I need advice with publishing options

[Kami199199]

Hey, its the first post i do here after reswarching options to publish the manga/comic im writting.

I have watched a video about what to do when posting webcomics and the advices were:
- make it colorfull
- make it vertical
- engage in social media.
- make it pg 13

Im a traditional artist and sculptor, so i have a bit of a problem meeting those expectations.

The comic is B&W, and the panels emulates nanquim paintings, having sometimes abstract elements and simplifications to fit my 1 page per day worked proposal.
One of the things i learnt with sculpting is that the art has to be apreciated first as a whole, so the page itself is one part of the deal.
Its a action comic that hovers arround martial arts as they are intended to be, with technical blows that are usually created to incapacitate the enemy.

So aparently i cheched all boxes but in reverse.

Solutions im thinking of:
- break the pannels to fit the vertical scrolling for mobile.
- create a pg version of the fights.

Is if even worth publishing at this point tho?

[Llyrel]

Truth to be told, that kind of advice is mostly geared towards people who mostly have an interest in making a webcomic that could "make it big" (= get a lot of followers in a short amount of time, get a staff recommendation, hopefully become popular enough to get some Patrons or even become a featured/Original/premium series) on the two major platforms, aka Tapas and Webtoon.
Before following these instructions by the book, however, I would ask myself the following questions:

1. Is becoming a premium/featured/Original series or making it big my main goal with this comic?
If it is, then it might definitely be a good idea to be able to tick as many of these boxes as possible. While you can kinda get away with traditional page format on Tapas, Webtoon will hardly feature a comic that is not in vertical format. Should also be pointed out that there are platforms like ComicFury and the (very new, still in beta) Dillyhub and FlowFo, where you can post your comic in whatever format you choose and nobody will bat an eyelid. Okay, these three are not as big as Tapas and Webtoon and there are no "premium/Original" series... but you CAN monetize your ComicFury site with ComicAd if you want to and there are monetization options on both Dillyhub and FlowFo, all available right from the start for everyone.

2. Am I making this comic for myself or to increase my audience?
If you're making a comic solely for your personal enjoyment, have a stable job that lets you earn money and have no need to "make it big" on platforms in order to pay the bills... then I'd say just do whatever you please if, on the other hand, your main goal is to get a big audience... truth to be told, the first suggestion that comes to my mind is "careful with that", because making comics can be a long, LONG road, success may take months or even YEARS to come (if ever), and the fact that you sometimes see people "making it big" and accumulating thousands of followers in a few days doesn't necessarily mean that your comic will achieve the same. Nope, not even if your comic "ticks all the right boxes". Which brings us to the next question:

3. What am I comfortable drawing the most?
Drawing comics is incredibly time-consuming. Even when you're working with a style you're 100% familiar with, there will ALWAYS be unexpected challenges to face. So be careful when it comes to picking a style. Colorful comics may be what's popular, but if you've never done any digital coloring before, the results may not be as good as they would have been in black and white. Heck, they may even ruin the final effect and make your art look worse instead. Trust me, I'm mainly a traditional artist too and I've been there. Of course you'll improve throughout the process, and the more pages you produce, the better your art will be... but starting with something you're more familiar with will definitely make the process a LOT less overwhelming, compared to jumping straight into a bunch of different techniques you're not fully familiar with yet. Btw hey, nothing says you can't add color later if you want! Plenty of artists do that!

4. Is online publishing my end goal or am I looking to turn the comic into a traditionally printed book at some point?
For me, online publishing was never meant to be the "endgame". I'm still very attached to the idea of traditional publishing and I'd like to see my comic printed one day. So I'm sticking to the page format for my main website, ComicFury and Dillyhub, and then I'm "converting" my panels into vertical format for Tapas and Webtoon. Some people are fine with the idea of their comic being 100% digital and will work directly in vertical format. Others will stack multiple traditional format pages on top of one another and make the fonts bigger for Tapas/Webtoon. It doesn't necessarily have to be one or the other. But if you decide to pick just one, make sure you pick a format you're not going to regret choosing later

[coppermouflon]

I think @Llyrel has covered everything in her comment and not much to add to that.

Your first decision must be what is it that you want? What are you looking to get out of this experience/ordeal (and yes, it will be an ordeal 100% guaranteed) that you are about to put yourself through? And you need to be 100% honest with yourself here and ignore all fancies of fortune and fame. Is this something you would do if you had neither fame nor fortune? The advice you mentioned was about getting more readers, so fame.

But there is something I'd like to add, something you might want to think about, and it actually links back to what Llyrel said in their comment.

You mentioned turning your fights into PG-13.
Is that your audience? Is the audience you want and plan to go after 13-year-olds and up?
If yes, then needing to change your fight scenes means you started wrong in the first place (I don't think that is the case though). It sounds like your intention was an older audience, so don't butcher your story and style to go after a different audience, that NEVER works. Just do you.

Do it the way you like it because you enjoying what you do is the only thing that will help you keep your sanity and continue on those difficult days. Again those days will come, it is unavoidable. Otherwise, I guarantee you won't last, and this is a LONG journey, not a sprint.

In my opinion, colour doesn't matter. Yes, it attracts more views originally, but if your work is good, it will attract people regardless and keep them, just maybe over a longer period of time. There are examples of successful B&W comics out there. Not having colour does not mean the comic is not good, and having colour does not automatically mean it is good.

Engaging in social media is actually way down the list for me. Where you should be engaging with is the platform you are posting your comic. That is where your readers are. It is extremely difficult to convince people through social media to come to a new platform to check out your comic. You have a better chance of targeting people already into comics and whatever platforms you chose to use. So don't expect that you will post on social media and get a lot of people.

So that covers 3 of the 4 advice you mentioned.

The last one is to make it vertical. This I actually agree with 100%.
If you don't do this, then this won't work as a digital comic. It can be a print comic that you edit for a vertical scroll, which means you intend on creating a print version some day, OR this is a digital comic first, so it has to be a vertical scroll design that you can then try to reform as a print comic if you want.

Truth is, whatever you choose as your focus, digital or print, the other version will not be that good and there is no way around that. Turning traditional comics into vertical digital comics will never be as good as comics created for digital vertical scroll specifically, and of course, the other way around is true as well.

Also, as you said, there is no whole page look in vertical scroll, but there are other scrolling techniques that will help you (if you go the digital route). So I suggest you try reading some of the top digital-only comics to get some ideas if that is what you will do.

I hope that helped.

[Kami199199]

My answer is delayed but dont think the responses arent apreciated. Thanks for taking your time to do it, im way calmer than i was about my comic now. Yeah im doing it for myself but i would like someone to read it. With that said no, my goal its not to trend so ill do my thing!!!