8 / 16
Nov 2019

I got a question for those horror, supernatural, thriller, etc comics. What was the experience like when you first started posting your comic? Here's ours:

I feel like the art has improved so much since our last release. That the story is much more interesting. But we're also not a random scary stories comic, like many other in the horror category. and the ghosts etc aspect isn't as explicit as others. Do you think this may be a cause for slow reception? Was it similar for you all, or do you think other aspects affect ours or helped yours. For example, not being in the romance category along with one of these genres.

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    Nov '19
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    Nov '19
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You've only started posting 2 weeks ago :neutral_face: Until people who choose comics for the front page see and love your comic enough to put it on front page, there probably won't be many views or subs, especially since it's not a romance. Maybe if you are lucky enough, because you are somewhere in the end of all those other horror comics and people are hardly looking at pages after the first one in Canvas. The fact that "it's not a random scary story" have nothing to do with it.

Think about horror genre as a whole not just in the comic industry, anything horror is right off the bat not friendly.
That audience have to actively seek for it. It takes the type of person who's okay with Rated R visual but also stories that are prone to challenge their morality.
(You add on top of it the fact that only a minority of webtoon readers actively look through Canvas and not all of them are into horror :joy:)

I wouldn't say horror is an acquired taste but it's definitely not something the regular joe will go for as a first option, it takes more of you.

The pool isn't as big as other genre but that doesn't mean your work will never find its success, a good story is a good story regardless of the label. And people will know it.
The quality will speak for itself down the line.
You are only 2 updates in, give it time :grin:

When it comes to being explicit with the spook or subtle, across all medium, it's harder to get into the "subtle" ones because they can be slow or they can feel too experimental.
But after reading your comic, I'd say you'll be fine since the horror aspect is pretty on the nose.

Thank you, I guess we're just so nervous cause the first release didn't feel like much of a success, and then realized after some thorough thorough criticism it was because we had sooooo much room to grow:
(first release)

You're right though, patient pretty much all we can be

Haha it's like we're appealing to the 20 percent of 20 percent of people, and only when they're in the mood. That makes a lot of sense. We recently rereleased the comic after some hard looks in the mirror so to speak, so now we really want to start this right so we never have to start over again. Im glad it's at least doing its job

I see that your art improved a lot, but you gave the first one only 3 months too =) We didn't hit the front page until almost a year passed, for example (but then we were posting traditional pages and cut them into webtoons format later). So yeah, don't worry and keep up a good job :slight_smile:

"Slow reception" ? You have 24 subs right now after only two episodes. If that's slow then my "reception" is watching grass grow.

over half was from friends and sub for sub on tapas. getting people to show up and sub on their own hasn't really happened. The problem with that is, those people don't really keep up with updates and like or comment :sweat_smile:

Ah right. I know the problem, and I sympathise. I think maybe 10% of anyone's subs are actual readers. I've put a lot of thought into how to appeal to the casual, browsing reader, even before I started my comic. Nothing seems to have worked so far.
(For now, I'm blaming it on not doing the vertical scrolling thing and lacking color. Yeah, that's totally it. :confused: )

You've made HUGE leaps in quality on all fronts, so your efforts weren't wasted. If any of us knew the formula for certain success, we would be using it, but I'm sure you've heard that one before.

Your stuff is good; That's pretty much all I can say.

Haha right, if any of us knew, we'd use it, the n probably keep the info to ourselves :joy:. But man, myself is the shading and lighting and animal creator so far, but the main creator and author is my fiance. Man! When I say there were SO many times of needing to convince him to change something to appeal to the masses a bit more. The black and white and tones, the style, the scroll format, the background and everything, we've started over so many times. So much convincing, and then he's like it's so good! I'm glad I thought of it 🤦‍♀️ basically. Anyways, I feel like all of the changes we put in only made us so much more anxious to get some fans to just talk about it with haha, but exhales patience...

I would say 20+ subs after 2 updates is pretty good actually. I mean, I only get 1 sub per update so to me you're doing pretty well. X3

Remember how you act when you want to read a new story. Unless the artist is known the only reason people are going to stumble into you is when they are looking for particular itches to scratch. Find many places that are about looking for your kind of work and say hello. If you aren't sure where to start, Reddit is a pretty good one.

Ah well, when WT made changes to Discover, it seemed to cause a huge drop to sub rate in free comics, so I have no idea how new comics with no following will grow without a bit of push from WT. :frowning: