Does it hurt you when someone unfollows your novel/comic?

[thepenmonster]

That's just their utter lack of good taste.You can't fix that so move on.

[abigaillmartin]

That’s honestly what I think. They’re missing out! 🤣

[allisoncandraw]

It doesn't particularly bother me. I think a lot of people on here expect sub4sub and I don't normally do that, so it makes sense that I'd have some unfollows.

[BelleBriar]

This made me giggle lol

[DanielRKM]

Oh man, it really, really used to. Don't let it bring you down because it really isn't a reflection of your work.

After I started losing subs, it made me really analyze my approach (and my feelings). After some soul searching, I changed my little "Thanks for Subbing" picture to always include a note saying "I hope you enjoy your stay here." That ways, it implies the temporary nature of subscribers (for my mental health- and I genuinely hope they dig hanging out with my characters for a while).

Good luck!!!! Go kick some butt, @BelleBriar

[BelleBriar]

That’s a good little note to add! Thank you. It’s wonderful that everyone is so nice here! 🥺

[GumshoeComix]

not really, it typically means they weren't reading in the first place, and I'd like to have my followers be active readers

[hakei]

I don't look at my comic numbers but oof -- when it comes to Patreon, it does sting and makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong even if I know most of the people leaving are probably due to financial reasons.

Some people even leave mean exit survey comments but I try to avoid looking at the surveys unless I notice an unusually large amount of people leaving.

[BelleBriar]

Noooo not the mean comments but yes, you can’t make everyone happy (and some are not happy, no matter what you do). I would say 99.9999% it’s financially related with the teeny outlier. Very teeny. Non existent. They don’t matter.

I will keep that in mind for myself

mean exit survey comments

[Teira]

Not really. I'm too concentrated on other things to be worried about sub count. People online can be fickle, so its bound to happen at some point.

[N1ghtm4r3]

kind of does but what can you do

[RedLenai]

Not really, I don't keep track of followers most of the time.
A lot of people keep tabs on the stuff they read without necessarily having an account or subscribing. So maybe if you want to focus on numbers, Views may be less harmful than Subscribers.

A thing tho that I've noticed is that people will unsuscribe to a person who constantly edits their chapters and has it set to notify readers of the change, is honestly very annoying and most of the time people won't bother reading the edited chapters or like having lots of notifications for stuff that's not a new chapter, many have enough already with Tapas's notifications of ink, recommendations and such

[Insanebaker92]

Used to. But as time passed by, I'm just pissed at it until the point I choose to ignore it and focus with my things and what I want to do. .

Right now, I wouldn't want this stuff to bother me.

[king-goldfish]

Is that so? I didn't know that "dead subs" were bad for you, algorithmically. Yikes. I've definitely got a few of those around.

[ccmatta]

It hurts less than seeing that not every sub reads my comic xD I stopped caring for that stuff a while back, but I'm always happy when I see a new sub or someone liking the chapters. I dont even know how many subs I have anymore, I stopped looking at it, not that I have a lot, a have a few, but the ones that reads are much less. I used to care about losing subs when I was even smaller, but I've got to a point that I dont care anymore, I'll just make my comic for the couple of people that reads it and for myself.

Also, my story is kinda heavy, so I get why people stop reading it. xD

[BelleBriar]

Yeah, that could become annoying, but I don’t want people to know how much I edit them when I’m unhappy with a chapter 🤣

[SameMoon]

You can't control your feelings but you can control your reactions to them. The pain is inevitable if you're a person with no resources nor a platform to promote it and you work very hard on it, but you have to keep doing your best. I personally don't check numbers at all, not on social media and definitely not on Webtoon and Tapas. I do my thing and keep on doing it. I recommend doing the same.

[MK_Wizard]

I would be lying if I said no. It's human for it to hurt a little because you want your audience to grow. You want people to read your work.

However, I learned to put that hurt along with my ego aside and just carry on while not taking it too personally. I've stopped reading great comics for several reasons and none of them were out of malice, so of course my own former readers can't be faulted for deciding my story isn't for them.

[TheLemmaLlama]

It does kind of sting, which is why I deliberately go out of my way to avoid looking at my sub count, to the point of physically blocking that annoying number on my screen from my eyes It's just an emotional reaction though; I unsub from stuff myself (sometimes without even reading, as I use subs as more of a 'to read' list and unsub when I forgot why I wanted to read something in the first place) so I have nothing against unsubbers, especially since my comic updates super slowly so it's totally reasonable if people think I'm dead or smth XD