Shadowgirls' New Existence

[JGray]

Shadowgirls recently announced it is transitioning what it calls hobbyiest to professional. Not in terms of quality (the art's always been pro quality, I think. The writing nearly so.) but in their approach to how they do webcomic business. Page layout, a task master to keep them on schedule. The whole shebang.

I'm curious to see what everyone thinks about what they've said and how they've said it.

Here's the link to the blog entry announcing it. http://www.shadowgirlscomic.com/news/dont-call-it-a-comeback-2/

[Rob]

Announcements like this are often more about hyping yourself up to believe you are doing the right thing more than anything else. You're drawing a line in the sand and throwing the gauntlet down and daring yourself to fail. Which is cool in it's own way. I mean, if it helps them move to what they think is the next level then good for them. That's their mojo.

But I doubt the fans will care all that much. They either like the art and the story and enjoy whatever level of access they have with the creators or they don't. The end product will either resonate or it won't.

However, I don't and will never agree that there is only one path to success in any business. And what works for them may not work for others. Additionally, what they consider a "professional" level of commitment may not necessarily get them anywhere either. And what they consider a "professional" level of commitment may still seem like a hobbyist ethic to others. A whole lot of stars have to align for someone to hit it big.

It doesn't sound like they are making any functional changes to their schedule either (other than committing to not miss deadlines and be late like I assume they have been in the past). Which leads me to believe that most folks won't really care much about this at all. Probably the biggest commitment a comic can make is to promise more content than they were delivering before on a reliable, regular basis. That is usually a big deal to existing fans and will often give you a nice bump with new ones. But reorganizing where your fan and guest stuff goes on your web page and committing yourself to delivering more reliably what you have already promised really isn't a change that affects your users much.

Behind the scenes things may be completely different. But as I said, these sort of announcements are often more about hyping yourself up.

[KidGalactus]

Eh. It doesn't mean much. People are always saying words.

It's the do's that they do what matters.

If these guys need to tell everybody that they're big brave dogs to feel like they're being taken seriously, then ok. Go for it, if it works for you. There's a thing, I think, of feeling like you need to keep telling people that you're a professional or very good at something, not so much for them, but for yourself.

Oh, hey there Rob. Yeah, what Robby said.

[Miluette]

From a reader's perspective, I never care about posts like that. Cosmetic changes are nice, but their website wasn't hard to navigate or poorly-structured before...there just wasn't much other content other than the comic itself, and that was fine, since they were consistent with the comic at least.

A while back I made a post on both my comics saying I was trying to focus more. Also that I would try to update more, and that was it. In the background I was doing a lot more. I mostly only felt the need to post to let people know I wasn't dead and that I was working on other things in tandem with two webcomics that would move up my priority tiers. Otherwise I'd not have said anything and held back the news posts for actual comic updates.

But yeah, nobody cares about how a comic does business, whether or not it's a hobby; so long as it's entertaining, readable, and relatively consistent, it's fine. Now, discussing this kind of thing on forums as we do here, THAT works, because people here are interested in that.

So, re: "We're stepping it up"; "ok"