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A Conversation With Randall Munroe, the Creator of XKCD

theatlantic.com

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Re: A Conversation With Randall Munroe, the Creator of XKCD

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post #13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep: Where did all this start? I was going through old math/sketching graph paper notebooks and didn't want to lose some of the work in them, so I started scanning pages. I took the more comic-y ones and put them up on a server I was testing out, and got a bunch of readers when BoingBoing linked to me. I started drawing more seriously, gained a lot more readers, started selling t-shirts on the site, and am currently…

The important lesson here is that some business models absolutely do work for the particular person. I have no idea what number of pageviews you would need to support a full-time t-shirt selling business. I imagine the conversion rate is frighteningly low. But it really is true that you can make a business out of any sufficiently highly-trafficked website with a sticky audience. But you have to match the costs with t…

And don't forget books! http://breadpig.com/blogs/news/5863073-reasons-to-self-publi...

Re: A Conversation With Randall Munroe, the Creator of XKCD

#22
post #7

"I got email from a bunch of physicists at MIT saying, "Hey, I saw your relativist baseball scenario, and I simulated it out on our machine, and I've got some corrections for you." And I thought that was just the coolest thing. It showed there were some effects that I hadn't even thought about. I'm probably going to do a follow-up at some point using all the material they sent me." God, that is just gold. Randall rea…

You might enjoy Ringworld.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ringworld_Engineers

> ... many fans had identified numerous engineering problems in the Ringworld as described in the novel. A major problem being that the Ringworld, being a rigid structure, was not actually in orbit around the star it encircled and would eventually drift, resulting in the entire structure colliding with its sun and disintegrating.

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