So far this site has been about the community coming together to share information and help lift each other up and so far it's worked pretty good. After five months there are almost two hundred of us coming here to look things over, offer our opinions and share our knowledge. But lately we've been running short on content. We've cut back on articles and the staff here, already very busy folks, have stepped up to try and help out. I've been incredibly busy (and sick) with the relaunch of my site (next Monday... thank goodness) and I've been slacking here, no doubt. I've asked you, the community to contribute but alas you must be pretty busy as well. It is con season.
So I have a choice to make here. I could simply keep the doors open and let content go up when we have it. Dragon is doing an excellent job with the reviews and Amanda is occasionally bringing us excellent interviews. Also
Webcomics.com is doing pretty well. Five months in and
Brad has delivered everything he promised he would and then some. My hat's off to him. But for me, and I cannot state this emphatically enough, this was never a competition. And I still feel strongly that a place like Webcomics Community, a place where webcomics creators can gather and talk and improve and share for free, away from the eyes of their readers is both needed and important. So I've decided to take a bit more active role.
I've avoided doing this for a lot of reasons. I never wanted this site to be about me. I'm not a professional webcomics creator. I don't have years of experience in the field. I certainly haven't gained much success yet and almost everything I've learned about webcomics has come from other webcomics creators; webcomics creators like you. I've also been told I come off like a dick sometimes despite my best intentions. So there isn't much upside to me trying to lead the conversation here. But I'm going to try and do it anyway, because I think it's important that someone does.
What I would ask of you my fellow creators is to not simply accept my words as truth. I'll always do my best to be true to you, but I'm just one person, one relatively inexperienced person with one opinion. I'm offering up my thoughts to encourage discourse as an experiment here. I want you to challenge me, if you disagree I want you to tell me why and if you think what I'm saying is factually wrong I would love to see some proof. I think you will find that while I defend my opinions strongly I will happily admit I'm wrong when presented with proof.
This article is not a conscience colonic or some sort of mea culpa. It's a manifesto for how this site, or at least it's front page will proceed for the foreseeable future. From now on whenever I have an interesting topic I feel like talking about rather than simply posting a short teaser on the forums and linking I'm going to offer full blown opinions on the subject in the form of front page articles. Hopefully this will lead to more in depth explorations of the subject. I've been talking about Webcomics 2.0 as a sort of tag line for the way things are changing in webcomics today and I think it will serve as an excellent signpost for when I get up on my soap box.
The first cannonball I'm firing is on the subject of professionalism. I'm going to come right out and say it. A lot of folks have been chattering on in webcomics for a really long time about how important it is that we look professional (I'm guilty of it myself). "I want my booth to look professional," "I want my book to look professional," "I need a site redesign so it looks more professional." Yet I can't think of a single instance in which professionalism has provided a proven benefit to a webcomicker I know. I can't.
And I often find myself considering the stark difference between the perception of professionalism and the reality. Some harsh truths I believe in.
Many of the most popular webcomics in the world have butt ugly websites.
Many of the most popular webcomics in the world have lousy art.
Many of the most popular webcomics in the world have absentee creators.
Many of the most popular webcomics in the world don't appear to have very business savvy creators.
I'm not suggesting that there are popular webcomics creators who are showing up drunk to business meetings and hitting on the receptionist before telling a racist joke to the company rep they are negotiating a merch contract with or something. What I'm talking about here are the many things that we, as smaller, aspiring webcomickers seem to latch on to as examples of professionalism.
And I think we are ignoring what is really professional about almost all of the worlds most popular webcomics. The one thing they all seem to have in common.
Consistent updates of engaging content.
I've seen very popular webcomics at conventions with ugly, poorly organized booths; selling merchandise that amounts to the kind of garbage that fills town dumps from sea to shining sea. I've seen those creators stammer and blush as their fans come up to them and gush inane and often vacuous sentiment about how the comic effected them before buying those aforementioned trinkets by the armload. I've seen cosplay and cakes and gifts and hugs and oh my lord the picture taking.
And nobody cares that their website is done on a simple wordpress template. Nobody cares that there is a typo on page 82 of their first book. Nobody cares that they can't draw or maybe couldn't draw for years but are now pretty good. Nobody cares that they are in black and white. Nobody cares.
Recently I started playing roleplaying games with a group on Sundays and I mentioned a very popular webcomic whose creator I am friendly with. The dungeon master immediately piped up and said "yeah I used to read that but I don't anymore." I was shocked. This comic seemed right up his alley and while I was prepared for him to have not heard of it I was not prepared for him to be a former reader who had rejected the comic. When I asked him why, it wasn't because the website has an ugly horizontal scrollbar (it does at least at my resolution). It wasn't because there was a printing error on the first book (it did the creator told me all about it). It wasn't because of donation requests (this site makes many). It wasn't the dead links on the site or the fact that almost nothing is sold beyond the aforementioned books. He said, "the story isn't being told fast enough and there's only one update a week. I got frustrated waiting."
Consistent updates of engaging content.
Many of the biggest comics around had the benefit of starting years ago when there was venture capital and not much competition for idle eyeballs on the web. There were fewer and less complex firewalls and a lot less monitoring of on line activity in the workplace.
For most of us that moment is gone and we are now in the land of Webcomics 2.0 where everyone is shouting and only the loudest get heard. Where everyone is looking for an edge whether it's a fancy website or the latest share application. And edges are important. I believe that it is those edges, the little things we do to increase our site functionality or engage our fans that will define the Webcomics 2.0 era. Because the days of just getting a car on the track are over. Now, to further the racing analogy, you have a thousand different details to fine tune before you can hope to compete in the high speed classes.
But you aren't going anywhere without an engine. And the engine that defines professionalism in webcomics and drives everything that goes with running a webcomic as a business is consistent updates of engaging content.