Hey there, it's GesuGesu from Tapas. I want to talk about how I squandered a chance given to me, and while I don't feel like my world is destroyed, I do want to share the story.
When I first posted Phantom Thief Kane back in 2017, my very first subscriber was a profile named Michael Son, who I thought was a very familiar name, but I thought maybe it was just a user who was pretending to be THE Michael Son. However, I soon found out that despite only having one episode launched, my series was featured on the Daily Snack back in the day.
From there on, I instantly gained about 1k subscribers.
Now here's the thing: when I created my series, it was a concept between friends, and all I had planned were 3 character profiles and something along the lines of a relationship chart and "heist of the week" kinds of ideas.
I updated maybe weekly for about 4 weeks before I ran out of ideas and took over half a year long hiatus. By the time I thought up of a few more episodes to draw, my active readers (judging by comment numbers) dropped to about 16, and most of them were just "oh thank god this comic is not discontinued!". My Hiatus was from July 2017 to Feb 2018.
I then updated fairly regularly until another >1 year long hiatus because I was at a crossroads in the story in how I wanted things to go. My second big hiatus was from May 2018 to September 2019.
When my comic updated again in 2019, my active comments dropped to 10.
I took another hiatus from July 2019 to September 2020. My active comments when I returned in 2020 was 3.
After 3 years of on-and-off comic updates, I finally decided to make an Extra episode explaining the comic update schedule: there is no update schedule. I had no other explanation for my readers, honestly. It's not my place to ask for pity that my comic series was poorly planned, although it was a good concept.
Starting July 2020 though, I decided to switch to a monthly schedule and try to stick to it, which has been successful for over a year now! However, I currently have lost nearly all my ACTIVE readers and I consistently receive 2 comments per update from my very loyal readers. I am very very grateful for my 2 readers, which do not reflect entirely the numbers that my comic actually has.
I don't have much to say for myself, because I am an old-time "Tapastic" creator living off the ghosts of dead subscribers, but numbers don't mean much if they're inactive readers who've long forgotten to check update notifications. I did learn after that to never launch a comic before planning at least a little ahead (my other concurrently running series, Tomboy Harem, thankfully had 12 episodes planned and drawn before launch). Even then, I took some advice to reduce my update schedule to tri-monthly, which I learned was still too much for my chaotic working habits, so now both Phantom Thief Kane and Tomboy Harem run on a monthly schedule which has been very good to me so far, although I can't say the same for the readers. The readers who have given up on me no longer know that the series finally has an update schedule.
Don't be like me. Don't get gifted a thousand subscribers and fail to keep them from leaving due to lack of foresight and hard work. I've been lucky to get featured with Tomboy Harem this year, and I hope not to squander it by going on large hiatuses (unannounced) and having fans give up on me.
I can say a lot more about my comic making journey in general, but that may be in a separate post..
I am in the Tapas Official Server under the same name "Gesu" if you wanna chat!
