Attracting Readers

Introduction

There are, basically, two different facets to popularity, one of which is superficial and one which is a bit more considered on the part of the reader. It's the difference between saying "Wow! Cool!" and "Hey, I like this." The first is how many readers you attract, the second is how many you keep, and a good (if simplistic) rule of thumb is as follows...

Artwork will attract readers and the writing will keep them.

This tutorial is about how to attract readers - the superficial "Wow! Cool!" factor - and for the most part this simply comes down to catching their attention. Anything goes, too, because all you're trying to do is get them to give your comic a look. Once they do, they'll make the judgement on whether or not they want to stick around and keep reading, but have to get them in the door first.

This document may sound in places like I'm assuming you'll happily sell your soul to the malignant deity of your choice to attract readership. I'm not. I'm simply telling you that if you do want to attract readers, selling your soul is one option. Ultimately, as with all things, it is for you to balance the sides and make the judgement call yourself. This is here only to be considered.

Artwork

The look of the comic plays a big part in attracting readers so, clearly, the more attractive the artwork, the better. Colour always helps there but makes for larger file sizes and greater bandwidth costs. There have been occassional comics which have converted their archives to black and white to save bandwidth while keeping the most recent comic in full colour, which is a useful compromise. However, colouring comics is also time consuming and not something everyone will find easy to do. Nevertheless, if you want superficial attraction, colour is definitely the way to go.

And large artwork works as well. You should make sure the comic panels fit on the screen, of course, but the bigger something is, the more friendly it is. It's feels less crowded, less restricted and less cramped. The image, and indeed the text, doesn't seem dense and heavily detailed. In short, it makes it less effort to look at and process. If you watch a movie on your computer, do you prefer it taking up a quarter of the screen or the whole thing? If you're reading, do you prefer dense, tightly spaced text or something a little more spaced out? It's the same principle, although again it comes at a cost of bandwidth.

As examples, College Roomies From Hell consistantly uses large and colourful artwork and It's Walky does some and some, making it a good one for a direct comparison.

The artwork should also be in a pleasing style. This is hard to categorise, particularly since I'm not a trained artist with a dictionary's worth of technical terms to bring into the fore, but generally curves rather than angles, a simple cartoony look rather than realism, and not too much fiddley detail. It depends, though. I find that if you have the right artist for the right style, anything will work.

Too much text, also, can turn people away. It just looks like too much effort. Being invited in should be as little hassle for the reader as possible, a maitre-de at the door with a gentle bow and a sweep of the hand, not a pile of forms.

The final attractive feature that's worth noting is pure technical skill. An amazing colouring job, photo-realistic pencil art, a unique and distinctive style... Anything that'll impress a reader and make him go "Whoa!"

The Main Page

Most of the "attracting readers" bit happens when they first see your comic on your website so it's therefore important to have your comic on the main page. It's immediately clear what your website is and what it contains, and the product is right there in all its glory to spark the curiosity of the casual passer by. As I have said before, having your comic on the main page could mean the difference between a potential reader closing the site because it's one of twenty opened from someone's link page or bookmarking it for a later and more careful look.

There are, however, valid situations where you might not want to. Mature content, for example, or if you release a comic in batches of pages as Inverloch does. Penny Arcade leaves the comic well away from the main page of its website, but Penny Arcade is a gaming website with news, reviews and so on. The comic is just one part of a bigger website.

If you don't have your comic on the main page then certainly have some sort of artwork. It's something quick to absorb that will spark their interest and motivate them to look further. Apart from looking attractive, it also helps identify what your site is about. Mindmistress used to display a sample frame from the latest comic and it worked well. Pick the right one and you have an effective teaser.

One problem with putting the comic on the main page is that you can't control which particular comic a reader will see when they first arrive. For example, the "Elastic" storyline from College Roomies From Hell is hardly representative of the style of the normal strips and when I first came across Schlock Mercenary, it was with this strip. Lots of text in a strange font, scrappy black and white art work… Didn't appeal to me at all. It was a few months before I tried it again and now it's one of my favourites.

Well, there's not much that can be done about that, although if you're planning on an advertising campaign of some sort, it would certainly be a good idea to time it for when you're comic's looking it's best and most interesting.

The First Comic

After you've got the readers past the index page of your comic, the next hurdle is the first comic in your archive and all the rules above apply once again. Indeed, it may be worth taking extra effort on the first chapter of your comic - making the artwork better, colouring it and so on. You can prepare the first chapter ahead of your comic's launch date if you're organised enough so the extra time this would take need not be a problem.

There are also some story-writing considerations. The first comic should grab the readers and drag him into the story. This can be done a number of ways. You can start with something climactic and dramatic, as Coiling Spine does here. That grabs the attention of the reader immediatly. It's more like an end than a beginning, and it's a huge event that tells you a lot about the story that's coming (being post-apocalyptic). It not only hits you with something big and noisy right off, but it tantilises, suggesting the possibilities of the comic that follows.

Another technique is simply to drop the readers into the middle of something. For example, my own comic begins with this. Something is obviously happening - the lady is clearly psyching herself up for some form of deception - but the reader doesn't know what. Curiosity and interest are both engaged, probably helped along by the webpage around it. There's no title, no logo, no clue to what might be happening at all.

You can introduce something interesting or odd that the reader will want to find out more about. The best examples of this I know are the opening lines of books rather than a comics, from Tolkien's "The Hobbit" - "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit" - and Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series - "The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed". In both cases, the reader is assailed by questions. What's a Hobbit? Why does it live in a hole? Who is the man in black? Why does the gunsliger seek him?

Good beginnings can also be simple and straigtforward. Schlock Mercenary starts by introducing a character who looks to be a lot of fun to follow the exploits of, and Count Your Sheep starts with an attractive, simple strip and a very dry joke.

One thing that should definitely be avoided is exposition. I've already said that too much text is a bad thing but reams of the stuff is not unusual for a comic's introduction. Avoid it.

Number of Comics

It is important that you have a fair few comics for people to read when they first get there. Two comics isn't enough for anyone to know whether or not they like your comic and they're not going to invest the time to check back for updates if there's no reason for them to - particularly if they already read ten, twenty or fifty other webcomics.

So, have a few comics and let the readers get a good taste. Twenty comics is probably sufficient but erring on the side of caution and going for, say, thirty or even fifty can't do any harm. If you have a story based comic, have one complete story (or "issue" if you prefer) and if you can manage two, all the better.

There are two ways you can actually make sure you have enough comics when people show up. The first is simply to make that many comics and put them all online at the same time for your comic's launch. This has the disadvantage that you're sitting on the comic for a long time before you start and that can be frustrating.

The second way is not to advertise the comic heavily until you have enough comics. Just update the site until you reach your mark - thirty comics, one story, whatever - and then start advertising it.

This even counts for adding your comic to the Webcomic List. For those of you who don't know, the List is a service that lets you know when the webcomics you read have been updated. It's extremely useful, particularly for less regular or less frequent comics because you don't have to keep checking their websites. You just check the list.

And when new comics are added to the list, some people will give them a quick look. A lot of these comics are brand new and have just one or two comics in them - sometimes even none - so the potential readers will simply go away again.

Uniqueness

Having something unique, something not done elsewhere, is always an attention getter. It could be the artwork, the colouring, the layout, the website design, animation, the characters in the strip, the font... Pretty much anything as long as it's something that will be noticed at a glance. We're talking about attracting readers, remember.

Conversely, something the readers have seen many times before would have a neutral effect at best. A black and white newspaper strip format, for example, is boring. It might not turn people away but it certainly won't impress them either. A comic that, at a glance, appears to be one of a cliched genre - college roomies, gaming, traditional fantasy - would also be unimpressive. Comic sans is a boring font, white is a dull background colour and sprite comics always seem to be using Megaman sprites. (What's wrong with some good old fashioned Commodore 64 game sprites, I ask you?)

These examples might not actually put readers off but they're certainly not eye-catching and memorable either.

Obstructions

It's important not to try to delay or obstruct the readers once they decide they want to read. It may seem odd to say that but you'd be amazed how many people do it without realising it. You want it to be as quick, straightforward and simple for the reader to start enjoying your comic as possible.

I said this above but the biggest thing here is to have the comic on the main page of your site. People often put news on the front page but people don't come to the site for the news. They come for the comic. Give it to them.

Filler comics in the archive are also bad, particularly right at the beginning. Clicking on "First Comic" and getting a message saying "My comic is going to open here soon!" is pointless and irritating. Remove the filler and put them somewhere else if you do want to save them.

Manga comics often read right to left instead of left to right. This is fine if the writer is Japanese or if the comic was translated from Japanese but making an English-only comic read right to left is going to irritate some people and turn them away. And no matter how big you make the note saying they have to read right to left, I'm afraid the readers will probably miss it. Their eyes will gravitate to the comic first and if they don't know to read right to left they'll just get confused.

Make the user interface - how they get around your website - simple, straightforward and also typical. It has to work in the way they're used to so they don't have to spend time figuring it out.

The resolution the website is meant to be viewed in is another point here. If it's too high, then the comic can be off the side of the screen and that's a needless irritation for your readers. So, try your best to make your website and comic viewable for people who use 800x600 resolution. There's a lot of them about - still around 40% of everyone who's online - so this is important.

And, there's download speed. It's not healthy - and not even necessary - to assume everyone uses broadband. Once again, there's a huge mass of internet users still on dial-up internet access and a comic image 300KB in size will take a minute or more to download. If they want to read the archives, sixty comics will take them over and hour to download.

Advertising

A lot of people feel that this is somehow cheating, that it's beneath them and after experiencing sitting through some prime time commercials, closing great stacked piles of popup windows and waiting for huge animated advertising banners to download, well, yeah. They have a point. Who'd want to be associated in any way with these irritants?

The alternative is word of mouth and there's a perception that someone who makes it through word of mouth has made it on their own merits. It's somehow more honest. This is because, in the real world, advertising is used to trick people, to get them enthusiastic about spending their money before they come to their senses. Word of mouth, on the other hand, is passed from people who are genuinely and honestly impressed with the product and carries the weight of their own, personal, unpaid for opinion.

Except that - and this is important - the underhanded trickery of advertising does not apply to webcomics.

No, really.

The whole point of tricking someone is to catch them before they've figured it out. Hollywood, for example, engineers great advertising blitzes as a matter of course, trying to con people into seeing any number of good or bad movies, because movies only have to be successful for the opening weekend and that's just two days. By the time everyone comes to their senses and realises the movie is a pile of tripe, it's too late. The advertising blitz has done its work.

But with webcomics, you want people to come back every single day for months, probably years and you simply cannot trick them for that long. You might fool people into reading something they don't really like for a week, even a month, but they will come to their senses eventually. No matter how much advertising you do, the people who read your comic for any length of time will be those with a genuine and honest liking for the work.

So, advertising webcomics is a great deal more honest than mainstream advertising and is very useful tool to attract readers. If your comic is liked by five percent of all people, then obviously the more people who see the comic, the bigger that five percent will be. Word of mouth is perhaps more gratifying but word of mouth is slow.

Of course, the problem with advertising is that it costs money and webcomics are notoriously bad at paying any. Nevertheless, here's a list of handy websites about comics that do advertising.

There are also lots of indivdual comics you can check out for advertising space (the more popular the better, of course). Now, assuming you go through with it, you'll need...

Advertising Banners

Whether you're actively advertising or just making a link banner for people to use if they want to, there are a few things you can do to help entice people who see the banner to click on it.

And, in fact, I've already covered most of it. A banner with artwork on is better than one without, the artwork is best if an attractive style and as large as you can manage, colour will usually help, something unique about the banner will catch people's eyes, a gag is good and so forth. There are a few more things to consider for a banner, though.

Here is a pretty good example I've cobbled together for my own comic, Like the Wind.

It looks professional and colourful, the art is attractive, there's a gag and the sloped sides are a unique, attention-getting feature that create a dynamic look (although I'll point out they cause a few additional problems which have no easy solution). This banner is also a good example of some other things worth considering - both good and bad.

Good, first. A banner should in some way represent the style, tone, feel, setting, characters or main character in your comic, and this banner does a great job there. The colour scheme is futuristic and, indeed, this story is a science fiction tale. The picture of the lady, looking over her shoulder with a mischievous grin, is very descriptive of her character and her enticing, "come on, follow me in" look is simply a bonus. There's a lot of information about the comic in the banner.

Faces are probably the best thing to represent your comic to the world, as faces not only show you the characters and something of their personality but also represents your artistic style extremely well.

The bad part is the tag line. Thirty-five kilometres an hour is incredibly fast for a person on foot but very few people really know how fast people run. The only thing they do know is that thirty-five kilometres an hour is a very slow speed for getting around by modern standards. Furthermore, Americans and English viewers use imperial measurements and probably have no idea how fast thirty-five kilometres an hour actually is anyway.

The tag-line is funny for those who understand it but it fails many others. It has one further problem, which is that it tells you very little. The lady is fast, fine, but is she a Olympian? On her high-school track team? A courier? No, in fact she's a theif, an interesting fact that may appeal to fans of Catwoman or Dark Angel, or even to fans of crime movies like Entrapment or the Italian Job. It's something that should be mentioned.

This would be better...

The tagline doesn't have quite so much humour or punch, but it is more informative. The banner as a whole now tells you about the story and implies much about the main character and the setting.

A good catch phrase is a definite plus. It's a small teaser and should get people curious about the comic. However, I recommend against "wacky" phrases such as "Three exclaimation marks mean quality!" (College Roomies From Hell!!!) and "Where monkeys are better than girls. That's what we tell ourselves." (It's Walky). They don't really say anything useful about the comic.

And, unless you're well known for something else, an author's name is... Well, not a waste of space, as such, but it won't mean anything to most people and space on banners is at a premium. I'd consider leaving it out but it's entirely possible that the design of the banner might need it - To balance out the text of the title, for example. If the title is in the top left, the author's name might balance it well in the bottom right.

So: For banners, everything in this tutorial applies once again, only with the additional point that the more you can say or imply about the comic, the better and more enticing the banner will be.

The last consideration with banners is space. There isn't much to play with (and with the examples above, I actually sacrificed some to get the sloping sides). An animated banner can give you more room but at the cost of increasing the size of the banner file and slowing down the download. If you're paying for advertising space, feel free to use an animated banner as long as it's not ridiculously big. It's costing you money and it's important you get as good a return as possible. As such, you need to tell people enough about your comic to get them interested.

But for a link banner for other people to use if they like your comic and want to spread the word, always have a non-animated version available and let them choose. It's only polite.

Fanart and Guest Strips

Once more, we are now reaching into the realms more well known by comic writers.

Basically fanart is a more subtle form of advertising. You pick a really popular comic, draw up some fanart and send it over. If you're lucky, the author of that comic will put it on their front page but if not, there'd probably be a fanart gallery. Guest strips, conversely, are usually by request.

And it's a sound idea. The only problem is that if it looks like you're doing it to gain new readers, you'll suddenly get a lot of people sneering at you. It's deceptive, after all. It's called fan art for a reason and if you're not a fan, if you're only doing it for a link? It's underhanded.

The other problem, of course, is that it requires effort that is possibly better spent on your comic.

The best advice is simply to do it as fan art. Do it for the comics you read and like, be nice about it, and don't expect anything back. Don't be mercenary.

Just, You Know, Generally Hanging About

Active participation in the webcomics community is what I'm talking about here. At it's most basic level, this is hanging out on forums and in IRC chat but as soon as you start doing this, you'll notice other ways to participate. People will be requesting guest strips, asking for fanart, running silly competitions, organising events that any artist can get in on, requesting critiques, writing stupid tutorials about how to attract readers and so forth.

Get to know people. Let them get to know you. Be nice and don't push your comic. That'll just irritate people. A link in your sig is all that's required. Believe me, they'll check it out eventually.

All things considered, there aren't that many potential readers in the webcomics community - not compared to those who aren't in it, anyway - but they are certainly the most passionate and many of them are other writers - and if one of them decided he likes your comic, it's quite likely he'll link you and share his readers around.

Here are the main comic discussion forums I know of...

The first, Comic Genesis, seem to be the most lively and by no means caters to it's own comics. Comic Genesis is, incidently, also where I tend to hang out.

Outside the Square

One problem I personally see with webcomics is the recycling of the same demographic round and around. What I mean is that people find webcomics through other webcomics, so really, the amount of new readers coming in is very slight and most of those will be the same teenage-to-mid-twenties computer savvy gamer part of our population.

There are lots of people out there who aren't in the webcomics community. A great untapped pool of readers, in fact. So why not put a flyer up on the noticeboard of your local youth centre? Or see if you can't get the comic published in a college newspaper or club newsletter? Why not make a hundred two-page sample comics and ask if they could be left on the counter of your local comic shop for people to take?

That's just a few ideas and I'm sure there's plenty more for creative thinkers. The only problem with this is the limited range of the advertising - most of it is around your local area, but I'm not so sure that's an entirely bad thing. Wouldn't you like to be famous locally, able to meet your fans, maybe run into them on the street? Anyway, you can always ask fans to help out with similar stuff in their own areas and expand your field of operations.

Got Any Comments?

Feel free to buzz me. This document will be added to as new things occur to me but I'm always open to suggestions and criticism.