• quixotic120@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1173·
    6 days ago

    What’s with modern webcomics only posting to social media and nowhere else unless someone reposts it? I want an easy to browse gallery. If your comic is only available via instagram/twitter then I won’t read your comic

    • datendefekt@lemmy.ml
      191·
      6 days ago

      Im OK with social media as long as it has RSS. But that also means no insta and no twitter.

    • pixelscript@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      5 days ago

      As a fanart hoarder, the number of great artists I know of who seem to exclusively post their work on Twitter, a completely unsearchable platform that lossy compresses anything you upload to it and makes it a pain in the dick to get highest quality downloads, as opposed to a browsable upload platform like deviantArt, Pixiv, or Tumblr, infuriates me.

      I think I know why a lot of them do it, too. To them, their work is intentionally ephemeral. They want to draw a thing, release it to the world, be admired for a day, and let it fade away into the aether. They don’t want a browseable archive of their past work. Art they draw is disposable. Twitter is the best platform for this, as everything on Twitter is naturally consumed this way. That, and its audience is way larger than any of the other platforms I mentioned, so they get more eyes on their work.

      Yeah, an archive exists on Twitter, but unless you want to scroll scroll scroll through every single tweet they’ve ever made in reverse chronological order, you’re never going to find what you’re looking for without some kind of external indexing tool. All of this before Elon bought it and further enshittified it within an inch of its life. You can’t even browse posts without being logged in anymore.

      • quixotic120@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        6 days ago

        Hosting is cheap and there is free hosting available if you don’t care about having a custom domain and have a limited audience. If your audience is big enough to go past that bandwidth you can probably monetize somehow and cover server costs easily, even if it’s just selling a few pieces of merch. My website is $80 a year with a custom domain and I get unlimited transfer/bandwidth. It’s shared hosting so over about 1k visitors per day means it’ll get slow but if you’re getting that kind of traffic you can probably sell more merch and get a vps

        Use twitter/pixiv/ig for promotion but if you don’t do the above your locking out anyone who refuses to make account. All of them won’t let you look at more than 1-5 images before locking you out entirely with account nag screens that can’t be bypassed. Or just stay on those platforms, I don’t care, I’ll just never read your comic

          • Mac@mander.xyz
            7·
            6 days ago

            You realize people make money from social media, right?

            Obviously not this one but the profitable ones.

            18k likes and 2200 shares.

            • meliaesc@lemmy.world
              21·
              6 days ago

              Yes, absolutely! But the suggestion to self host when you’re not even contributing to their income comes across as a little unjustified.

                • meliaesc@lemmy.world
                  21·
                  5 days ago
                  • Comment 1: Why do some comic artists only post to social media?
                  • Comment 2: It costs money to make a website.
                  • Comment 3: It only costs $10 to make a website.
                  • Me: The comic artist is not making any money right now from us on Lemmy.
                  • You: Social media platforms are profitable.
                  • Me: Yes, they are. Additionally, I believe that comment 3 is unfair because that person is not paying towards the $10 for the comic artist to make their own website.
      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
        51·
        6 days ago

        No, it really, seriously, doesn’t. People that rely on social media are just lazy and ignorant.

      • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
        41·
        6 days ago

        And it gives you some degree of control over reposts and people stealing content. If your not on the platform you cant really contest claims against a video or post.

      • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
        2·
        6 days ago

        Plenty of ways to host for free, even with a custom domain. (Though the domain is $15 per year) Like GitHub. Or you can even just use Tumblr with a custom domain.

    • Mac@mander.xyz
      123·
      6 days ago

      There are a billion more people on Instagram that will see a comic there than actually go to websites to read comics.

      • quixotic120@lemmy.worldEnglish
        23·
        6 days ago

        that’s why the internet fucking sucks now. Everyone’s too afraid to make their own site and lazily relies on the conglomerates of social media, which has reduced the internet into like 5 websites that repost each others content

        Also seeing isn’t converted to income, especially on instagram. The more hardcore comic fans may want to see your work in full, may want to follow the story if there’s a narrative to your comic, see your arts evolution, etc. and they’re probably the ones that are far more likely to drop cash on merch for a series they enjoy. That’s why you combine the approaches, post comics on instagram or whatever to get the word out, and have a site so your hardcore fans can easily browse your work (with the added bonus of letting people who don’t fuck with social media also see it)

        Again, or don’t, I don’t care. Post everything to facebook and twitter, make the internet just 2 websites instead of 5, refuse to have control of the primary platform your work is shared on, whatever