2013-04-23: [CT] Chapter Five: Where Do We Go When We Just D

[The Comment Golem]

Discussion thread for [CT] Chapter Five: Where Do We Go When We Just Don't Know

Bonus! You can take a look at some of the recoloring process here.

[Mord]

Have to say, I'm not a fan of the mini-comics being offered for donations. I understand that you are in need of money but offering up story content behind a donation for a limited amount of time seems like a cheap way exploiting the few fans that still come around. I'd suggest putting them up in the store instead, but I'm not sure that would be any better seeing as how you don't even offer the old yearly wallpaper collections anymore.


Also I know you guys have had a lot to deal with over the last few years but I hope Poe gets started on something new soon. I know back in November you mentioned wanting to get the printed comics out before moving on with anything else but just looking at the forum it already looks rather doubtful that you would even have a successful kickstarter drive if you don't get another project up and running to bring in more life.

[xelan]

I'm okay with bonuses so long as they don't interfere with the main story. I am; however, curious as to how much we need to donate in order to get the bonus? I've always been appreciative of how consistent your comic output has been. I've bought several books, and recently when I heard of your latest health problems, I bought and recently received a shirt.

Get better soon!

[Imp-Chan]

The mini comics aren't actually story content, they're omake. Any donation is enough to see them, there's no minimum (though I'd appreciate it if you aimed at $2 or more due to the PayPal fees). I did debate putting them in the store, too, but since we switched store systems it makes a lot less sense to do that, because we'd have to set a pretty high minimum price to cover processing costs (which is one of the reasons we have no download products at all right now). They're actually doing pretty well without that, though. So far, the mini-comics are the only pages Michael has ever done for which he's gotten a fair industry-standard page rate in return. That's not really surprising, though, as most webcomic artists don't make anywhere near as much as they're worth.

Have to say, I'm not a fan of the mini-comics being offered for donations. I understand that you are in need of money but offering up story content behind a donation for a limited amount of time seems like a cheap way exploiting the few fans that still come around.

While numbers have naturally dropped since the comic ended, there's still a lot more readers than you'd think from looking at the forums. I'm very disappointed that you'd call it exploiting the fans to offer exclusive content for a price which they determine. I don't see any exploitation there at all, it seems to me like a pretty standard transaction of goods for payment, with the added benefit to the donor of determining their own price and knowing that the money will go directly to our living expenses and nothing else. It is exactly as voluntary as purchasing something from the store. What, then, is the problem? Is there perhaps some expectation that we should make all online content free? Do you feel it's unfair to issue a limited time offer? I'm having a hard time understanding your point of view on this, and that bothers me because it seems like an important thing to understand.

I do understand and share your concerns about getting Poe back to creating, but the man is burned out and deeply depressed. It's everything I can do to keep him making progress on the books and interacting with the world, and sometimes we neither of us can manage even that. He is not up to the grind of running a new comic all the time, and we're all just going to have to live with that right now, Poe included. Of course I would rather have an active and eager readership just waiting to buy the books, but since nothing we are able to do right now will produce one, we're just going to have to do our best without that. We do realize our own position and what will be needed to make a kickstarter work, and I do have a plan to ensure it gets enough exposure to bring in new buyers in addition to existing readers when the time comes. If you want to brainstorm ideas to help with that, I'm very happy to hear them, but please don't expect us to alter reality to accommodate the ideal way of going forward. We know we're in a crappy position, but our choices are either give up or do what we can. It would be nice if more people appreciated that he's still working on this stuff at all, and hasn't just said fuck it and walked away. It's because there are fans who care that he's even still trying.

^-^'

[Mord]

While numbers have naturally dropped since the comic ended, there's still a lot more readers than you'd think from looking at the forums. I'm very disappointed that you'd call it exploiting the fans to offer exclusive content for a price which they determine. I don't see any exploitation there at all, it seems to me like a pretty standard transaction of goods for payment, with the added benefit to the donor of determining their own price and knowing that the money will go directly to our living expenses and nothing else. It is exactly as voluntary as purchasing something from the store. What, then, is the problem? Is there perhaps some expectation that we should make all online content free? Do you feel it's unfair to issue a limited time offer? I'm having a hard time understanding your point of view on this, and that bothers me because it seems like an important thing to understand.

No issue with you charging for it, in this case my main issue would be the limited time. I'm also not a particularly large fan of collectors/exclusive/limited editions that are actually limited in number and include what could be classified as unique story content that won't be made available outside of those collections.


Also have you and Poe considered going back into commissioned artwork now that Poe is presumably not spending anywhere near as much time on ES as he was when the comic was still ongoing?

[BloodHenge]

No issue with you charging for it, in this case my main issue would be the limited time.

Agreed. I'm in a bit of a financial bind myself, but I don't want to miss out on content. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how big a hassle it would be to make the old content available perpetually, even if it still requires a donation.

[Imp-Chan]

No issue with you charging for it, in this case my main issue would be the limited time.

Agreed. I'm in a bit of a financial bind myself, but I don't want to miss out on content. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how big a hassle it would be to make the old content available perpetually, even if it still requires a donation.

Ah! I understand now, thank you. In this case the limited time is a function of the donations system. We can only really offer one at a time from the main button, and because these are technically thank-you gifts for donations, we can't really set up a collection of buttons without making them products sold for a fixed price... which would change the destination of the payment to the business, not us personally. When we were running wallpapers, the ones sold through the store went to the business, and the ones that we gave away as thank-you gifts were for donations made to us personally. We can still do that, because Poe personally owns all the art and the business is actually technically licensing it from him.

So we do have the option to offer them as downloads through our store, but there are a few limitations. First, we can't really afford to run many products for less than $10 through the new store system, because we pretty much wouldn't make anything on those sales by the time we were finished paying all the various fees (that's why there are no bookmarks or buttons up, either). I'm not sure we'd get a lot of response at that price-point, not if it's a fixed price instead of offered by a donor. Second, our new store system is product-limited. This isn't a problem in terms of physical products, because I don't anticipate having so many that we'd reach that cap any time soon. If we start putting up new products for download on a regular basis, though, we'll reach that cap fast. The solution is obviously to cycle through and replace old stock with new stock, but that brings us back around to the heart of this problem, which is...

Digital products may last for perpetuity, but they still have a shelf life. Just like people won't buy fashion after it's been around for a while, people lose interest in comics that have been available for a while, too. We sold some of the wallpapers through the store, but most people chose to get them by donating during the month they were available. By the time we offered the wallpaper collections, very few people still had any interest in them, and we put more time into setting it up than we ever got back in sales. Some people will always still be interested (Exploitation Now has been dead for almost a dozen years and still gets 500 readers a day), but it won't necessarily be enough to offset the price of keeping the product available.

Limited editions in general actually have a lot of reasons for existing. First, keeping things available in perpetuity can be a losing proposition for digital, as I already discussed above, but it's even more of one for physical products. The world just doesn't have infinite shelf space, either for storage or display, and on-demand is so inefficient that it amounts to just a great way to set about giving all your profits to somebody else. Second, setting a limit allows a publisher to calculate their profit and loss, and gives them the freedom to move away from a product that isn't earning their investment back. If they're committed to availability in perpetuity, they can't do that. Third, exclusivity is a product all by itself, and it does drive sales and give people an incentive to buy. This is not a world where sales fall into anyone's lap to the point where they can be taken for granted, so incentivizing sales is actually really important. That's why you see promotional exclusives attached to pre-orders in video games, for example. It'd be nice to think that people will buy when they can and that such measures aren't necessary, but really... most people won't.

I do understand feeling like you're missing out on something, though, and resenting a system that appears to be artificially setting up a situation so that more people will miss out. So while I can't promise to never offer promotional exclusives (we really do have to drive sales), I will try to figure something out to make the mini-comics available through the store in some way for at least longer than the month or two that they're available right now. Maybe some form of annual backlist subscription or something? I don't know yet, but I will work on it.

^-^'

[Imp-Chan]

Also have you and Poe considered going back into commissioned artwork now that Poe is presumably not spending anywhere near as much time on ES as he was when the comic was still ongoing?

It's everything I can do to keep him making progress on the books and interacting with the world, and sometimes we neither of us can manage even that.

Poe does not have more free time now, he's spending as much as he ever was, he's just having less and less to show for it. It is exceedingly frustrating, because things were slow enough when I was the only one with that problem. Now that we're both coping with it, it is really HARD to get done even the things we already have to. We could re-prioritize for a commission big enough to actually pay the bills, but anything less would just slow us down more.

-.-'

[Elessar]

I do understand feeling like you're missing out on something, though, and resenting a system that appears to be artificially setting up a situation so that more people will miss out. So while I can't promise to never offer promotional exclusives (we really do have to drive sales), I will try to figure something out to make the mini-comics available through the store in some way for at least longer than the month or two that they're available right now. Maybe some form of annual backlist subscription or something? I don't know yet, but I will work on it.

This would be much appreciated for us collectors.

You might also consider sneaking them into the final print copies as extras, whenever those books materialize.

[Imp-Chan]

There are other extras in the final print copies, which are also adorable, but yes we could see about including some of the mini comics there. My part of Volume One is actually completely done now (unless I resize it because like an idiot I decided on different book dimensions AFTER I'd finished it, and even though they'll make the next 1000 pages easier to letter they might require some adjustment from the first 200), it's just waiting on additional art from Poe and shading to update it to match the rest of the books. Volume Three is done except for page splits, and Volume Two is in progress. After that, since I changed the book dimensions and all the text is editable, it gets LOTS faster.

It's really hard to report progress on the books very clearly as I'm doing it, because we rearranged all the chapter breaks so there's no real point of reference anymore. The files aren't even labeled by their original dates, so unless I go out of my way to look it up, it's kinda hard to say what I've done at any given time. Plus, a lot of the files are waiting on one or two art panels or general corrections from Poe.

^-^'