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The main obstacle with webcomics isn’t getting them published. Even if you don’t have a lick of money to spare, you can score some free site space and start posting your creative output to the world.
No, the main obstacle is actually getting the world to notice you. If you care about that sort of thing. I’d say webcomic creators do, at some level, care about that, or we wouldn’t be putting up our stuff for public viewing.
But this is where it starts taking some effort, and quite possibly money, to make things happen. Sure, you can just concentrate on creation and wait for Neil Gaiman or Warren Ellis or some similar person of influence to happen across your comic and like it enough to introduce you to their audience, but that’s a bit like hoping to win the lottery. Actually, it might even be more like hoping to win the lottery with a random ticket you found in the gutter. You should probably at least be buying a few chances at the jackpot, right?
That’s a lot of what advertising your webcomic can feel like. You put out a ping on the Internet’s radar and get some curious souls wandering by, a few of whom might end up becoming readers. There’s some comics that come pre-equipped with some sort of professional marketing strategy attached, and that certainly helps, but even then the Web is littered with the bones of comics that made a big splash, only to fade away. In some cases it even feels like it was the actual event of being noticed on a large scale that caused the breakdown. They won the lottery but just didn’t know what to do with all the attention. I know at least one friend who pulled the plug on his comic precisely because he started getting a lot of interest and couldn’t reconcile that with his ultimately reclusive nature. I know another who has had to (at least temporarily) take his comic down because he got popular enough that a company sent him a cease & desist order over use of certain trademarks, and now he’s got a fair use case on his hands.
I don’t think we would necessarily suffer from those circumstances, but there’s another nagging feeling I wrestle with… what if we don’t actually deserve to win the lottery? If our current resolution is to err on the side of having fun with the comic rather than stressing over it, should we even be attempting to promote ourselves over those innumerable other struggling creators out there who update more often, most likely with much better story and art as well? Look at us right now, taking not one but two weeks off for the Holidays, when others out there are still powering through. For shame!
This is a reason I’ve (at least for now) abandoned any thought of bugging the bigger news/reviews sites with our existence. If they find us independently and think us worthy of attention, that’s one thing, but my past experiments with actively reaching out have not gotten much result, and at this point I’m back to where I feel bad trumpeting Zombie Ranch if we’re not being “serious” about it. Poking at them would probably just legitimately invoke the question, “Wouldn’t your time and energy be better served getting a buffer built up?”
Then there’s even the subject matter problem. At a “how to get noticed” panel at a big convention last year one of the panelists said he won’t look at any submission that has zombies. Period. Or there’s the time awhile back I had considered submitting us to The Webcomic Overlook, since even El Santo’s negative reviews tend to show he’s put some time and care into them and usually have some constructive criticism to offer. I shied off. Firstly because it was around when he said he was no longer going to take suggestions of what to check out, and secondly because in his review of Dead Winter, he flat out stated “When I want to read about zombies, I don’t want anything more than over-the-top action and copious amounts of blood and guts.”
So, yeah, not a good sign for floating his boat, there. I admit, he’ll probably never find us on his own. Neither will Newsarama, or The Beat, or any of those juggernauts (or even semi-juggernauts) of geekdom– and if they do, they’ll probably click through a few pages at best before moving on to something more polished. But, that’s probably okay at this point. We have some people reading and enjoying, willing to follow along at the pace we’ve set. It’s like having a mom-and-pop store with some regular customers who are understanding when we want to close up early for Christmas, because they like our product and the atmosphere it’s delivered in. Spending time and effort on some massive promotional push doesn’t seem like the right thing to go for under those circumstances.
Mind you, it doesn’t mean I’ve completely stopped advertising and promoting… even mom and pop stores rely on more than just word of mouth… but sometime in the latter part of 2013 is when we’re planning to put together our first ever Kickstarter in hopes of being able to fund our first trade paperback collection. So as a New Year’s resolution, I reckon we’d best save some of our energy for that.
6 thoughts on “Promotional considerations”
Frisian
Sounds very reasonable to me. I’ve followed Zombie Ranch more or less since 2010 and I really like the fresh and ironic (“If he’s bit, you must acquit”) take on zombies. But I don’t know if I’d bought it as a book, especially with shipping costs much higher due to living in Europe.
Publishing ZR first as a webcomic and kickstarting it later should give you most of the freedom you’d want as an artist (well, the format has to be printable, after all) and a smaller financial risk regarding print.
The Crossed (http://www.crossedcomic.com) takes the concept to the next level: one part of the story as a webcomic, the other parts in print only.
alexander hollins
with my own new comic about to launch, I’m right there with you on it. It really seems to be word of mouth and mention of a comic by another comic i read that does more than anything to get me to check out a new comic (how I found you!)
Hmm, back in the day (late 90’s early 2000’s,) a lot of comics did april first crossovers and similar. I wonder if anyone is organizing such this year?
Another big issue is metrics. How can you really tell what brought people over, and how many of them stayed?
BTW, imo, your comic is NOT a zombie comic. It’s a modern western, with zombies as furniture. just as a comic with rocket ships in the background is not necessarily sci fi.
soul devourer
Seeing as I am a developing author myself, I can see how hard it is to get noticed. After reading this, I’m not sure that I want to notice. I may just be fine with publishing my stuff on writing sites and getting a real job. If anyone has anything to say on the matter, then please e-mail me at tylerdozy@yahoo.com
Clint
Now by all means I don’t want to discourage others from promoting themselves to the extent of what they’re comfortable with, this is just where I’m currently at with Zombie Ranch. We didn’t start this with any formal plan or business model, or any intentions of getting a book or movie deal… heck, Dawn even still calls it our “test comic” where we basically are free to make all our newbie mistakes. I don’t know if three years and counting qualifies as newbie anymore, but certainly neither of us feels like we’ve learned all we need to know. Much room for improvement.
That said, “test comic” could imply we plan to scrap it at some point, and I have no plans to do that. We certainly seem to have struck a chord with enough people that I have hopes to put that book together now, which I completely agree would have been a tough sell back in the day, not to mention the distribution problems. The webcomic format solves the distribution problem and also the problem from the buyer’s end on if they want to invest in the unknown… everything’s pretty much here for free, so what you see is what you’ll get.
Which is why some creators are either in the model The Crossed uses or moving to it, because they feel like they’re giving too much away for free. Deciding that we’re not approaching this from a bottom-line business standpoint may mean we’ll never make a living off it, but it also means we don’t have to hide away parts of the story we want to tell behind a mandatory purchase. The worst that happens with a Kickstarter is it doesn’t get funded, which would be disappointing but not a catastrophe.
Ballookey Klugeypop
Very thoughtful and well-reasoned. I think you’re making the right decision for yourselves. I know one printed comic I read has been on indefinite hiatus due to the creator dealing with anxiety issues (possibly from “oh hey, I have an audience? And they LIKE me?”) I’m perfectly willing to give creators all the time they need to work on what they have, but the ugly thing I see is people pestering this person’s facebook page with angry demands for updates. (the Internet? Angry?) I’m like, that ain’t helping! So there’s something to be said for developing a buffer and being careful how you proceed so that the project remains fun for you.
Clint
There was a recent Cracked.com piece on Internet Entitlement which had this pithy quote to offer:
“What isn’t justifiable is people who bitch about free content being late. Those guys are assholes. If you see anyone doing this, kick them in the ear…”
I’m not a big fan of creators who just leave people hanging without any sort of word on what’s happening, but particularly since I started a regular project of my own, I’m much more forgiving of the occasional missed update… and I can’t recall ever harrassing someone about it.
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