The Difficulty of Spreading Webcomics

[monotone_ink]

Lately, I've been thinking about the difficulty of webcomics--in that they inherently lack the ability to promote themselves.

To illustrate this point, let's have a look at an illustrator, in the context of a social media outlet such as twitter:

• When an illustrator is skilled, their work will be eye-catching to the general populace. As a way of showing their appreciation of their work, they reward the illustrator with a like, and a retweet if they want to show this work to other people.
• As the illustrator continues making their work, more and more people will become aware of them, as the nature of retweets spreads their influence towards the populace. With this, they have a larger audience, and thus a more solid ground to embark on more creative adventures.
• Very often, if these illustrators are successful enough, they get picked up by actual companies to make work for them (case in point--Kuvshinov Ilya, who starting off as an online illustrator, is now making concept art for the new Ghost in the Shell).

While cases such as this are slightly more difficult for animators, the same rule applies--in that they can easily be viewed, and if appeasing to the general eye, can be spread throughout the net and catch some attention.

Now attempt to apply this to webcomics, and you come across issues:

• For someone to enjoy a webcomic and spread it around, they need to actually invest time and energy before deciding wehther or not it's worth their prolonged attention.
• Considering this, stand alone illustrations/images have the high ground in quickly grabbing one's attention.
• Additionally, there's the issue of time--it takes much much longer to create an outstanding webcomic than it does to create an eye-catching illustration, which if great enough, becomes memorable and spreadable.

Though webcomics are superior to illustrations in their sheer ability for story-telling, they are at a massive disadvantage in terms of getting your work out in the art field, let alone the consciousness of the general populace.

I'd been racking my brain lately on ways to spread comics while juggling the use of energy, and time and time again, I always come back to the same conclusion:

PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL

And I don't mean just updating people whenever a new page has been uploaded, or advertising your comic in different places (e.g. This is my webcomic, come read it!)

What I mean is making separate pieces of art that both promote your webcomic, while also being a stand-alone piece of art that people can appreciate separate from the source.

Take for examples these trailers made for the Tokyo Ghoul Manga.
Note that this isn't for the anime itself--this is more so for the sale of the actual books:

If I had no idea what Tokyo Ghoul was, and I was shown these trailers, I know personally that I would be slightly intrigued, and wanting to know more about this.

The same logic can even be applied to the Tokyo Ghoul anime itself--if it hadn't been for the show, all the promotion they did for it, and if it wasn't for the spread of various Tokyo Ghoul-related fan art and illustrative material, I never would have read what I consider to be a very great manga.

Now, while all of this sounds good, it's unrealistic to expect one man teams--of which are typical of webcomic creators--to go about making grand animations or illustration campaigns to promote their work.

With this in mind, how would you go about promoting your webcomic with the use of supplementary material?

Let's gather some solutions in this thread!

Also, if you want to read through my twitter rant, you can go here.

[GesuGesu]

I'm planning on opening an instagram account for my characters in general. I haven't started it yet though, since it's hard work;;

[LT1986]

Thank you for making this forum thread. These are the types of forum threads that long time creators need. I have to go now, but I'm looking forward to checking back in on this thread to see some of the ideas and possibly add one if I get one.

[MegaRay]

I started a Youtube channel with a dub of my webcomic, music and everything. It is hard work but I believe it is the easiest way to share it. Of course you have to atleast upload a video once a week, but I always slack off xD

[DasIstWunderblyat]

The question is how make things that appease the eyes of general populace? Skill alone is not enough.

Perhaps you better invest and advertise yourself as an illustrator first, then make a webcomic. It (from what I see) makes you has more solid ground than appearing out of nowhere with your webcomic. Your fanbase in illustration would be more than happy to check your comic out. It is a sure possibility some fans won't like your webcomic, but at least they are checking it out and may contribute to the publicity (sharing, retweeting, voting)

It's what I think why "Fisheye Placebo" is so popular, because a renowned illustrator named Yuumei made it. People are checking it out and even excusing its flaw because "It's Yuumei" (TBH it's meh, just the art is pretty) . If Yuumei appear with their comic first instead of illustration, I bet either the comic or them won't be as big as now.

[solhawthorne]

Hey I love your work! Just wanted to say that lol.

This argument goes really far back, and I vividly remember being a part of tumblr communities where it was a huge problem for original content to get noticed versus fan art. This had mostly to do with the way searching and indexing worked, and it was okay-ish for fan art, and absolute shite for original content, especially anything long form. Twitter is more like this too now, where it's nearly impossible to actually explore original content.

I agree that webcomics lack an easy marketing path, but I disagree that it's inherent to the medium (books also require time and energy investment, arguably more than comics). I think it's simply that all major social media platforms prioritize a different medium (namely, short videos and single images) and platforms for novels are more entrenched with more readers. It's really the job of sites like Tapas and Webtoons to push forward their own platform that uniquely promotes and markets webcomics, but they might just be challenged by the small market that exists for amateur comics.

Sorry I don't have anything more practical to say, I'm not that familiar with marketing itself. The one thing that comes to mind is that there just may not be any way around simply posting volume and getting eyeballs through fan art.

[VibrantFox]

I'm not sure if i can contribute well to the discussion since I honestly don't know much on what work in driving original content without making fanart or having to do both illustrations and comics since most social media platforms seem to demand it like @solhawthorne said

I know I've seen some different methods people use to promote their webcomics outside of promo illustrations like short animations, trailers, comic dubs, or even social medias for characters but not too much else that I can think of off-hand.

It'd be nice to see effective methods of spreading webcomics but I don't know if there's ways to do so that won't require a lot of extra work since that's kind of how the biz seems to be

One thing that I wonder about though is if it'd be possible to generate more avenues for webcomics on existing platforms, as in not only working with known hashtags out there but maybe making some of our own and making them more popular through use? It's a mostly abstract idea but maybe something to work with

[joannekwan]

Yeah I totally get your gripes!
Like Kaina said, I focus more on promoting my illustrative work. Every so often I might sneak in a wip of a comic panel I'm particularly proud of, but 99% of the art I share online are stand-alone illustrations, most without anything to do with my comics. I just … don't really promote them at all.

And since my stories aren't really all that dynamic, as far as poses and vistas go, I imagine doing regular 'X title updated today!' posts will just become white noise to followers after a while.

Recently I HAVE been toying with an idea for my next comic to be closer to my colorful illustration style, but it needs its own unique script, a plot I haven't thought of yet.

[ben]

I actually haven’t found it super difficult to promote conics. We’re lucky to already be working in a visual medium.

What I used to do and still do on occasion was just draw daily strips. I would do them extremely quickly and I allowed myself to post even the ones I thought were garbage. Strips literally spread themselves on social media because they’re one of the few things people actually share. I’ve known people who start em and within a month they’re already getting fan art from strangers and hundreds of likes and retweets.

That’s not to say every strip is gonna be a hit. There is a format to them and you get better at them as you go and the good ones are the ones that are gonna take off.

I gradually started adding pages to strips and eventually they became little vignettes and that was an extremely good primer for getting people into my longer format stories. I had built up the audience, set them up for longer works, and now that’s basically all I do.

Also, you might not think that strips would help you develop skills that’ll translate well to longform but it absolutely does.

[joannekwan]

I think the challenge with strips though is boiling down a complete concept into just a couple of images. It has to be relatable to be very shareable, like Sarah's Scribbles, or if it's more esoteric, fit a certain brand of humor, like FalseKnees' birds.

The little luck I've had with strips is fancomics for IPs like Dragon Age and Overwatch. Since they use recognizable characters and there is implicit information about them already (their background/personality/etc.). You don't have to outwardly explain those things and can use that referenced knowledge as part of the joke.

[FroyoFighter]

start as early as possible, find some content (I use past sketchbook(s))

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Considering this, stand alone illustrations/images have the high ground in quickly grabbing one's attention.

As someone who does a lot of illustration (and actually prefers it to making comics) I'd like to add to this:

Yeah, it's probably easier to get someone to want to look at your art than to get them to want to look at your comic. But doing standalone art isn't exactly easy street either...especially when you're stuck in that 'middle ground', where people like your art but just not enough.

They'll request free things from you even when you explicitly ask them not to, but no one will actually buy anything from you (no matter how low your prices are...). They'll 'like' your art, but they won't share it with anyone or talk to anyone about you. Growing your audience becomes like pulling teeth, and if you feel like you're in a good place with your art style it just makes it worse, because then there's nothing you can really do to try to improve your situation.

That's why a little story every once in a while, comics included, actually helps a lot. Even something as small as a recurring OC that people will recognize can do a lot to help stave off stagnation, if you're not fortunate enough to be one of those miracle-tier artists that just happen to have exactly what the people want these days.

[ben]

I actually think fan comics are severely limiting the audience because the wonderful thing about strips is that if you just keep it simple it’s sharable amongst a wider margin on people. There’s a vast array of strips that are all wholly different and wildly successful so I wouldn’t be so quick to say it “has to be” one thing or another. The only thing it has to be is funny.

It is harder to do original content and have it work but the payoff is a lot higher and you learn a lot more about developing characters that readers have to know and understand quickly. And you won’t have to worry about folks abandoning your work when you do eventually start your own IP.

[JRHoch]

Webcomics might just be like writing poetry--the readership will always be small, and only a very few will get widely known and heralded. Forget about doing it to make money.

I have noticed that a lot quickly popular comics have come from artists who had existing fan bases, often from doing illustration work online. Fisheye Placebo is only one example of this. Sometimes I'll see a comic on Webtoon with only 1 page, a cover, and the creator already has 100 subs.

[Iris-Grimoire]

It's important to be consistent and memorable to get by, above all. Even if you do a mix of fan and original content, you can't just do what's popular and expect it to stick - but if you're the person that really likes to draw Hollow Knight, or has that funny looking OC, you stay in people's minds.

This is also why a lot of bigger artists say to do what you love, because that shows. If you just rely on following trends or drawing a thousand OCs expecting one to hit it off, you spread yourself too thin. Drawing for a franchise you really like or making a repeating cast of characters (which usually is what's happening in a comic already) is a big difference. Of course, if it only it were that simple, but it's a start.

Making promotional illustrations is a really good tip as well! Your comic might be 30 pages away from a cool action or emotional scene and you probably can't draw any faster without harming yourself - why not just draw your character fighting something in a single, much faster to finish picture? And even if you want to avoid spoilers, you can always draw something out of context or an AU for kicks.

[skicoak]

Well, here's a tangential question... we've really focused on vertical storytelling over the last year in our webcomic...then when we went to a mini-convention, we realized we had to push a product that could only be fully appreciated in a form that was hard to replicate outside of the form.

Same thing tends to pop up in other social media forms, vertical storytelling doesn't translate.

Anybody got a better work around than producing enough content for two different purposes?

[nostalgicroxas]

I actually think it might have a bit more to do with marketing. A friend of mine does novels and comics and is able to sell them. It's nothing like she's making bank from it, but she's able to attend conventions and shows to sell at. I'd like to stress that this is the kind of person who you would never see not doing something. Even when sitting in a hotel room at a convention to relax, she's literally talking to you while drawing her comic out as sketches and working and doing two things at once. http://www.s-kojika.com/about/

Yes, take commissions and advertise you're doing them, but you need to show people that you're always doing something and always being active. I mentioned it on another thread about Patreon needs to look alive even if you have 1 or 2 Patrons, or none. The same for dA, and I imagine instagram and tumblr aswell. If your portfolio you're showing people hasn't been updated in 1 month, 3 months, how likely are people to stick around?
@JRHoch - in regards to Fisheye Placebo, this is from an artist who clawed their way up from conventions and selling in Artist Alleys and shows. It's all working hard. If you look at their dA page (pretty sure they started there, I've been following them on there for like a decade it feels like), you'll see that they're just invested even through health hiatus's.

Lots of these "big" people have guides (Sacred's creator is one that comes to mind youtube here ) and information on how to make it. "Graphic Novels" might be a different sell than "webcomics" since the terminology holds water differently.

[BlueWorldComics]

That is a really interesting take. Where do you think would be a good place to post art and accumulate a following?

[GesuGesu]

I'm doing more of a fake "if these characters were real" kinda posts

I've been drawing on top of photos on my phone, but unfortunately Medibang mobile doesn't have the full blur filters that I use in CSP

[JRHoch]

Hey, I have no doubt it's about working hard. Many people think it's about working on the comic; the bulk of it might be the networking and marketing.