So you're unable to envision how driving away audience could hurt his sales? :smallconfused:
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It could, there is the possibility that some established fans will give up and those would be potential lost customers, although it's also possible that they'll buy Book 2 if/when it's available. But how many people who would be inclined to buy his book will forever choose not to because he didn't update the comic for a few weeks?
I don't know what his sales figures are, don't much care either, but by having his material up on the web and getting traffic it does mean more eyeballs than if he were solely working offline, and more eyeballs means more possible buyers. Now if he went on complete indefinite hiatus with no text updates or anything, yeah he'd probably lose most of his traffic and getting it back would be a real struggle, but it doesn't look like he's doing that.
Slow updates do hurt sales. And why? Because the rate at which the webcomic is being updated represents the rate at which the print comic is being assembled. If the webcomic is taking forever to progress, the comic is taking forever to get made. If it takes forever to make a comic, it takes forever to put that comic on the market, and it takes forever for you to make any money from that comic. And until the comic is selling, every day is a loss of profit, what with having to pay for web maintenance, bandwidth, advertising, going to cons, the artist's salary, etc.
Now, I believe the site is being maintained with the profits from the whole "tool" thing, but think about it. People are only going to pay for membership on a site that rarely updates for so long. Heck, if this thread and Erfwiki are any indicator, people are already starting to drift away, and that's less people paying membership fees.
If you are making a webcomic, or a comic, or a book, or a graphic novel, or anything for profit, inconsistencies and delays equal profit loss.
It depends on what else he does.
For an amateur comic writer who actually has to make a living doing something else and is doing the writing in between as a hobby, a page a week isn't bad.
But compare it to a professional comic writer, Warren Ellis managed to put out six pages of Freakangels weekly, producing around 870 pages in three years, during which time he has also been writing 3-4 other comics, a movie, and a novel.
If writing is your job, you need to treat it as one.
That isn't totally a fair comparision, for example if you compare the two comics, Freakangels tend to be 4-5 panels per page, whereas Erfworld has usually around 10-12 panels per page. Plus, I could be wrong, but I don't think Warren Ellis also manages the buisness side of freakangels - merchandise ordering etc.
Personally? I'm not that bothered about regular updates since I've got an rss feed, I'd like to have them more sure, but honestly I can't see anything more constructive I can ask the authors to do.
They're going to get an inker and colorist, so that should take the weight off Xin. And Rob's going to improve his speed writing skills anyway since he's doing a novel. I mean, YES, Rob could try finding another penciler to replace Xin, while she cares for her mother, but even aside from that being cold-hearted to cut off her income for something she can't control, it took near six months (the gap between Issues 1 and 2) for Rob to find someone to replace Jamie, what's the odd he can find someone without having a gap in the comic anyway?
Comments like these (and others), particularly by an audience who gets to read the product for free on the web, always put me in mind of Neil Gaiman's response to a reader, complaining about the delay in George R.R. Martin's Dances with Dragons:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil Gaiman
I would counter with Terry Pratchett's observation early in his career that journalism taught him the clear link between words on the page and food on the table.
It's appropriate that you bring up GRRM. The reason I'm not buying any of his books any more is because I got too bored waiting for Feast for Crows to come out and lost interest in his work. GRRM isn't my bitch, but nor is he someone I'm giving money to, which he could have been if he'd been a bit better at getting books written.
A work that is plagued with delays and then goes on a hiatus is going to bleed off readers. If the free work exists to promote and sell a more complete product, and the product itself is no longer being produced, that's hitting it both in terms of maintaining/expanding its demand and producing more discrete types of product to sell.
The two factors combine to make a worse whole on both sides.
But why are you guys acting like Rob shouldn't or doesn't know this though? It's not a hard observation to make and presumbly he's got the stats every month. I mean infrequent updates = potentially inferior product = slow/reduction of uptake isn't a hard deduction to make. It's just that he doesn't have a clear solution for it.
The problem isn't with leaving a work if the schedule isn't for you, the problem is hanging around a work complaining about it and offering no positive criticism. It's useless and makes the problem worse.
All he's saying it is an "excuse" for at all is the past few months, and the reason why they're going on hiatus now. Unless he talked about it more somewhere other than the news post, he's not saying every slowdown they've ever had is a result of this. In fact, he says just a few days before that in the post for the Dwagon plushies that the business side of things is a major time sink as well.
I was acting surprised that someone couldn't see that as causing problems for someone's revenue earlier.
And, well, observing something unfortunate that's come to pass and then reminsicing that it's had rather unfortunate heralds isn't so much a problem as a natural human response. That was then criticized in such a way as to act like the person who made the criticism didn't understand things, and then that brings us back to my post.
Though I am confused and flattered that making the observation somehow makes the problem truly worse, considering a single forum post is generally of negligible impact compared with what happens on the production side.
Hmm, after reading your post, I have a question:
How do you know Rob hasn't seen delays as causing problems for his revenue? Just because the problem hasn't been solved, does not imply ignorance on the part of the person involved.
As for your second point, you are right, actually. I made a mistake and phrased it wrongly. It doesn't imply making the problem worse directly. However by seeing such negative criticism, without clear solutions, you could add to frustration on the part of the author, slightly, by however small an amount increasing the chance they will simply stop the comic altogther, a delay of infinite length.
At best your post is simply a vent for your fustrations, but at worst it implies that Rob is such a moron that he doesn't realise irregular updates make some prople annoyed, reducing the readership and thus his revenue. Which seems incredibly condescending to be honest. I mean it's SO OBVIOUS.
Delays are bad, so we should reduce them! That they are not reduced is more likely to imply there are tricky problems involved in reducing them, and is less likely to imply the author is so stupid, that he needs to have this pointed out, AND that he is competent enough to easily and quickly resolve them once pointed out to him.
I don't, though I imagine he is aware to some extent as in as much as Rob is real to me, I imagine him to be of average to above average human intelligence and more experienced in life than I due to his age. I don't particularly care to what extent he's aware, though, so much as how able he is to overcome the obstacles placed before him and, armed with experience, avoid placing any further obstacles in front of himself. And I wouldn't even have an awareness that developed were it not for the chronic issues culminating in this discussion.
My post was not meant to convey that he was not aware or did not care so much as to be a response to the idea that it doesn't or shouldn't matter at all to Rob and we should feel privileged that Rob deigns to grace us with anything because of the nature of the comic strip as a vehicle to sell the print comic, and to get them to think about what they were saying. While it is his strip and he can do what he wants with it, if his goal is to make money by using the strip as advertisement, then a callous disregard for losing readers is not in his interest and shouldn't really be suggested.
Well I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.
So is anyone looking forward to reading about FAQ?
As the "someone" in question, I'd appreciate it if you didn't put words in my mouth. Here's what I said:
And in response to your question re: whether I was capable of understanding that delays can hurt sales:Quote:
In that light it doesn't really matter what his update schedule or non-schedule happens to be, as long as people are buying his stuff.
Emphasis added. :smalltongue:Quote:
It could, there is the possibility that some established fans will give up and those would be potential lost customers, although it's also possible that they'll buy Book 2 if/when it's available.
By no means was I suggesting that Rob should callously disregard losing readers and I'd appreciate it if you didn't say that I was.
Hm, I notice that there has been a page of talk about the update frequency, but not about the content. Not a good sign.
On the sales thing: I used to be a very loyal fan. I think I was the second or third person to post on the new Erfworld forum. I even got a pay pal account to buy the books and get a subscription. But the delays choked my enthusiams, and I even banned Erfworld from my comics list. I still read, but waiting for the next update is very low on my priority list. And now I don't really intend to buy an comic because of the high shipping costs. Maybe if I ever travel to the US and see it on a con.
New text update, of the prequel. It's certainly interesting. I really hope that this prequel comes out reliably, I'm intrigued.
What? What's this Goodminton side? Where's Faq, or the Croatoan thing mentioned ages ago on the cast page? Who's this Atomic "Tommy" Firebaugh? At the very least, he's another pun. Was Wanda popped as an heir? Does Erfworld not allow mages to be Royals? Are the other two mages Jack and Marie? Already? I was under the impression the three were popped in Faq, not in Goodminton.
Apparently not.
One possibility: Her side falls, she escapes to the Magic Kingdom because she's a caster, she gets hired by FAQ because their king hires weird casters to debate philosophy with.
That might be too simple, though.
There's no reason a royal couldn't be a caster. All of the other royals we've seen seemed to have unit types. But obviously, a royal caster would be very rare and insanely valuable (since both royals and casters are already so valuable individually) -- this also explains why Wanda is so good at so many things; we know royals level faster and have higher stats. I wonder if Stanley knows?
It seems pretty clear that she's not the heir, considering the Chief Warlord is already her elder brother. It seems unlikely that Goodminton would spend the extra schmuckers to make her the heir if they're as desperate as they say anyway.
I'm a bit puzzled as to why her older brother is so disappointed she's a Croakamancer, though--surely when you're in a desperate situation, with your back against the wall, the ability to turn your dead units into mostly-serviceable replacements is a *good* thing?
I'm guessing Goodminton is the capital, and Croatoan is the side name.
My assumption would be that for tactical reasons, they really, really needed another good warrior. Wanda is great, but chances are without a strong fighter on their side, they're just going to get rolled too quickly for her to have much chance to apply her abilities.
Actually i don't think wanda is a royal. Her father is an overlord not a king which would imply that, like stanley, he is a non-royal ruler. Though I am rather thinking that maybe wanda was popped as an heir though she may not have that status, if that makes sense...
One thing we don't quite know about is how exactly "family" works in erfworld when you have multiple brothers and sisters. One thing we know is that the first heir born to a ruler is considered the child of the ruler, but how do the other siblings come to be? Are the siblings simply warlords and casters who are popped within the capitol? Or is each sibling a character that was popped as an heir? If you already have a popped heir and you pop another heir, does the old unit retain the status or does the mantle of heir get passed on to the new unit? If its the former, then is their a benefit to popped in heir that is not automatically an heir, instead of just popping a normal warlord? I might guess that, even if they are not royals as the case would be in a non-royal side, an non-heir would still have better than normal stats... hmmm
How would Wanda pop as heir without having that status? I would think that Tommy is the current heir.
As for the family issue...I guessing that while nobles have better stats than commoners, ruling families have equally superior abilities. So when the ruler decides to pop a new unit, they can designate it to be a member of the royal family (which I'm guessing costs more schmuckers and turns, but grants better stats and the ability to be promoted to heir).
We mostly know how family works, but only for royals: A royal ruler can decide to pop a warlord as royal, and then they are a son/daughter and a brother/sister for the other royal warlords. And a royal warlords doesn't have to be a heir, an example id Tremanis. But a side can have multiple warlords with heir status. Which one is the first in line isn't clear. A lot of that is explained in this text update. It probably works the same way for non-royals.
Tribes aren't named after sides. Stanely and Sizemore are from the Plaid tribe.
The people on the wiki seem to assume that tribes encompass more than one side.
My assumption would be, that tribes are specific groups of units in the sense, that Plaid infantry would have different stats and optional abilities, then for example Croatan infantry. Ruling over one tribe or another would allow you to produce units, that belong to a given tribe.