So i finished book one of Amazing Superteam and created a web based CD of the comics for distribution with some bonus content and a link to my comics on line. It's easy to burn the CDs and give them to people i know but i'd like to make them available to my fans on line and i can't afford to mail CDs to everyone who wants one. So i was thinking about using a bit torrent of the ISO file. How many of you are familiar with or use bit torrent software? I'm trying to get a feel for how prevalent torrenting is with people to see if this is a viable option. How many of you know what an ISO file is and how to burn it to a CD? thanks for any input.

Bongo

I don't use BT because it takes a millenia to download things, and i don't know how to use torrents.

Direct download is superior, and quite a few webcomic sites offer that service. Also there's a site called WOWIO that does when you're looking for-you get paid to apparently, but i'm not 100% sure

No idea on how to solve your problem, but I just thought I'd drop in to add to what Skullbie said about WOWIO - as far as I know, it's only available to Americans, which might put a damper on things.

WOWIO is definitely an option but if I remember right they have some sort of deal that makes them exclusive in that you have to be accepted before they'll do anything with your comic. That's what I remember, but it's been a long time since I looked into it so I could be wrong.

Bit torrents are great if you've got a huge file, music or a program but they're really too slow to be of much use for anything else. I'd just suggest putting a S+H price on the CD's. Low tech has always been best for me, but I'm sure there's probably another way. I just don't know it.

Quick note on Wowio: I haven't checked but I'm told that now they've moved out of Beta, their payout has been reduced for new comics placed with them (from 45 cents per download to 25 cents per download). Existing Wowio users are also banned from offering more than this to new people they sign up.

Could still be okay but it's worth noting that Wowio is no longer as attractive as it was originally.

Torrents are only as fast as the number of people seeding the file. The more seeders there are, the faster a downloader can download. However if there are only a handful of seeders then the download isn't any faster than it would be normally. And if there is only one seeder and he goes offline or something, that's it, you have to wait til another seeder comes on to get more of the file. You will probably need to keep seeding it (keep a torrent software open in the bg when you are on the computer)

On the other hand, it doesn't cost you anything, it has the possibility of being faster than a normal download, and torrenting is a pretty common way to get files nowadays.

I dunno anything about iso files, sorry :) I've seen downloadable comic archives that use exe though...

thanks for the replies. i have looked at WOWIO but didn't like it because you have to sign up to download the content and they have no information in their help section on uploading content. i assume the content will have to be acrobat files and i don't have that program. i don't want to make people sign up for something to get my content. they should just be able to download it for free. and it looks like iso and torrent has it's own problems as well. possible slow downloads, people not knowing what torrents are or how to use them or burn ISO files. i'd spend a ton of time doing tech support for them. so until i can find an easy and free way to distribute i think this is on hold for now. :(

You could simply put it into a rar file and upload it to for example Rapidshare and just share the link to that. Or to mediafire. Not sure how long mediafire keeps files up, but on rs they remain for 90 days since the last download.

The thing is rapidshare makes you wait up to a minute before starting the download (depending on the size), the file cannot be bigger than 100mb and at some locations it could be very slow or even unavailable (since some providers block it entirely).

You could also make a .cbr file (super easy to make)out of your webcomics to distribute or sell. There's tons of cbr readers and the best part about them is that the files look good and the cbr reader loads quickly.

ISO is a CD Image, but I wouldn't recommend it since it requires a Virtual mounting program or to burn it to a cd in order to view the content (or other stuff that people don't normally have). I would put the content of the cd in a RAR/ZIP for online distribution.

the rapidshare suggestion is great, everybody is using it these days.

Ever tried edonkey? it's like torrent but is easier for certain things. To distribute a file you just put it on your edonkey shared folder. Although I don't see torrent/edonkey as a good way to distribute your stuff, people use it to download stuff they've already heard of.

Paying for a hosting is not an option, is it?