What follows is an explanation of the changes you’ll see here on the site: not only what we’ve done, and where we plan to go, but why.

Modern Tales was launched with the lessons of the dotcom bust in mind: “low expectations” was our mantra. Yes, our subscription-based business model cut us off from the majority of readers; but it also kept us from having to spend money on bandwidth. In an era when bandwidth costs were ridiculously high (and advertising sales were in the toilet), having a small, dedicated audience that was willing to pay its own way was exactly the perfect plan.

Then everything changed utterly, as happens on the web every five or six years or so. Services like Google AdSense made it feasible for even the smallest publisher to make some money with advertising. Bandwidth prices collapsed in the wake of the dotcom bust. My first reaction to this change was to launch Webcomics Nation, a sort of hybrid between a portal and a collective, where each cartoonist is given the keys to manage (and the responsibility to manage) his/her own business. But that left Modern Tales hanging out there, rudderless, and more and more difficult to justify every time one of the MT artists chose to move over to WCN (which happened a lot — with my encouragement, I have to admit). Low expectations could not possibly cut it anymore — they were, in fact, hurting us. It was time for a change.

The challenge was to shift the business model to match the new realities of the webcomics world, and our own higher expectations of the kind of success that is truly possible today, reaching out to new readers, while still maintaining and rewarding the loyalty of our thousands of paying subscribers with new high-quality exclusive content, and, at the same time, reclaiming the magic that had made Modern Tales special to begin with.

So I commenced to ponder.

Putting aside the question of business models, the most unique aspect of Modern Tales is that it operates as an edited filtered, high-quality collection of work. Other popular portals are edited by committee, if at all. The popular loose collectives are “edited” by virtue of the fact that all the cartoonists on the sites are friends with one another. None of these sites give the feeling — to me, at least — that there is a unifying vision, an editorial mandate. While it is argued often that, online, editors are not needed, I’ve never subscribed to that particular theory. Yes, it’s a great thing that anybody can publish anything at any time. Yes, many great webcomics that would never have made it past an editor are big hits, earning money and acclaim for their creators. If there were only edited portals, that would be a bad, bad thing indeed — webcomics would be no more interesting, or exciting, than traditional media. I am completely in agreement with that line of thinking. But, given that webcomics is dominated by non-edited, self-published media, as great as that is for the vitality of the medium, there’s room for at least one site, maybe a small handful, that are run along more traditional magazine-style lines. An edited portal provides a point of reference for new webcomics readers, who aren’t already familiar with the scene, as well as for big-time webcomics fans who are always looking for more great stuff to add to their extensive bookmarks. It allows all readers to dive into webcomics that they’re likely to enjoy, without having to read through 4,000 duds first. It’s a place that can stand, not for some business model or another, but, simply, for quality, first and foremost and solely.

There. That’s the real key to our success. As an edited portal, Modern Tales has a more cohesive point of view, and a higher caliber of content, than the general webcomics scene at large. That has always been part of our mission statement, but now, with webcomics exploding into a hyper-competitive commercial arena, it is more urgent than ever to fulfill. That’s what we’re carrying forward into our new era.

As you may have heard, we’ve decided to open up the vast majority of the site to non-paying readers, and to recruit even more webcomics to join us on a free basis, while maintaining our tightly-focused editorial mission. You’ll see those new free strips roll out in the coming weeks and months. The new editor for the free section of our site, who will be posting here soon, will have more to say on that subject. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the new Modern Tales, and I hope you tell your friends, who may have been curious about the site in the past, but were maybe turned off by the need to pay.

Don’t get me wrong. The subscription model is not going away. If you are a subscriber, we thank you tremendously much; we owe everything to you — and you can look forward to a fresh set of subscriber-only webcomics coming your way in the coming weeks and months. Subscriptions still make up an important part of our business, and we will continue to take that part of the site seriously. Expansions in the subscription-only part of the site are made possible by the new business model, and will keep pace with the free expansion. I trust that our subscribers will be the people who actually gain the most by this new Modern Tales.

I’ll be blogging here every week, making announcements as they come along. The new editor will also be speaking up shortly. We’ve got a lot in store for you. I can’t wait to show you what!