Ah!, speaking of merchandise.

I once read an essay about the idea of, if you have a successful artistic creation, should you exploit it financially, for example by selling rights for someone else to find new income streams (Bill Waterson famously never did.) The essay argued that even if you are primarily motivated by art and not money, you should for the reason that money being the motivating factor for so many activities in our society, doing so is the only way to keep your creation relevant in society, which would then mean that your creation would keep being exposed to new people, as opposed to live in the minds of ever older people and die with them. I would like to to find the essay and reread it, but I could never find it. It kind of rang true.