In this second portion of the interview, I asked about the ways Pete earns money from the comic, including Amazon and other referrals and his premium subscriber program, “Defenders of the Nifty.” I also asked about his feelings about or experience with e-books. Previously: Part One Me: How did you decide to start the Defenders of the Nifty program? Pete: There again, that’s been going on so long I can’t remember exactly how it started. I guess it just came from the idea of, instead of just offering donations, kind of giving a little bit back to people who donate because, with the way I do business, it’s very hard to have merchandise bring in that much money because, well, for one thing, I’ve been ages behind on books; I’m trying to fix that. And the shirt design, maybe it sells, maybe it doesn’t. If it doesn’t sell then I have two good designs to make up for the one that didn’t work out so well. It’s kind of tricky in that way. But with the Defenders of the Nifty membership, all the money goes straight to cover my expenses and pay me for the comic. The money doesn’t go to pay for the shirt materials, the merchandise, to put the stuff in the box and ship it—it all goes directly to the strip. So in that sense, it’s the single best way to support the strip and it’s been the biggest support. I think it’s like anything else in Sluggy, it just happened kind of organically. Just a concept that went through and worked really well. Me: So does Defenders account for most of your revenue now? Pete: Currently it’s most of my revenue. Of course, as I said I’m about seven years behind on books. Once I get some of those books out, maybe that would come into the running. Advertising has never really been a significant chunk of the money. ...