Last year I acknowledged I had a problem with procrastination, and this year I’ve started taking steps to overcome it. In the last two weeks I’ve worked on a Jump Leads script I’d been putting off doing for two months to the point where it’s very nearly finished, I’ve begun working with the rest of the Jump Leads creative team to screw down the details of an upcoming multiple-issue story arc as well as fleshing out a new character who we’ll be introducing at some point in the future, and I’ve redoubled my efforts to find a new dayjob. I’m also looking at ways of raising capital to properly publish the second book as well as to republish the first, having nearly sold out of my own stock, and trying to raise the profile of our little webcomic.
The Jump Leads stuff is particularly important because last year I realised that if I want to make a career out of writing, specifically out of writing Jump Leads, I need to be about 5,000% more focused than I have been. I need to stop looking at it as a hobby, as something for my portfolio while I wait for something bigger and better to come along and start looking after it properly.
It’s started to bother me when I see people in the webcomics community – that is, the lower end of the webcomics spectrum where you’ll find people such as myself – who in one breath say that they want to make a living out of webcomicry, and in another mention that they haven’tupdated their webcomic for the last three days running because they’ve been playing Modern Warfare 2. Or re-watching Firefly with the cast commentary. Or, y’know, they just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
How can you possibly be serious about making a living as a webcartoonist when you don’t even have the discipline or the inclination to get your comic drawn and updated? We’re talking about people who say they’re on, say, a thrice-weekly update schedule but who haven’t updated their comic in a week and a half, and then they wonder why their already small readership is dwindling.
It’s even worse when their Twitter feed is littered with tweets along the lines of, “Will draw next comic after this game of Assassin’s Creed II.” Then “Whoa, is that the time? I just got sucked into that game! I’ll draw the comic tomorrow.” Then “Gonna jump into Assassin’s Creed II again. Man, that game rocks.” Then ‘Why isn’t anyone reading my webcomic? 🙁 🙁 :(”
If you want your webcomic to succeed, the first rule is “Make it worth reading,” and the second rule is “Stick to your fucking update schedule.“*
And while I’m on the subject, let’s discuss the relaunched Webcomics.com, shall we?
To everyone who has pointed out the apparent “irony” of Halfpixel charging for access to the site now when in How To Make Webcomics they decry paywalls with a passion: You make a webcomic. You want people to read your stuff, and there are millions upon millions of webcomic readers out there. They, conversely, make a niche website. There are probably only thousands of fledgling webcartoonists out there, and probably only a hundred or so of those people who genuinely want to make a living from making webcomics.
To everyone who has balked at the cost: It’s $30 a year. That’s not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things – a drop in the hat compared to the cost of webhosting, convention table/booth costs, travel and accommodation expenses, book and tee-shirt printing, and so on. Brad’s articles – and they are mostly Brad’s articles – are worth every damned penny, and that the guy has been pouring so much effort into them for over a year for free is, frankly, criminal. Brad deserves some kind of compensation for such sterling work, and I for one don’t mind picking up part of the bill. If you’re serious about making a living as a webcartoonist, it’s completely and utterly worth it.
To everyone who takes offense to the above: If you feel you don’t need Webcomics.com, if you didn’t use it before or if you’ve never really had much interest in the articles, then that’s fair enough and I wish you luck. If you feel it’s something you want or need to have access to but you object to the idea of throwing a twenty and a ten in Guigar’s direction then you need to seriously reconsider whether you’re willing to put in the effort to making webcartooning your job, because if you aren’t prepared to pay $30 a year for articles that could potentially help you improve the way you go about your business (and what you’re doing is business if you’re taking it seriously) then will you be prepared to shell out for hosting? For marketing? For book-printing and all that other gubbins I mentioned earlier?
I utterly regret not taking full advantage of the website before they shifted it over to a pay model. I thumbed through it occasionally last year but I didn’t have the time – or, at least, I told myself I didn’t have the time – to read the articles in full. I’m kicking myself now. Absolutely kicking myself.
I’m going to go to sleep, and I’m going to enjoy my weekend. And Monday morning I’m going to wake up at 8am, have breakfast, and sit in front of my laptop at 9am ready to write, and plan, and prepare for the year ahead. What will you be doing?
* Yes, I’m aware that there’s a degree of irony in this statement considering Jump Leads’ schedule has been wobbly for the last four or five months. No, I’m not going to discuss it.