Webcomic Promotion: Reach Beyond Comics
by Joey Manley
If you hand some random new non-comics acquaintance a graphic novel, or a comic book, or especially a mini-comic, they’ll often look at you like you’ve just handed them poo. “I don’t read comics,” they’ll tell you. Not every time. But often. If you send them a link to xkcd or whatever, though, they’ll more often than not actually follow the link, and read the comic, and send an email back thanking you (if you read their personality correctly and sent the one comic that they needed to read, which is almost always xkcd, but is sometimes Digger).
In print, comics are their own category of thing. People think you have to be a special kind of person to read and enjoy them. They’re either intimidated by comics, or superior to comics, or both. Not always. Yeah. But often.
On the web, comics are just one more fun thing to look at. It’s all part of “the web,” and people don’t get their guard up so quickly. They go from blog to animated cartoon to webcomic to photo-sharing site to social network and back to blog again, without paying attention to the differences between these things. It’s just one big mush of fun. They don’t feel like they have to be “comics fans” to read a webcomic.
And if you’re a comics creator, that’s great news. There’s a whole world of new readers out there who you can reach now, who weren’t available before.
I see creators who are accustomed to the small press world make the mistake, over and over again, of only trying to find readers within the ever-shrinking ranks of comic book aficionados — even when their work is online. I guess they have an excuse. That’s the world they’re used to.
What really surprises me is when webcomics authors, people who started their careers on the web, make the same mistake.
The vast majority of xkcd’s audience didn’t find out about it on ComixTalk or ComicSpace. They found it on a math professor’s blog, or in the forum for a site about physics, or whatever. Likewise, much of Penny Arcade’s vast audience couldn’t care less about other comics, or even about the comic form of the content: they’re there for the, um, content of the content, the sharp look at the videogame world, and the funny. The fact that it happens to be a comic is secondary to them. I’m not saying that they don’t enjoy the comic as a comic (and it is, almost always, a very enjoyable comic). But that’s not why they’re there.
That’s true of just about any huge hit in the webcomics world. There aren’t enough people who self-identify as “webcomics fans” to sustain a meaningful business — but there are enough people out there who will read a webcomic, if it fits their other interests.
Even if your webcomic is supremely “comic-booky,” superheroes, say, or angsty personal confessions (to go to either extreme of the comic book world), there’s bound to be a non-comics-oriented community out there on the web who might find it interesting. You just have to look a little harder. And the nice thing is that those people won’t already be committed to Morrison and Quitely (if your comic is a superhero comic) or Chester Brown (if your comic is about your chronic … um … addiciton to … ah … yeah, never mind). Your comic will stand out more, in those communities, than it might in one where lots of people already read lots of comics.
So what are you waiting for? The plan here is obvious. Get your head out of the comics community sites like this one, at least for a little while. Get yourself out there into the rest of the web — or even the rest of the real world. Don’t be a pest (that should go without saying), but find the communities whose obsessions intersect with the subject matter of your comic, and participate in those communities as a useful, helpful, friendly face. And eventually some of them will follow you over to your comic. And then more, and then more. Maybe. If you do it right. And if your comic is great.
Which it is, right?
If it’s not, then you should stop worrying about webcomic promotion and work on that first.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Okay, but what if you’re not making a comic with a niche focus?
October 13th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Requires more creativity in promotion, but can be done. Give me an example of an existing webcomic without a niche focus, and I’ll tell you the communities I would hang out in, if I were the creator.
October 13th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Well, there’s this new comic on WCN that just started. I think it has potential, but the artist seems a bit of a flake.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:06 am
So on a very quick reading for promotional possibilities (will do a deeper reading for enjoyment later — I like the work of that flaky artist you’re talking about):
I see “school of magic.” This makes me think Harry Potter fans might like it. There are gojillion sites where those folks hang out. I might (if it didn’t make me feel too dirty) write a Harry Potter fanfic or two, submit it to the places where such things are submittable, and include the url to my comic at the bottom.
I see an art style that alternately reminds me of Windsor McCay’s Little Nemo and Tezuka in his Astro Boy mode. There are, I believe, major motion pictures coming out about one or both of those — right? I’m sure the funders of said major motion pictures have pumped up all kinds of community action on those properties. I could be wrong about Little Nemo. But wouldn’t it be grand? As an alternative: the Where the Wild Things Are communities. Not the ones about the book (that’ll be too parent/child) but the ones about the movie (which will be adults with nostalgia for the book).
Those are just quick ideas.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Oh, and fans of the book and broadway musical Wicked, if you engage them as a real person in an on-topic way, and happen to have the link to your comic buried somewhere in a sig file. Or maybe even Wizard of Oz fans, though they’re likely to be more single-minded in their focus.
October 13th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I think a lot about exactly this kind of thing when it comes to my web comic.
Theater Hopper is about movies. So it should have no problem attracting people with an interest in Hollywood or pop culture, right? No so fast.
Theater Hopper appeared (for free) for almost a year at the popular movie blog First Showing. And while I am aware of a few people that started coming to my site after the comic was taken down from First Showing, it didn’t bring a whole lot of traffic to me at the time.
I’ve tried sending press kits to prominent movie blogs along with free books to pursuade them to cover Theater Hopper to no avail. I feel like I’m hitting my head against the wall trying to get the online movie community to take notice of my comic.
Potentially I could join the forums of these groups and promote Theater Hopper that way. But, to be honest, that takes a lot of time and I’m not that patient.
I don’t mean to poo-poo the suggestion, Joey – because it’s a very good one (diversification is key). But it’s not a magic bullet, either.
October 13th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I don’t believe in magic bullets at all!
Making a living in webcomics is hard work. There are a lot of much easier ways to make a living. It should go without saying that anything I suggest here is not going to work instantly or easily, and that some of these ideas will not work at all for some people (but will work for others).
These “webcomics promotion” posts are in response to people who felt my post last week, where I suggested that everybody make a great comic and make it popular, was too vague. Once you get into the details, you get into the slog and the toughness and the frustration and the effort. Yup, yup, yup. No argument here.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Just reading the suggestion makes me feel unclean.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
The main point of this article really punctuates a point made by Chris Anderson in his book “Free: the future of a radical price”(available for free on Itunes). And that point is that there is a mental shift from print to digital. Somehow this shift opens up entire maps of mental pathways previously unavailable to the print world.
His point is that people expect digital to be free, but are suspicious when material items are free. This article, however, makes me start to think that there is much more to the mental shift than price expectation.
Perhaps, as you say, consumers of the web view content as just “part of the web”, as if there were this giant book, of which we access different pieces.
Which brings to mind this question. Where are the edges of this puzzle? When does digital content break from “the web” in the mind of the consumer?
Is it when we pay for it?
When we have to download it?
When we somehow take ownership of the content?
If we know where the edges are, then we know when it ceases to necessarily be free. We know the boundaries between building our communities, and monetizing on our awesomeness.
Also, what other mental leaps do we make, when we jump online?
October 13th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
I think there are an awful lot of people who could benefit from a promotional clinic treatment like you gave William’s comic. Lord knows I could use it. My biggest problem is I keep changing the kinds of comics I do. I pretty much need to start over again from scratch with every new project.
I really ought to be doing more to promote Gingerbread Houses, though, since that one is going to last a little while longer yet. I’m sure there must be some communities built around fairy tales and oral tradition storytelling out there. That’d be a good place for me to start. Any other suggestions for me?
October 14th, 2009 at 3:30 am
what about a graphic comic like tat?
http://dimsumdemon.deviantart.com/art/IUSA-Chapter-1-Cover-139777503
either way if I’d go to forums to promote or not to, its not getting any traffic. My only feel is just finish the book and do whatever I need to justify the story. I’m doing this full time and I dun even have enuff cash to live through the months. All I ask is people just read it and I guess that itself is hard enuff.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:31 am
[...] advice at the ComicSpace Blog these days; his most recent posts, on search engine optimization and promoting your comics to people who don’t usually read comics, seem to be particularly [...]
October 14th, 2009 at 8:04 am
I don’t want the comments thread here to turn into the parlor trick of me coming up with places to promote your comics! Ha! I only meant to inspire. If you’re a personal friend (hey Alexander) hit me up on the phone, though!
October 14th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Okay, now that I’ve washed off the fan-fic slime…
These are good ideas, I think, if Yes You Can! (Shameless plug here) was a comic similar to those works. (Not blaming you for not picking up on it, you have a dozen pages to go by.)
A LOT of webcomic success seems seem to stem from the idea of “Find an under-served niche and try to wedge into it” Which I think is just fine if you’re making a comic about… uh… Your fat black lesbian Klingon cosplayer protagonist making fun of the mundanes. Fat black lesbian Klingon cosplayers will flock to the comic and you can talk about Star Trek all day.
For me as a creator, such a narrow focus is… too narrow. I’m personally hoping my comic will have appeal across a wide variety of demographics. Like they tried to do back in the era of print comics selling in the tens of millions.
But I admit that I’m foolish dreamer, a hopeless romantic, a ridiculous man who refuses to see the way the world is shaped and walks to the beat of his own drummer. I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo, and everyone is so fucking special…
I guess what I’m getting at is that it seems that I’ve always been making comics that may only appeal to people who like comics. Which I’m cool with as it saves me from trying to run two jobs, and I can start and stop as I see fit. But as you pointed out, those people are rare and getting rarer. So for guys like me, and maybe even Alexander, it seems that the “Make it popular” idea is something that will remain out of reach until we swallow our pride and make niche-targeted material.
October 14th, 2009 at 10:51 am
[...] “On the web, comics are just one more fun thing to look at. It’s all part of ‘the web,’ and people don’t get their guard up so quickly. They go from blog to animated cartoon to webcomic to photo-sharing site to social network and back to blog again, without paying attention to the differences between these things. It’s just one big mush of fun. They don’t feel like they have to be ‘comics fans’ to read a webcomic.” – Joey Manley [...]
October 14th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
A niche does not have to be narrow, nor limiting. Most people are happy to see just *one* of their pet obsessions spoken to in a comic, and they’ll read you and follow you around and be happy because, hey, you included them. You don’t have to “make niche-marketed material” — in fact I would strongly recommend against that; in my limited experience, such pandering tends to be clumsy and uncomfortable for both the readers and the creators. But there are people who follow my comic just because there’s non-white main characters instead of a cast of blondes. There’s people following it because the female lead isn’t a skinny stick, or because I know where to put a comma, or because there’s pages of worldbuilding information. Does that mean my comic is only for non-white readers, fat people, grammar nuts, or people who think Tolkien didn’t write enough appendices? Not really. Do I write the comic specifically to appeal to those people? Oh lord no. Do I look at those niche appeals, those things that make me different from other webcomics, when I go to promote my work? HELL yes.
Write what you want, write what you love, and then look at it and take it apart from every angle to see what sort of people you can toss it in front of. And maybe you’ll get an audience. Or maybe you won’t, but hey, at least you’ll have fun on the ride.
October 16th, 2009 at 7:39 am
[...] better? I also wonder if Disney’s purchase of Marvel somehow be involved in some new business initiatives Perhaps I’m seeing coincidence and imagineering [...]
October 16th, 2009 at 11:01 am
I think the problem most people have when promoting is they don’t really grasp how the public at large actually consumes things. People move like locusts from one “field” to the next, taking in whatever is the new thing at the moment. Becoming the next big thing is just as much an accident as it has always been. People don’t see that you’re promoting extra hard and give you a shot because they feel you’ve earned it.
You can promote your product/strip until you drop from exhaustion but until someone, somewhere that is a group “authority” (trend setter) decides that your item is the next place the group should go, you’ll continue to sit in relative obscurity. That doesn’t mean your offering necessarily stinks, it’s just that it isn’t what the public is wanting at that particular time.
Coming to terms with this idea will save you a lot of grief when you promote and see very little return on your investment.
October 17th, 2009 at 10:11 am
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October 31st, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Thanks three times for posting these articles about promotion.
They are greatly appreciated – as – when making stuff and stuff – usually letting people know what I am doing is the furthest thing from my mind. Well – promotion and tadpoles. Normally – I tend to not think of tadpoles very often when I am making things.
I especially like that you are very straightforward and realistic in your portrayal of the game. It isn’t enough that nifty things are made – if no one knows that the nifty exists . . . Bells need to be rung. Flares need to be flared. Feet need to be stomped. Links need to be shared!
Again. Humbly. I say “Thanks!”
(and if I must promote – then – I say “Please. Please. Please. Go look at my website. There is a penguin there – and – much much more!”)