Much later than I intended, my (hopefully) final post on serialization and pacing is below. Think of it as decompressed blogging. The trade should be out for Christmas.

Release Schedule, part two

Dirk Deppey, in response to part one, makes points I think my bias let me to ignore, in that monthlies provide a more regular stopgag to financial stresses while one completes the longer, slower selling (but possibly more profitable long-term) graphic novel. It seems to me Tan was doing a bit of the same thing selling individual pieces of The Joy Luck Club prior to putting together the full novel, so it's a strategy I should have taken into account.

I do seem to recall, however, that the versions of previously-published work by Tan differed to some extent to the versions which appeared as part of her novel. Selling chapters as short stories requires that they work as such, later to be re-edited to work best for the novel. One wonders if a similar method might not be useful in the serial-to-trade game: provide serial versions edited to work as individual (not to be confused with "stand alone") issues, then re-edit/re-imagine the pieces in their larger whole for the trade. Of course, if serials are, as Deppey and any number of others suggest, merely surviving because the bookstore / trade market has yet to grow to its true economic potential, I suppose I can't argue with much force the extra effort involved in such an endeavor.

So enough with the traditional print markets, anyway. I said it was webcomic time, so let's get digital.

First, a quick personal definition: by "webcomic," I mean comics created originally for and specifically with the web in mind as their primary medium. CrossGen's Comics on the Web, while a nice resource with solid implementation, is a collection of modified digital reprints of traditionally-printed serial comics. They were written with the Direct Market / Bookstore paradigm in mind, and I think their storytelling approach reflects it. So, too, the sorts of strips you'd find at comics.com are digital reprints of syndicated newspaper strips, and are heavily influenced by the needs of that medium rather than their web presence. Given that, neither is a particularly insightful example of the way digital media approach serialization, collection--and pacing for both--which is what I want to discuss here.

Since webcomics aren't constrained in their page size or length, updates aren't the either/or proposition that serials vs. trades tend to be. Even with the increased flexibility digital media provide, however, the web cartoonist still has a decision to make, though now it's two-pronged: 1) how often should she update? and 2) how much should be in each update? I'm still new to webcomics--my primary sources for such are Girlamatic and Scott McCloud--but from what I've seen, one of the two elements tends to take precedence. When you update on a schedule, your update contains what you can finish in that time (Girlamatic and McCloud's Morning Improv). When you update by chapter, the update happens when you have enough material done (such as McCloud's latest effort, The Right Number).

Let's start with the scheduled model, then. With a few exceptions, the comics at Girlamatic update weekly, and most updates are one page. I've found the single page updates read best when the page itself has something to say. Dylan Meconis' Bite Me and Garrity and Brosgol's L'il Mell and Sergio both have ongoing stories, but most updates tell their own story, as well. By and large, you don't have to know what's going on to, er, know what's going on. Of course, both of the above are primarily comedic series, and as such lend themselves (via tools honed by their newspaper strip predecessors) to daily gags which in turn make the page. The (possible) danger here is that their archives (collected editions) may wind up reading less like an ongoing story and more like a collection of strips; the lingering subplot is overshadowed by the more obvious daily beats.

Series like Jenn Manley Lee's Dicebox or Otis Frampton's Oddly Normal, on the other hand, tend to simply be "whatever page is next." Of course, while they have their own humor, both of these series use humor to flavor their drama and adventure; they are incidentally (or supplementally, perhaps? Either way, it's not accidentally) funny rather than primarily funny. Their storytelling hinges on dramatic rather than comedic beats, the former of which often requires a longer and/or slower build up than the latter. Does this make the updates weaker? Would they do better to delay updates until they have a true chapter of the story, a full scene, a complete dramatic beat? It's something I've been wondering.

To be sure, subscribers can read back as far as they need to in order to get back up to speed, and it's hardly incumbent on a pay site to cater to its non-paying visitors. Still, if every new update requires that kind of warm up, it may provide an artificial sense of inertia. Then again, it may be a matter of reading strategy. Folks who know Dicebox is best read in larger chunks may hold off reading it for several months at a time, in effect waiting for the trade.

Of course, the power of regular release is that it makes for habitual readers. If I know Dicebox will be there every Wednesday, and I like Dicebox (and I do, for the record, enjoy it quite a lot. I revel in the sarcastic back-and-forth that is Molly and Griffen.), then that's where I'll be. If, instead, I have to wait for an announcement about the new release, I may forget to check in regularly; and if Dicebox was my primary draw to Girlamatic, then I'd have less of a chance to find myself hooked on the other fare the site offers, and thus less enticement to pay for a subscription.

Part of that conflict stems from the fact that Girlamatic is a collective site with many creators. The hope there is that fans of one cartoonist will be tempted to try others. Scott McCloud's site, on the other hand, benefits from a single-creator paradigm, allowing him to use both a scheduled and a per-chapter update strategy at the same time. Given that the structure of The Right Number is a significant part of its appeal (panels within panels, drawing the reader literally deeper into the story even as its protagonist becomes more deeply entrenched in his obsession), it makes sense that its release is determined not by a date but by a dramatic turning point. Chapters of The Right Number may come out at irregular intervals, but while I wait, I have daily McCloud in his Morning Improv. I'm still hitting the site regularly, so I'll be there for the announcement concerning The Right Number, chapter two.

Webcomics, at least as I've so far encountered them, exist simultaneously as serialized entries (their most recent updates) and compilations (their archives). Perhaps this makes moot the question of where the storytelling focus is (serial segments or collections), though I tend to think it alters rather than eliminates the question; how you package your updates may be integral to your return traffic.

Beyond that, the markets for your serial and collected editions are effectively the same, even if the audiences might not be, a situation which complicates strategies in that it becomes that much more difficult to discover which is your primary market. With print comics, it's a simple matter to track sales in Direct Market stores and in the bookstore, a method which has made it increasingly clear that trades sell better in bookstores and serial pamphlets in specialty shops. When a pay subscription provides your readers with both the digital version of "the issues" and "the trade," it's harder to tell just who you're selling to, and thus how to keep them coming back.

Tags: comics, commentary, webcomics, writing