I mean, realistically what can you do other than work hard and put yourself out there? There’s millions of comics out in the world and it’s very difficult to gain readerships alone.
it´s a mix:
Intelligence, social skills, work ethic and luck
and being open to new ideas, trying out things.
work ethics doesn´t mean having an unhealthy lifestyle
Some of us are not from countries where laboral exploitation is romantized, where people won't take a vacation for "not wanting to be unloyal to the company or co-workers". Don't admire that lightly the fact that many mangaka overwork themselves, many isolate themselves, barely see their families, barely do anything regarding their health and don't have healthy lifestyles that would probably kill them young or in the job.
Many Oda fans are worried about his health and habits, we love One Piece but damn we wished he took more rest.
There was even the horrible case of Juniljus the artist of Roxana, that not only dealt with stress, anxiety and the pressure from following unrealistic deadlines from her Editor, she not only risked her health at the point of barely sleeping, but she also had a miscarriage that could have taken her life too.
If you want to sleep 4 hours a day, eating at whatever time, barely exercising or socializing, not being able to take breaks not even for health risk matters, then so do you. I know from personal experience is not worth it and you can definetly make a comfortable living out of art without being popular or having a contract with an editorial.
What do you even consider "putting yourself out there", what exactly do you want to achieve with your comic? Being rich? Being popular? Becoming a celebrity?
If you want to make a living out of this you'll need appealing art, appealing stories, knowing how to self promote, being constant, creating engaging content, being charismatic, being on time, know your current tools and resources, invest and learn new things, taking risks, taking pauses, and the most important thing figure out what is that thing that could differentiate you from the rest, then know how to exploit said thing. Besides figuring out any other reason why you're not achieving certain steps of your goal.
Everything is easier said than done, don't underestimate all the cons of hard work, you'll need to work smart too, taking shortcuts and taking advantage of certain resources. Trying your hardest doesn't mean draining your own energy, achieving a top goal or destroying your health in the process of reaching that goal.
I get so sick of this. Most high performing jobs are like this. Most CEO's literally work 60 hours a week. Most company owners work 70+ hours (80+ when they first open.) And when you see these people in high up jobs go on vacation, they don't drop their shit and disappear. They are constantly in touch with their company. I was a project manager on a fairly large company. Yes I took vacations. I still answered my phone at all times. You get to choose your life you want. If you want a 40 hour work week with no pressure, you will get paid accordingly. No one even asks the people that do these types of jobs if its worth it. They have a certain type of personality that makes them do it that way. Just because you don't want to doesn't mean others don't and are forced to.
I think you completely misunderstood what @RedLenai is talking about. Not everyone who focuses themselves or are required to put 60+ hours into their jobs are CEOs. Sometimes it's people who are just trying to survive or are pressures to work themselves to death. Not everyone really has the choice, depending on where you live or what jobs are available.
If you want a good insight into this, I recommend the 2009 documentary Last Train Home.
I was raised with the idea that if I had good grades or worked hard I was going to succeed or have a good paying job. Then, when the economic began, see people who studied in universities struggle to find not their dream job but just a remunerative one made me disillusioned. It no more depended on how much I was or not intelligent, it become a competition on who had good connections, soft/hard skills, and who was the most clever in answering stupid attitudinal questions in interviews... It's a never ending "learn roller-coaster" just to get very little in the end
You missed the point.
Karoshi is a social problem in Japan beyond the control of the employee, anyone can suffer from it, especially animators, mangaka and a big part of employees working under a black company, not that they knew about that when they joined but then its very hard for some to even leave.
When did I say that CEO's don't work?
Or that they take no-phone vacations?
When did I say that they "drop their shit and disappear"?
Did you work hard? Good for you, some were exploited beyond that even more than you and sadly that's too a reality
Don't exclude yourself and then get offended as if I was invalidating your working hours or what you had to do in order to either feel worthy, responsible or keep your paycheck.
I have more than the personality to be working more than 60 hours, after all I already did it. But I'm not reckless either, I don't want to die from a stroke, a heart attack, or lose a child and being forced to work during the whole miscarriage. I don't want to be like some of my friends who also overworked themselves and at 18 already had tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis or other severe problems in their bodies, some of them even developing stomach ulcers due to stress quite early in their lives.
I want to be closer to the guitar than the harp, and I would like to see artists and people in general living what its expected a human to live, not dying young under their desks or committing suicide from overworking themselves.
Oh, and yeah. I work less than 40 hours nowadays, have a healthy sleep schedule, grass time and make more money than the average Original Webtoon LATAM author, without being popular or having a contract. So maybe its not only working hard but also working smart, exploit the situation instead of it letting exploit you.
Just stop. We are talking as a job, not being in a starving country ruled by despots. You can ALWAYS find someone in a worst spot than you. You can always find someone in a better spot. Taking your examples to the extreme is just a shallow way of debating. Comparing working as a comic artist to a child drying in a third world country is dishonest.
Depends on what you mean by 'working hard' tbh. Obvs literally doing nothing would guarantee failure, but failure is far from guaranteed if you follow the 'path of least resistance'. (E.g. forcing yourself to do nothing while you're bored is in a sense 'harder' than doing something to entertain yourself, so the latter is technically the 'path of least resistance')
At the end of the day, I think working smart is more important. As much as you can, manipulate your circumstances such that the 'path of least resistance' leads you to naturally do things that contribute to success :]
On paper hardwork should equal success, it’s what we been taught thru life, work hard, and you will be rewarded. As we all know life is unpredictable, in order to succeed unfortunately hardwork is a factor but you will also need luck too
6 months later
It's more a combination of luck and working smart. Then there's the debateable definition of success.
