the whole thing for free before hand. Any thoughts on this subject

I would only buy book versions of a comic I was a fan of, and easily viewing it online is better than paying money for a comic I don't know then being disappointed with it or something.
You can always try it then switch back if it doesn't work.

On further note checking your page I see it's 30$. @_@ Dang man...

Yeah it is close to thirty, but it costs me $19.00 to make. so I am only making $5.00 extra. It is 292 pages hardbound. I don't know...maybe the book is more for me than my readers. I think the books look great. The funny thing is you have a chance to read 80% of the book on Drunk duck. So you most likely would know if you would like the book enough to buy it. I am just trying to give people incentive to get my book by making the ending only in the book. I might do what you said in trying it for awhile and seeing how it goes.

Instead of keeping your readers from the ending (and probably saving yourself a lot of pain when they beat a path to your door and hang you up by your toenails) wouldn't it have just been smarter to include something special and unique, yet not necessary to the actual story, in the book? Like a short epilogue, or prologue, or even a short story or some bonus artwork. I know it might be too late to do that, but it's something to consider, and it works out better most times than taking vital story pieces and hiding them from casual viewers.

I honestly don't think many people reading a webcomic will be willing to shell out $30 to read it unless they really, really love the author.

I mean, if your goal was to make a money, why bother going the webcomic route?

Judging from the number of responses I see on most of your pages, I would suggest you need all the attention you can get to promote your book. It's one thing if you have thousands of people viewing & a whole bunch of people responding to your book --- then I could *maybe* see cutting off the free pages to get people to buy the HD. But, judging by the number of responses you seem to get on average, you'd only be stripping yourself of free publicity.

Also, I would SERIOUSLY suggest dropping the HD approach. Maybe make it 2 or 3 SC collections. There are very few books by amateurs for which I would come close to slapping down that much green.

While your passion is obvious, I just don't know that your work is strong enough to pull in the kind of sales you would like, especially at that price tag. IMO, I would suggest going with single issues through a less expensive POD publisher, & offering single issues through Wowio. If the singles generate enough sales, then you might give some thought to collections.

I love print. Theres just something about a printed book, that a page on a screen cannot get ya. Having said that, I also love web comics, because it gets you instant feedback, that you can use as fuel for your creative drive.
I planned on Engine, being either a comic series, or a collected novel years ago. Truthfully, I had no idea what drunk duck was a month ago...and kind of just stumbled on it by a whim.
I know I didn't want to show all my cards, so to speak, as far as the artwork went. So, I left out lots of action stuff, so that the collected novel would have at least some new stuff in it, that wasn't featured on drunk duck. The pages left out didn't effect the major points of the story, so me leaving them out didn't hurt the storyline.
You can always try it that way. what is your budget? LuLu seems really high....at least, to me.

I think cutting off the ending to your story online so that it was only available in the book would do more to alienate your readers than boost sales. Not a lot of people are going to be willing to pay $30 just to read the end of the story. I think that extra content is the way to go, personally. My book has 25 pages that were online, one of which gets an extra story page for the print version as well as ten pages of new material exclusive to the print book. This works slightly better in the format I use, however, since everything is set up as a series of short stories.

Also, you should look into finding a cheaper printer. A much cheaper printer. SIPS Comics is the best I've found so far, although I'm not sure they do hardcovers.

Thanks for the opinions everyone. The biggest complaint I see on here is that it is to expensive. So lets do some math:)

The first suggestion was to sell the book as individual issues
Since a normal comic book issue is 24 pages...then my book a 292 pages would equal about 12 issues.

Lets say I sell each issue at $2.00
My book is actually $26.09...but with shipping and handling everyone rounds up to $30.00.
So lets add shipping and handling to the issues
The lowest shipping rate is $3.00
That makes each issue $5.00 total.
12 x 5 = $60.00 dollars total for the whole series...considering you would buy each issue individually.

or

12 x $2.00 = $24.00 + $3.00 = $27.00 for the cheapest method to buy them.

Another example was to sell three softback books at 100 pages each.

Let say $10.00 for each issue.
3 x 10 = $30.00 + $3.00 shipping = $33.00 total
or
$10.00 each with $3.00 added equals $13.00 x 3 = $39.00 total

So does $26.09 plus $3.00 equal $29.09 sound so expensive for a book like this.

I could do the book in soft back, but I decided on a nice quality book since I knew going in I would not sell many because I am unknown. I don't expect big number sales. Maybe a few sales.

Regardless of printer...this book is really inexpensive. At least I think so.

Unless you have the resources to fund advertising that will reach anywhere near as many people as you do posting it online for free, I'd say pulling it off the web will more than likely hurt your sales. Nobody picks up a comic they've never heard of - I think the assumption that everyone who reads a comic online would buy it if they didn't have free access to it is faulty. The question is, how many people have bought your comic because they were exposed to it online? And as ttyler says, webcomics aren't really an adequate substitute for print, at least not to a lot of people. Me, for example, if I really like a comic, I want to own a print copy - digital files don't cut it.

The funny thing...the more I think about stopping the book the worse I feel. This was an idea I was tossing around for a bit. I do agree with everyone here that pulling a stunt like this could really alienate my readers. I keep thinking what if someone did this to me what would I feel like. Actually if I read the entire webcomic and loved it...then I would buy a print copy to own it in print. I am with ttyler...i just love printed books. I think I will just keep advertising on my webcomic and finish the book. I am still figuring out the whole webcomic versus printed comic audience out. I still don't think it too expensive though :D Thank you all for your suggestions and opinions. They do help:)

I dunno about the hardcover, that seems a little too high end for an independant comic. I think you should have eiether a lot of smaller issues (20-40 pages). Or one big book (like you have) with an extra or alternate story...something with extra materials. Depriving your readers of an ending is kinda mean. I can see a cliff hanger between print issues but not leaving out a vital part of the story.

Well, there's a few things I could say about this,

One. You could get a cheaper publisher (like Ka-blam, they're pretty cheap from what I've heard)

Two. You could include special content only available in the books.

Three. Maybe make really flashy covers?

I'm not sure. Haha.
Hope that helps! :]