It's never enough, is it? 
Weeeelll, maybe not enough. On good days I'm ~30 pages ahead or more, which makes me almost 5 updates ahead. But right now I have just material for 2 updates, maybe, and I'm going crazy hahaha I spent days writing the script and not drawing so I lost all my buffer content, I fear having to go on hiatus again because of that D:
Has it ever come in handy?
Yes, a lot of times.When I'm too burnout to draw, when I'm too buzy with work/life in general, when I'm sick (I have a lot of mental disorders that make me function less etc etc), so I depended a lot on my buffer content on those 2 1/2 years I've been posting comics here. It's important if you want to keep constance and something unexpected happens you know?
At least 3 months worth of content! I update twice in a week, so that works out to be around a minimum of 24 episodes.
My buffer always comes in handy lol. 
My day job has me in either a busy or hellish busy mode, so I gotta prepare that buffer for the times when it gets hellish busy to the point that I can't spare time to write for weeks on end.
Three to four months' worth! For me that means 24 pages at the bare minimum, but it's usually over 30. I love being able to have the wiggle room to do edits or insert entire new pages on the fly ahead of time.
I started with 30 pages of buffer, and I still have 25 after removing 3 pages because they weren't really important to the story, taking a week off of drawing once for family reasons, and the natural 'buffer decay' of drawing four pages a month... but sometimes having 5 updates a month.
Either way, if I stopped drawing right now, and continued only posting 1 page a week as I have been doing (this MIGHT change temporarily for an upcoming fight scene), I could technically keep posting until February 4th before I ran out of pages.
Has having such a large buffer come in handy? Not yet, but I made it this large as a 'what if' fallback. What if I have to move? What if I get sick or injure my hand? What if I'm dealing with something really stressful for a long period of time (family illness, etc) and just CAN'T make myself draw? You know, mid-to-long term problems that would make it really hard to draw consistently. I imagine if I ever have to deal with something like that, my huge buffer will come in VERY handy.
My buffer is dry! I try to keep about 2-3 ready but I've been behind on my comic lately--Its okay though, I've still been drawing and still pushing projects forward at least. I started with 3 buffers and today (past midnight) currently marks exactly 4 months I've been doing this. I reckon I should take a couple weeks hiatus and build up my buffer before returning to a regular schedule, or else the work I do is gonna be lower quality. I want them to look good, y'know!
Well, here's the queue for Re:Apotheosis:
That's the prologue, all 30 chapters, and the epilogue. The sequel is in editing until it gets locked down sometime in early to mid-September, at which point its 14 chapters and epilogue will go into the queue as well.
I can't speak for an ongoing webcomic - I don't write those. But, for a novel, I try to have at least 2/3 of the book finished before the first chapter goes into the buffer (or, alternately, at least 4 months worth of updates). There are a few reasons for this:
If I get sick, or something happens that makes it so that I can't write for a while (and this has happened), the weekly schedule will be kept.
I won't be caught having to add something into an earlier chapter to support a plot point in a later chapter after that early chapter has gone live. The only time I have to update a chapter is to fix a typo or make a change to the description box (which does not affect the narrative). That also means that none of my subscribers will ever see a message that an earlier chapter has been updated. A novel that is being presented as a professional product should never appear to be a work in progress.
Since I own a publishing company, and I want to be able to sell print and e-book copies once the serial is completed, I need to have the text locked down at least 4-6 months before the publication date. This gives time for pre-release publicity (so, in fact, I'm right now racing to finish up the second book, Re:Apotheosis Aftermath, so that it can release the week the sequel story - which is the main story in this book - finishes its run on Tapas).
Now, my approach may not be practical for your novel project. But, it does mean that I have never had to worry about getting an installment done in time to meet the posting schedule. It's more work for me, but it's a smoother experience for everybody reading my work.
I have about 3 weeks worth of story content and some 1 panel jokes on the side - I'm pretty determined to never have a noticeable hiatus, but I think it's fine when stories do take a break I just know that if I personally take a break then I wont finish it.
I have about... 7, 8 weeks ahead on a weekly updated comic? It's important to me to keep a buffer so I'm on time every week, and I do think this gives me more opportunity to let my drawings "rest" a little. Then I can go back and try to look at things with more of a critical eye :).
It also helps me when I get swallowed by one of my other hobbies, so I never have to sweat TOO much if I fall a bit behind.
I completely finished my novel before I was comfortable posting it, so a fair buffer I would say ^.^
As of now... I'm short on buffer, unfortunately! I only have a 2 or 3 page buffer (yeah, it might seem absurd, but that's how things are) and it's not looking good for me. I update my series weekly (just did it today) and I try to do get one page ahead each week.
I made my biggest mistake halfway through the production of chapter 2. I had quit working on it because I was working on a oneshot for a manga contest and, meanwhile, I would still post pages on Tapas and Webtoon. I had 30+ pages worth of buffer, but ended up pretty much wasting them. I haven't been able to recover since then. So yeah, once I finish posting chapter 7 (it'll be next week), I'll most likely go on hiatus and start things anew!
I remember telling Andie, my artist, that we needed to do 10 before posting. It got to a point where he was like "Can we post nooooooooooooow?". I'm glad we did 10 when we started because WHOOF. Now we do 5 before hiatuses. I plan on doing quick gags once the Season is over.
As of this moment, I have a month and a half of buffer content. I'm hoping to extend it to four months before Christmas. Then I can take my annual two-month hiatus just to get things organized for next year.
Usually i'd be satisfied with just being one chapter ahead of the weekly update but right now - and since i update once a week - i make sure to be 4 chapters ahead, meaning a month. I try hard enough to keep this up, but so far so good. Sweating over it and struggling to write more, never did me any good. So for the time being im satisfied with that 
Kudos of course to everyone who managed to gather enough buffer for more than 2 months. I'm looking up to you all !!
1 month later
closed Sep 21, '22
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