What is the best series update system?

yvettegustafsson 2015-07-01 18:53:50 UTC #4

Nooo, not ever 20 pages at a time! If I don't have time to read it all I'll stop and getting back to where I was before is a bit of a hassle if it's 20 pages to look through. Maximum 5 pages at a time would be OK.

ZelEnkora 2015-07-02 12:58:19 UTC #5

if u do a chapter a month--- its like uploading and then disappearing for a month till ur next chapter is done, believe me, i used to do that! but now i've changed my scheduling to 3-5 pages a week! i think that's a better choice as your comic will appear 4 times a month in the fresh section and also in the trending section (that is if u have enough subs) which will get you more subs. comics that update regularly tend to get more subs ( i used to get abt 6 subs whenever i upload a new chapter, i.e 6 subs a month... but when i changed it to 5 pages a week, 4 times a month i got like 20 subs in 3 weeks) so... yeah, 3-5 per week sounds like the better path to take! dont u think so?

Pernellmatthew 2015-07-03 11:46:53 UTC #6

Sounds like a good plan to me! Thanks

guilhermecahu 2015-07-03 14:47:32 UTC #7

If you don't mind, I'd like to present an idea and ask a question regarding this matter too.

There's a story I've been planning for some time. I want to start publishing it by August, if possible, and the periodicity worries me a bit. My idea is to publish a chapter every two weeks, each chapter consisting of some pages and being an enclosed piece of information in its entirety. The point is I'm still asking myself if this is going to work.

I've seen comics that have 1 page released per week, or 1 page two times a week, but some of them have a little problem. Their single pages are incomplete pieces of information (for example, a page with 5 pannels, only people running or fighting secondary charaters there), which means the reader waits an entire week for... nothing exciting to happen. And maybe the same will happen on the following week, and on the following, until someday there's something really exiciting to read... but that excitement won't keep momentum and will be faded by that long wait for another piece of incomplete information. OK, some comics are different and there every page has a theme and you can always say "this page presents this main information" everytime. This is a piece of complete information.

I thought about that periodicity of a chapter each 2 weeks with this in mind. First because I don't want to make the reader wait a long time for nothing, second because I want the reader to read consistent things - and I don't want the intensity of the conflicts to fade. This comic I'm planning is a story-driven slice-of-life, so every chapter (that may have 5 to 15 pages, I'm still not sure) will have a central theme and every part (in hierarchy it's Part > Chapter) will happen in a different period of time (the slice-of-life way). Oh, this periodicity also gives me more time to work on new chapters. Publishing an entire chapter per week would be impossible for me.

By reading this post, those problems of exposure came up, something I wasn't expecting. I thought that waiting 2 weeks would be worth of reading concrete, complete content/information but I can't stop asking myself if this will really work.

Then, what are your opinions on the matter?

Marvin 2015-07-03 15:26:46 UTC #8

It depends on what kind of story you're writing.
If it's a kind of gag-a-day (except "short-story-a-week-or-so" in your case), then I think your strategy seems pretty sound and you should go for it.
Now if you're writing a long story with a plot, I think you should think about it in a different angle. You should NEVER butcher your story because of the way you update. NEVER force yourself to create a "sort-of-ending" to every update or a cliffhanger or whatever. This would totally butcher your story, your pace and everything.
Personnally, most of the comics I've got in my reading list are stories with a long plot that are meant to be read as a whole.
If the author can only draw one page a week, then okay, I'll re-read the previous page to keep the flow and everything's fine.
And don't forget that most of the readers here subscribed to a lot of comics so they'll have a dozen of other updates to read between yours.

So yeah. Whatever is best for your story, not your readers.

shade277 2015-07-03 15:29:50 UTC #9

Do not update on weekend and holidays like 4th of july or x-mas =)
Never update to much pages - keep some in buffer
Be frequent
Be stable

guilhermecahu 2015-07-03 15:50:05 UTC #10

Sorry if I wasn't clear. It is a story with a plot, it has conflicts, characters are developed... well, something sequential. I call is slice-of-life... but now I'm not sure this is the right expression. Anyway, something with a plot.

Well I'd like to do something I can keep up and create a good experience for the readers as well, that's why I thought of uploading every 2 weeks.

I'm constantly thinking about this .-.
But don't you think this breaks momentum?

And constantly thinking about this as well. This is what makes me afraid of uploading many pages at once.

But there's something I keep in mind (and I think I forgot to explain this too): mine will be a manga-like comic (but with western reading, of course), and manga tend to have a block of content spread through many many pages while american comics are kinda different, having each page (our double page) to present a block of content. The periodicity I presented, then, would serve as a middle ground between those two systems. What do you think?

And, of course, I'd like to keep periodicity. With the material I have now, If I were to start publishing in August (1 chapter each 2 weeks), I would have a 6-month buffer. I think that if I were to publish 1 page a week, then I would have more than 6 months of buffer - which would be good for me, but leaves me questioning the reader experience.

Marvin 2015-07-03 16:52:03 UTC #11

That's what I talked about when I talked about angles. It all comes back to how you consider your comic.
Either it's :
- something you upload on tapastic to get readers, a feedback etc and incidently has a plot
- a story you want to draw and tell and incidently decides to share on the web

Tell me if I got it right. You have a japanese-paced story with a plot and several subplot (following the big one) with some sort of proper closure for each little subplot. And you have a 6 month buffer.

You can totally update every two weeks (more than 5 pages at a time is still risky though). But honestly, you shoud plan your updating schedule while considering your speed at drawing. To me, the ideal would be to be able to read 3-5 pages per day (which isn't really possible, I know).
If your comic is good, the readers will adapt themselves to your schedule. And some of them will discover your comic in a long time and be able to read all the first chapters in one go, respecting the pace you've chosen.

You shouldn't worry too much about the readers' reaction to the lack of closure of your updates. We're a nice bunch and know that the pace of a long plot story will be disrupted by the time between each update. We're used to it and it's ok ! Don't you read long plot stories here yourself ? What do you think ? =)

ps : I've just looked at your preview, if I were you I would update 1 page at a time for about a week, then no more than 3 pages per update because there is a lot of text, your pages are all pretty crowded and there's a lot to look at... You should also put a bit more space between each page so that it feel less like a giant bundle !
And I'll be honest, as a reader, here's what I thought "Oh ! The art is nice, there's a lot of work behind this... Mmmh... the text isn't always very lisible... ouch, lots of text, I can't read the action in one glance, I have to concentrate... Ah, lots of pages too... I feel tired... I'll write down the name somewhere for when I have time and want to see if the story is any good."
While if there was no more than three pages I would have tried !

guilhermecahu 2015-07-03 18:32:12 UTC #12

Yeah, it's exactly this.

Oh, yeah, you're right =o

I'll consider this. I can try to break each chapter into a group os pages or, if I'm going to break things anyway, I could post 2 days a week with 1 page per day. People wouldn't need to wait an entire week for a single page nor they would be flooded with information.

This is terrifying ._.

Marvin 2015-07-03 19:06:08 UTC #13

Yeah, sorry And one last thing, please, please dont put all your text on one side, center it in your bubble... I'm not good with english so :

I'm just telling you my first impression as a reader, this is in no way a criticism towards your art or story ! So please don't take it the wrong way ! =)

guilhermecahu 2015-07-03 19:13:03 UTC #14

Oh, yeah, this I know =P
(And no need for apologizing)

Hm... If you read something of mine, I need to say those 2 comics I have on Tapastic are more experimental. Wait, did you find the right me? Holly sh*t there is another Guilherme there =o Anyway this is my page: http://tapastic.com/guilhermecahu
The comic I'm planning hasn't been published yet (you can only find my experimental ones), but in case you saw the other Guilherme's comic, then that's a funny coincidence. He puts many pages per episode as well as I intended to do.

Marvin 2015-07-03 19:20:28 UTC #15

Sorry, I replied hastily and didn't look at your avatar, I thought you were the one that created the topic ! My bad ! But everything still stands (except for the very specific stuff) !

guilhermecahu 2015-07-03 19:21:21 UTC #16

lol don't worry. Everything you wrote was useful, anyway.
Thank you very much!

Marvin 2015-07-03 19:22:53 UTC #17

You're welcome, I just started updating my very first comic too, so I'll see for myself if my advice were that useful !

Pernellmatthew 2015-07-06 02:44:00 UTC #18

I know you were replying to someone else but us confused but you gave great advice. I am going to fix the text of final product so that it is easier to read. Thanks again!!

Marvin 2015-07-06 11:45:55 UTC #19

Ahah, cool ! You're welcome !

ZelEnkora 2015-08-14 10:51:55 UTC #20

honestly, i lose touch with the story when it updates a page a week! i've read some series that started off with at least 5 pages per update and then slowly they started updating 1 page per week and i found it extremely hard to follow! i update 4 pages per week, two pages per episode and upload 'em on mondays and thursdays! and i think its kinda working out, i guess

DeadAccount 2015-08-14 11:22:48 UTC #21

Hey, I'm happy it works for you, but unless you work on your buffer for like a year before you even start posting, that's kind of not feasible for a lot of artists >_> Unless it's like those gag-a-day stick figure comics. For me, each page takes like 10-12 hours to complete, and that's the time I put in after spending 8-10 hours at work.
A page a week is all I can manage, but we try to make each page contain some important information or entertaining bit of dialogue. (admittedly, some pages do get a bit too busy, but it's something we're working on...) I've seen some long form comics on Tapastic that take 20-40 pages even to get the basic premise down, and some pages are just like...3 panels spent blinking or something. These are the kind of comics I'd prefer to read in volumes rather than page by page.

But it does seem to be a matter of taste. Seems like people's opinions really vary on this.

ZelEnkora 2015-08-14 11:32:56 UTC #23

but drawing a lot of pages takes a lot of time! two pages per week and regular updates kinda keeps them in touch with the story too! i first uploaded a chapter a month and at some point most of my readers must have just skipped to the end, mine is not the only one they read ya know! so updating a few pages sounded more appealing to my readers. But my friends told me to upload a chapter a month because they only read mine and preferred reading a lot of content when they read and didn't want to bother reading every week. And i can draw a page a day, i only take 3-5 hours to draw a page! and its a manga, so i don't have to bother coloring it

guilhermecahu 2015-08-14 12:32:20 UTC #24

Since I started preparing my pages, I saw that uploading chapters (which would have more than one page) per week would be madness - in my case. So it reinforced the decision of uploading only a page per week. If it works for you, it's ok, but I currently have other things to do besides my webcomic. It usually takes me 2 to 4 hours to finish the linework of a page and I estimate around 4 hours to tone and finalize each of them. Not to mention the time I use to analyse my first sketches and work on a second version of them for more accuracy and better diagramation, which must take 1 to 2 hours per page. And I'm already preparing a 5-month buffer until the end of the month so I can decicate the rest of my semester to college and my professional future. So it's similar to @cryoclaire situation.