Getting your comics noticed.

[peahat]

DejaDoDo

peahat

Helloo :3

I would suggest not even thinking about selling IRL until you've built a sizeable fan base on the internet. The internet is an INCREDIBLE tool for self publishing. You can distribute your comics to a targeted audience basically for free. Giving some copies to your local bookstore or library aren't a bad idea, but your comic won't be seen as much by your target audience.

There are many webcomic artists who have become successful (moneywise and famewise, I guess) thanks to their internet fanbase. Focus all or most of your energy on improving your work and publishing on the internet. Yaayyayy internet!

If you're hellbent on selling IRL, though, I think a artist booth at a convention is the best way to get your name out. You'd just be showing them to the same people that are on the internet anyway. Nerds, lol

Soo... In ur opinion then. Should we put a 'store' on our website selling teashirts with our stuff on it, or special signed edition on our comics.. and little stuff like that? Or... should we just not. My thing about it is... noones gunna wanna buy something online that doesn't mean too much... or that they dont know...

Yes, basically. You can still distribute printed versions of your comic if you want, but wait until you're certain you have enough internet fans that would want to buy it. You could even have them preorder the books and use those funds to print them. I think that would be the safest way to do it anyway, since printing even the smallest stack of books could cost you anywhere from $300-$2,000 (I was just looking this up for myself tonight). That's not to mention storage, shipping, and other costs, as Angry Yasei mentioned.

keiiii

But how DO you use the internet properly for this purpose?

Put your comic on the internet for free, promote it, and ONLY go to print when you have a sizeable fanbase. Use the internet it to find an audience that will actually read and buy your stuff. This has worked for a lot of comics already; TJ and Amal and Honeydew Syndrome off the top of my head. Both very popular webcomics that went to print and did not seem to put their authors in debt, lol. Neither of them went to print until they were at least five chapters in and had a huge rabid fanbase.

I don't know if that's what the authors had planned, but I'd say it worked for them :V

[keiiii]

peahat

Put your comic on the internet for free, promote it, and ONLY go to print when you have a sizeable fanbase.

Well yeah, but how do you do the "promote" part successfully? XD

[peahat]

keiiii

peahat

Put your comic on the internet for free, promote it, and ONLY go to print when you have a sizeable fanbase.

Well yeah, but how do you do the "promote" part successfully? XD

Oh, haha sorry.

Okay, my experience is almost entirely with Smackjeeves, so I can only give advice there. But I would recommend that website wholeheartedly anyway.

STUFF I THINK YOU SHOULD DO:
1. Host your comic in as many communities as you can, like Smackjeeves or Tumblr. ESPECIALLY Smackjeeves. When I say community, I mean anywhere that people can subscribe to it and be alerted whenever you update. Do not buy webspace or host it on your own personal website right away.
2. Have a bright, eye-catching banner or image that appears whenever you update. Everytime you update on Smackjeeves, your banner jumps to the top of a Recently Updated page. It's free advertising, really. My comics used to snag anywhere from 2-10 new followers just by updating, but that's only when I had a really nice banner.
So go ahead and put fifty trillion hours into your banner. Have someone else do it for you if you're not that confident, not even kidding.
3. UPDATE REGULARLY. Imho, this is the number one thing you can do to set yourself apart. There are reams and REAMS of webcomics with mind-blowing art and unique premises... but they never get past ten pages (due to the author's laziness or whatever) so they'll never get anywhere.
But a webcomic that is faithful, updates regularly, and doesn't leave its readers hanging.
Also, as I said, updating in a community is basically free advertising. Once you stop updating, you stop advertising :/

And that's all I can think of right now. Do these three things (in my experience), and you'll gain readers without really doing anything besides writing your comic. Depending on the quality of your comic (and banner) of course.

I belong in the category of failure authors who stopped updating, unfortunately ): So I never got to the point where I had to think about paying for ads or webspace. OH but. also, put your comic on one of those webcomic lists, if you can. Like topwebcomics.com. Your readers can vote for it and help it climb to the top. Offer them rewards for if they can get you into a top spot. This is another thing I did that worked well for me.

I hope that helps :3 It's been a while since I've been in the webcomic game, but I'm trying to get back into it. I've heard that the book How to Make Webcomics is good too. It's on its way to my house now (:<

[Empuska]

Angry Yasei

As far as starting off via webcomics and building a fanbase before going to print, I can't suggest this book enough: How to Make Webcomics by Scott Kurtz. Kurtz has been at this for a long time, and he really knows his stuff.

There's just one profound problem; the information they actually gave about marketing and monetizing comics aren't something you don't bump into internet. Besides I really hated their attitude of "Merchandising is the way to go" though most of the graphic novels are tad hard to merchandise the way they think. That's why I like Jason Brubaker's blog posts about these things, because he seems to concentrate on growing the fan base in point of generating revenues from actual product than relying on all the other things.

[peahat]

Empuska

Angry Yasei

As far as starting off via webcomics and building a fanbase before going to print, I can't suggest this book enough: How to Make Webcomics by Scott Kurtz. Kurtz has been at this for a long time, and he really knows his stuff.

There's just one profound problem; the information they actually gave about marketing and monetizing comics aren't something you don't bump into internet. Besides I really hated their attitude of "Merchandising is the way to go" though most of the graphic novels are tad hard to merchandise the way they think. That's why I like Jason Brubaker's blog posts about these things, because he seems to concentrate on growing the fan base in point of generating revenues from actual product than relying on all the other things.

I adore that post about growing a tree @____@ He puts a lot of what I was trying to communicate into very clear and motivating words.

[Cat-the-Bat]

Get more people involved.

What some friends and I are doing is an anthology where everyone writes/draws a short comic.
This immediately means that each of the 9 people involved will start promoting it to their unique set of contacts (family members and web communities.)

We recently posted a kickstarter for it and it's currently on the "Popular this Week" section of the website. People look at it. We offer the PDF for free at a low donation price and a physical copy of the comic at a higher price.

We offer teasers, but not the whole comic. This gets people interested.

And then, this summer, we will be getting some physical copies published and selling them at a SMALL convention before hopefully working our way up. We'd like to do a second as well.