The long, hard road of self-publishing a web comic

Every morning, as I sit down at my desk with my morning coffee, I indulge in a tiny pleasure. I spend 20 minutes ambling through my favourite online comics.

On 4 May, though, my coffee tasted that little bit less peppy. Jonathan Rosenberg has taken an indefinite hiatus. Goats, which follows its characters hapless attempts to save the universe from being accidentally rebooted, has been running since 1997. Rosenberg, in a heartfelt message to his fans, is throwing in the towel and planning to find a "real" job.

There are thousands of online comics on every conceivable subject and in every imaginable style. A lack of artistic talent doesn't stand in your way as long as you make up for it with clever gags.

Xkcd is just a series of stick-figure drawings that even the most untalented child could do. Randall Munroe, the writer, makes up for it with his tremendous ability to convey scientific truths vividly and his obvious compassion and good humour. Dr McNinja is the tale of a doctor, who is also a ninja, and his arch-enemies are pirates and is drawn in rich and beautiful imagery. Dinosaur Comics features the exact same three-panel clip-art and only the dialogue changes. Wondermark is the rearrangement of 100-year-old satirical comics from old newspapers, scanned and recreated in new panels.

It's all fabulously silly stuff and my mornings are richer and more relaxed for them.

But Rosenberg's story tells you the flip-side of the humour. Of people who convert university, or high-school, hobbies into full-time work. None of these comics charge for access and rely on hosting advertising and selling merchandising, like T-shirts and books, to make a living.

Of those thousands of comics only about 30 earn sufficient to pay their producers. And these are small teams; comics produced by one or two people at most. The smaller subset that have transcended these limits, like Penny Arcade, have done so by forming an industry around themselves.

Compare this to the way in which some of the world's most beloved comics have been produced. Asterix, by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, has sold over 325 million copies since it was first produced in 1959. Georges Rémi's Tintin has sold over 200 million copies. These comics supported vast industries and the services of massed teams of letterers, copiers, researchers and artists. Beyond them were the reproduction houses, distributers and book shops.

Selling 200 million books employed tens of thousands of people.

Xkcd employs, at most, 12 people directly and indirectly, and receives well over 10 million visits a month.

It used to be that graphic design students set up a website to showcase their talents in the hope of getting a job. Then some became successful without getting a job and the floodgates opened. Soon the industry that so many had hoped to break into was starting to collapse.

Widen your gaze from comics and suddenly you can see why the mainstream publishing industry is running in terror before the deluge of the online storm.

The Huffington Post has turned its creator, Arianna Huffington, into a media-superstar. 63 million visitors a month visit the news and opinion service which employs only 60 people and relies on the free contributions of 3,000 writers. Writers who include the current US president.

This doesn't mean that the Internet is the death-knell for the established press or writers. Quite the opposite. Never has there been such a hubbub of conversation, debate and information.

Instead newspapers, writers and artists are all reinventing themselves; shortening the distribution chain and using technology to improve efficiency. Thousands of people who used to have supporting roles are finding their jobs no longer exist.

While this is encouraging news for prospective journalists who thought their careers were over, the restructuring of entire economies along such efficient lines should cause your morning coffee contemplations to taste particularly acrid.