I am planting the worry seeds, but I am also hoping for reassurance that this stuff wonât happen.
So these are some sites that webcomics users and readers often use for hosting and promoting:
Hosting sites: Smackjeeves, theduck, tapas, Comicfury, personalised www.mywebcomic.com sites
Sites that could be used as hosting sites: tumblr, deviantart, patreon etc..
Mainstream social media sites: facebook, twitter etc..
From what I read speculations how bad losing NN can be:
Will you have to pay for access? What if...
You: Have to pay extra to access and post to your sites. You have to pay a lot more to maintain all your mirrors.
Your audience: Has to pay extra to access your sites or site. With many users choosing to only pay for social media sites, you will significantly lose readership.
Will you have to pay for better access? What ifâŚ
You: Have to pay extra to get a decent speed at your sites.
Your audience: Has to pay extra to get a decent speed your sites or site. If anyone remembers reading webcomics in the late 90âs early 2000âs it SUCKED waiting for each page to load. This will mean a big lose in readership and perhaps the entire webcomic sharing format will change (downloading pdfs? A return to more zines and paper sales?)
Will only the biggest sites survive?
Perhaps smaller sites like Smackjeeves, theduck, tapas, Comicfury and personal sites will go down and webcomics will be hosted at bigger picture sharing sites like deviantart or facebook?