Why are web comics so successful?

[I'm going to be using Jeph Jacques' Questionable Content as an example here, I just discovered reading over this before posting.]

There are a few factors:

--Webcomics got started before we did.

--They're a fast read. Chris Poirier once said he thought readers liked quick reads when it comes to serials--1000 words was what he aimed for, if memory served. My readers said they liked longer updates of around 2000-3000 words, but that's a self-selecting audience. It might be worth trying it, or breaking up longer updates onto a couple of pages rather than just the one. I might try that with the Gulch, breaking updates into two pages of about 1k each. I know that when I start re-serializing the History I'll be doing it in no more than 2k chunks. Maybe I'll break that down even further and release two small chunks a week rather than one large one.

--Graphics are easier on the eye on the web than prose.

--Site design. The most successful comics have a clean, professional design. I fully confess to cadging a lot of design tips from Questionable Content in the new iteration of my own site.

--A plethora of "blogspot"-type sites that all look the same and don't have their own domains. Now, there are comics that don't have their own domains, but they're on a comics-specific TLD. DigitalNovelists.com is an attempt to do that. I may spend some of my PW dollars on DN advertising that pimps more than the service itself (I have a slow imagination sometimes). The main problem with doing that is that I don't make the cost of hosting DN sites as it is; the advertising doesn't pay for it. I may put some banner graphics on free DN sites to promote the cluster. Most if not all of the webcomic hosting services do that. (I'll start a conversation on DN about it.)

--Flaky update schedules. You will note that popular webcomics update pretty much every day they say they will, and if they don't, they produce some form of filler (Yelling Bird FTW!). Web fiction writers on the whole are doing a much better job of meeting schedules than they used to.

--The "fanfic" problem.

--Webcomic artists have banded together more, and again, earlier.

--Audiences are more forgiving of shaky art, as long as the story's clever/funny/engaging, than they are of shaky prose with the same clever/funny/engaging aspects. Look at the opening episodes of Questionable Content; Jeph could barely draw, and look at his work now--it's truly inspiring to see how he's grown as an artist. I'm not saying it's easier to draw a comic than it is to write a story, except maybe I am... No, I'm not. I mean, look at xkcd. Stick figures. Incredibly funny, consistently clever, right on top of what's going on stick figures, updated constantly. Easy to draw, very hard to write/conceptualize, especially consistently.

--There are a TON of comics out there, easily a hundred times more than what's out there prose-wise. Maybe even a thousand times more. The vast majority have numbers like ours, or even worse. What you're seeing at Top Comics is the best of the best of a huge pool of comics. There are nowhere near that many of us (yet). It wouldn't surprise me if the percentages of "wildly successful/moderately successful/not really all that successful/who?" are roughly the same as in our community as in the comics community. AE is the only one of us who can be considered "wildly successful," and her living is modest. I can be considered "moderately successful" when I'm updating the History (I've lost 75% of my audience since early summer, and am definitely in "not really all that successful" territory by my own standards); Andy Fanton fits into "moderately successful," though the big galoot has yet to capitalize on it despite numerous pokes in the ribs from me. Note that I'm NOT talking about relative merit. I'm talking success in terms of readership. There are excellent stories that don't have the readership they should.

I think the latter point is perhaps the greatest one--that, and time. We haven't reached critical mass, and we haven't been doing this long enough. There's not much we can do about either of those. The other issues--professionalism, communal action, etc.--are issues we've discussed elsewhere here, and that I think everyone here is working on.

Another difference that's big in my opinon: people are used to reading comics serially. Almost everyone (at least in the US) reads newspaper comics, and comic books tend to come out in small, regular issues. Traditionally published prose has and still does come out in serial form, but it's much less popular and I doubt there are many people alive (if any) who remember when it was popular.

But I agree with MeiLin: critical mass and time are the biggies.

It seems all SF/F books come out in series, now, though. You never get one book in a mythos any more. Perhaps this will soften up the audience for us eventually.

I've been so paranoid lately that I was worried that no one would comment on this, so thanks Mei & Clare, so far! I think you both make excellent points.

At least time, as a problem, is self-solving.

I want to make that critical mass come faster. I wonder if a definition is in order. It seems to me that critical mass means the point at which it is commonly known to the public that there is good reading available on the Internet, and anyone who wants to find it can, with one Google search, because they have heard one or more (but preferably one) commonly-used terms. Is that what you mean, Mei?

Reminds me -- I THOUGHT I had revised my SEO stuff to add weblit in, and somehow it didn't take. It's fixed now. The rest of us should all be doing this. I can start an instructional topic on SEO for those who don't know how -- shall I? For one thing, we need to bury the current site at weblit.org. (Warning: don dark glasses before viewing.)

Re: weblit SEO guide - yes, please! If you have the time, that would be lovely. It would especially help if there were a few pointers for those of us who are starting out posting on livejournal & similar blog group sites for now, if that's possible.

Oh my God. If THAT'S (weblit.org) what people see when they come looking for us, no wonder we're not nearly as popular as webcomics. If I saw that site, I think I'd stop looking....

Interesting thing I've noticed: artists are, as a whole, more tech savvy than authors are.

And they've got a format for webcomics - it's called Comicpress, and it's a pretty mature platform - a theme - for any webcomic creator to use. All they have to worry about is the look of the site. The structure's already been taken care of by the theme itself (and they've included some pretty useful features in the package, too).

We're currently still working on that. MCM, in particular, has got a working script that I'm currently looking at. It's buggy, but has the potential to be really good.

PS: definition's been done, by the way. I went out and did it in response to MeiLin's story about the publisher and fan fiction. I figure NOBODY should have the experience she did, and I hope the definition site helps.

Update: Another reason - less people read. More people read comics than they do books. Therefore popularity of webcomics > popularity of web fiction.

Update 2: I've finished the whole archives of xkcd before - and in that time I would have probably read only half of the chapters of, say, Tales of MU. Pictures are denser. Worth a thousand words. Therefore more satisfying. It takes far less effort to 'read' a webcomic than it does web fiction. I quote Chris Poirier: 'webcomics are a diversion; web fiction is an effort.'

Update 3: It is easy to fall in love with a 'cute' webcomic character. Not so easy to fall in love with a 'cute' fictional character.

Platform: I'm working pretty hard on that myself right now. I've got a version going now for Scryer's Gulch that's based on a Drupal webcomics tutorial. If I can tweak it right, I can roll a Drupal distribution, or at least a tutorial/map. I have learned a LOT since I started working on MLM and DN.

Chris sums it up, Eli. And folks, do link to Eli's definition page. I've got it linked on the bottom of every one of my pages.

Conventions. No one's mentioned this, so I thought I'd throw it in. Comics have conventions. Lots of them, all over the place, and fans of comics go to conventions.

My friend Danielle Corsetto makes a living publishing a webcomic. (Which is awesome. Check it out: http://www.daniellecorsetto.com/gws.html) She spends every weekend driving to some convention somewhere, all the way from Canada to Atlanta. She has a table, and huge stuffed cactus, and she gives out stuff. She markets like a crazy person, IN PERSON.

Now, there are genre conventions for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but they don't let in people who aren't traditionally published (or do they? Has anyone tried?) and I warrant that there are less of them and that they rarely focus entirely on science fiction BOOKS, but on the genre in its entirety, with movies and television shows thrown in for fun.

I think we as writers of weblit are going to have to market differently than people who make webcomics. I'm not sure exactly how, because I haven't really "made it" in the sense that I'd like. But I think we've got to take our special differences into account.

1. Reading a book is a commitment, and it should be. We can't try to create fiction that takes little effort from the reader to connect with (like a webcomic.) To do so would be a disservice to our medium. Readers of fiction like to read books because they are sucked into another world and transported there.

2. Books are such a joy because they are interactive. A reader cannot thoroughly enjoy reading without using his or her imagination to bring the story to life. Unlike a visual medium, we provide the scaffolding for readers to create images, sounds, and feelings for themselves.

There are probably more special differences, but my mind just went blank. The truth of the matter is that our audiences have to invest time and energy into our stuff. We can't forget that. And somehow, we have to prove to them that it's worth it.

Sff and horror cons let in anyone who pays admission. What they usually do is give traditionally-published writers special breaks, often free admission in return for you speaking on panels. (This was the perk that MeiLin was denied.) If you take a table in the dealer's room (which costs), you can flog or promote anything you like.

The exact way the line is drawn is "pro" vs. "fan." In other words, if you have received money for your writing, especially a substantial amount of writing, such as a book, you're a pro; if not, you're a fan. We will break down the barrier as soon as we convince convention organizers that we are pros. That means, basically, we have to make money, and we have to prove to them we make money. I think the best way to do this, once we are making money, is just to talk to them. Most of them are forward-thinking enough to accept new media so long as they know that there's quality work in those new media. Everyone knows that electronic communication is the way of the future fast becoming the present.

As a pro for 20+ years, I've attended innumerable cons including several Worldcons and World Fantasy Conventions, and was involved with organizing Ad Astra in Toronto for six or seven years including two years as con chair. Shirley has done the same minus the con chair part. We have a few connections we can possibly pull.

What I've often thought might be worth doing is figuring out where some cons are relative to clusters of writers, and seeing if it might be worth renting a booth together and showing up with merchandise.

Provided the writers in question have similar enough stuff that it's worth going to the same convention, it could be workable.

Web comics are one possible comparison to what we're doing, but it might also be worth looking at the Indie Role Playing Game movement. It's similar in that it's individuals marketing self-published games online and off. Much like web comics, they've been going for a while.

They do the "let's rent a booth together" thing. Currently, they're well enough known in the role-playing game community that some of their games have impressed critics at least. I don't think that any have been massively successful, but some have become well known within the gaming community.

Wow, Karen, thanks for that informative post.

Re reading as a commitment, I think Lois McMaster Bujold put it best: "You don't write a book. You induce one." By triggering the reader's imagination with your words, you start something running in their heads which could be called a movie, except that it engages all the senses, not just vision and hearing. A comic artist does not induce so much as display, running the visual aspect of the movie for the reader. You view the world as if through a window, whereas with a book it’s more as if you are right in it.

It involves a commitment on readers’ part, but it is one that they are very willing to make. Wondering whether Eli was right that more people read comics than books, I scared up some stats: Total annual US book industry revenue ranges from about $25 to $35 billion according to this comprehensive collection of numbers which is worth reading for other fascinating info it has, e.g.: average time to write a fictional book: 475 hours; time a book buyer takes in the sales pitch on cover and jacket: 15 seconds. Several entries on the same page suggest that the fiction market is about half the total market, so let's say it's $15 billion. Total retail sales of comics to comic shops, Jan-Oct 2009: $358.85 million. Lots more sales info on the same site here. Let's say by the end of the year it's an even $ .5 million. That means that people spend approximately (very approximately, as these figures are all estimates) 30 times as much money on dead-tree books as on comics.

What an awesome thing the web comics people have done, turning that around. It’s got to be these other factors – the comics people being more visually/technically savvy, starting earlier, banding together, the platform thing, etc.

But possibly also Clare’s serial reading point. Why did prose serials cease to be popular long ago? I suspect because other serial media, including comics, emerged that were more easy to enter and thus more attractive. Close to 200 posts apiece into two books, I have noticed that my new readers curse and spit when they are caught up and have to switch to getting daily bits instead of the whole story in one shot. I think there are actually some who are holding off; I had one ask me when he expected me to be finished PA. I think that has to do with the entering-the-world factor. It is harder to enter the world of a book than it is to enter the world of a comic, because each time you enter a comic, the world is provided for you visually, whereas with a book your imagination must recreate it. We are asking readers to do that with every post. (@MeiLin, maybe this is why your readers want 2-3k?) Perhaps we should look at a “while I’m writing/posting it, it’s free, but I charge the moment it’s done” model?

Following from Valerie with special differences, here is another one: ideas, concepts, purely intellectual constructs. They can be expressed better, if not only, in words.

Perhaps also we should look at accentuating what we can do that neither dead-tree authors nor comic artists cannot? The thing that springs to mind here is verbal/conceptual interactivity. Ideas percolating, more later.

On statistics: a few things we must remember. In general, us writers have it better than comic artists. We've got way more options for publication than they do (also, in part, that comics are a fairly recent thing compared to books/the publishing industry). I remember reading one disparaging essay by a webcomic artist - he said something along the lines of 'you writers think you've got it bad?! HAH! Look at us! We have even less opportunities!'

Which explains, probably, why so many of them came online en masse, and before the writers did. They really had no options, and the Internet was a breath of fresh air to them.

Another thing we must remember with regard to the statistics Karen's posted: 1) the fiction market will always have more readers, if we're looking at it from a industry-level point of view. This may seem like a contradiction with my earlier statement, but bear with me a little. Why? Well, partly because it's a generational thing: there are far more people buying books than there are reading comics. The people who read comics are - what? - my generation? Geeks? 30s-40s? The comic industry is really a subset of the genre-fiction industry, which in turn is a subset of the fiction industry.

If we remove the demographics from the literary-fiction segment, and we remove the older generation (your grandparents, say), and we remove the younger kids, we'll get people between the ages of 11-40. Exactly the sort of generation that's post-literate and likely to prefer comics over books. Incidentally, this age group corresponds with the majority of Internet users today. And so this leads us to 2) there are more people reading comics than there are reading fiction, particularly so when we're talking about the web.

Raw industry-level data is useful, but it'll take a bit of thinking to tease meaningful trends out of it. So if you want to argue that webcomic writers have become successful due to a function of time, sure. But my contention is that it's far easier to coax an audience of post-literate Internet users to read webcomics than it is to read a screenfull of text; that they have an easier time of it. We have our own niche, of course, but we must recognize that we do have to take certain core differences into account.

>Provided the writers in question have similar enough stuff that it's worth going to the same convention, it could be workable.

For a science fiction convention, it needs only fall into one of the categories of science fiction, fantasy, or supernatural horror. (The fantastical element, either magic, supernatural elements or not-yet-existing technology, has to be there.) Four writers selling hard sf, fairy fantasy, superhero tales and zombie romance respectively could all sell at the same table just fine, at least for most cons I've been to.

I would be very interested in this. Right now I just have a few people from Twitter and Facebook that have started reading Black Mask & Pale Rider, and most of those are friends and family. I'd probably have a lot more if some of the people that I know who would read it would actually have an internet connection (like my parents). I've noticed a big traffic increase lately, however, thanks greatly to joining this community here. However, that has only given double digit numbers, and even then, I'm not sure if anyone is actually downloading the pdf's to read each short chapter.

I've read the definition and my first reaction is... can we *please* re-write it to be a definition of what it actually is as opposed to what it is not? To begin a definition with a negative I've seen, tends to lead people to think you're being defensive and get turned off.

Let us define what we do and what we are rather than what we don't do and what we are not.

Thanks.

SEO post coming soon. Re interactivity - Shirley and I talked about it, and couldn't wait. We're setting up our first character chat session. We will let you all know how it goes.

Getting back on topic:

Eli wrote:

> Which explains, probably, why so many of them [comic artists] came online en masse, and before the writers did. They really had no options, and the Internet was a breath of fresh air to them.

That makes a lot of sense, possibly explaining also why such wonderfully-talented people as Sarah Ellerton did it. Do they have us beat (currently) on quality? A thorny question, but if they do, this would be why.

The idea that Internet users are post-literate or people don't want to read off the screen seems overly pessimistic to me, though. Check out the eBook sales figures, same site, about 40% of the way down or do a page search for "1,442%". In 2008, the Internet surpassed newspapers as a source of national and international news for Americans for the first time -- and even matched TV in the under-30 set.

It seems to me there is a huge, pulsating, hungry-for-new-stories market out there. We just haven't attracted it in a big way. Yet.

Something I've entertained for a while has been to create my main serial series as a web comic. My only problem being that I can't draw (though, I can sit down at a canvas and paint, drawing is just a struggle for me). I do have 3D modelling tools to create the characters and have been trying but each looks... clunky. I do know of a few artists locally who don't have exposure online (although, I'd love to get Leah Keeler to do layouts and designs for a web comic series and she lives not so far from the town I live in http://keelerleah.vox.com/). It's still an idea that I entertain from time to time as I work on the text based serial, and move toward a podcast version as well.

My ultimate goal would be to hit the mediums; text, visual (web comic) and auditory (podcast).

...and then, the major motion picture... TOTALLY off-topic (what the hell, this thread is all over the place): what 3D modelling software do you use? I use FaceGen and looked at Poser but imo it's just not there yet.

I use RayDream Studio 5.5. It's old (like ten years or so), but I know it. Granted, I have to relearn a lot of stuff because the other day I opened it and took a look at the tools and my brain melted. So, that's gonna be a while before I actually do anything in it.

Reading a chapter/installment of an online serial/novel is never going to be as popular an online activity as skimming a comic strip or watching a webisode. Just like reading books doesn't come close to watching TV as a mass-market entertainment. People may be "getting their news" from the interweb, but that probably includes people who glance at Yahoo! Headlines and consider that "getting their news." It's not that people don't want to read at all. I mean, technically speaking, even texting or IMming or reading Twitter / Facebook updates is reading. But that's a far cry from taking twenty or even ten minutes and reading an installment of a web-based novel / serial.

There are, of course, lessons to be learned from webcomics and their popularity, but in shooting for the moon of huge-ass, massive, xkcd-size popularity, you may miss the less splashy but still tasty, low-hanging fruit right in front of you. However you define 'tasty'.

To answer the question, the easy and most obvious answers are probably:

- They're short. Most webcomics take a maximum of 1 minute to read. Easy to ingest, easy to show to a friend and convince them to read since it's only a minute (usually less). This makes them easy to spread virally.
- They're visual. People like pictures, they're instantly engaging when skillfully done. Also, you can make avatars of the characters, another way for people to get viral.
- They're funny (well, the good ones are, and of course funny is subjective). Humor is pretty much the casual web surfer's currency, as we all know from thousands of joke-filled emails and oh-so-wacky videos.

I think I'd toss out web design as a reason. I've seen many a popular webcomic with positively hideous and convoluted site desgin Goblins, for example). Of course, if the comics themselves are well done, that's a visual treat right away.

And length of time of webfiction's existence? That's the one that makes me giggle. I'm sorry, can I just ... (sighs heavily) ... okay, I feel a rant coming on.

WHERE is this bizarre "webcomics were online before webfiction was" meme coming from? Because online fiction, from fictional journals to serialized narratives, has been around almost from the start of the WWW.

I know many, perhaps most, of you didn't start putting your writing online until the mid-to-late 2000s. Maybe you're all very young, maybe you didn't discover reading on the web until then, I dunno. I believe some of you were inspired by Tales of MU and maybe are under the impression that it was the first webfiction site ever? Whatever the reason for this alleged factoid, it just isn't accurate.

There were plenty of us putting our writing online as far back as fifteen years ago, and probably earlier.

The Spot began in 1995. For those too young to have heard of it, this was a story of several roommates told in a series of diary entries by multiple characters, who also interacted with their rabid audience. It was Big Brother before Big Brother existed; it was a blog before blogs were named blogs. And it was staggeringly popular, part of the zeitgeist. From 1995-1997 it was everywhere both online and in print media. It failed only when its creators sold the property to a larger company, which then proceeded to screw up royally.

Other webfiction tales of that time, starting in 1995 and 1996, included East Village, The Company Therapist, Crescendo Cove and Dead Kelly. After that came Newport and Covington Bay. Two serials that launched in 1997 and are still around include Footprints and my own About Schuyler Falls -- which was Yahoo and Netscape's Site of the Day back when it launched, so while it's not burning up the charts now, it had its day in the sun. Dozens and dozens of other sites launched subsequently, too many to name, but several are still publishing.

So there it is, guys. The webfiction/weblit world existed before y'all discovered it. I must say it irks me that people are so unaware of the history of the medium, especially on a site devoted to it. Maybe it's not lack of awareness; maybe it's the unfortunate sense that webfiction doesn't count if it's not commercial/fantasy or sci-fi/based on Drupal or WP/inspired by MU/fill-in-the-blank. The serials may not have been your cup of tea; they may not have been commercially successful enough; they may not still be around. Still, give up a little respect to those of us who participated in this realm long before b2/cafelog even existed, much less turned into Wordpress!

Whew. Er, uh, my point is: I don't think length of time is really an issue. Length of your installments, maybe. Cut 'em down to less than 300 words and you might have more of a chance.

(My installments average 9,000 words, so I'm not necessarily saying this is something you shoulddo. But if massive popularity is what you're looking for? Brevity is probably key. Unlike this post.)

I think Kira is right. It's a thought I was having earlier - but I can run through my daily slue of 16 webcomics in less time than a chapter of Mu. And that's on Monday, the day they ALL update. When you get later in the week, the number drops, as some update MWF, some do M-F, and some do MTh.

So yeah - time of reading is a factor. Same with archives. It took me two or three days to get through Mu's archives, back when I first started reading, and that only had 150ish chapters at the time.

I started reading Questionable Content (thanks to an avatar picture on a forum), around strip 500 or so. And I was able to get through those archives in the same or less time.

My own serial is fairly young (just posted Chapter 75 last week) and my installments are fairly short - averaging around 500 words. The compiled manuscript runs over 48k words. That's a LOT of catching up for someone to jump into. While people are willing to do it with dead tree books, where the end (at least to a part of the story, in the case of series) is defined and definite, I can understand why someone might find it a bit daunting.

And I'd wager I'm one of the smaller on-going serials out there.

Kira, you're right, of course, about the length of time fiction's been on the web as opposed to comics. And then there's fanfiction, which has been on since the beginning, too. I remember The Spot: I've been doing websites since 1994.

@ Kira: I'd love to plead youth, but that bird has flown I must instead plead lack of attention. I didn't use the web much until 2001 when I started paying attention to the political blogosphere.

You've just done much to alleviate that lack of awareness of the history of our medium. Suggestion: start a new forum topic -- or perhaps MeiLin can even add a new page -- on the history of the medium. I'd love to know more about these earlier works and how they did, in terms of readership, media coverage, income and what-have-you, and I'd love to learn what lessons can be learned.

Here's a very simple contributing factor.

The process of reading most webcomics: click. click. click. (x infinity)

The process of reading most weblit: click, scroll scroll scroll. click, scroll scroll scroll.

Larger comics will involve some scrolling in addition to the clicking, but not nearly as much. You still get a pretty good flow - there will be a lot faster clicking. If you've ever seen a person on a slot machine, you know that a motion in itself can be addicting. But basically, at the root of it, I think there's a fundamental difference between reading the two, as it is now. I don't think this means chapters should be shorter, but I think that the scrolling to advance the story as opposed to the constant clicking could be a detriment. Scrolling is annoying and it is physically tiring to the eye. I could wank on about book design theory, but uh... later. For now, I'm just gonna say that the most pleasant reading experience I've had in years is on my new Sony e-reader, which advances the story in clicks no matter what size the text is or how much is on a page. I don't have to scroll, so it's not nearly as tiring. I wish there were an easy way to set up that kind of reading experience on the internet, and I've thought through a little on how it'd work, but I'm not learned enough as programmer yet.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I think all the other points are valid too, but on the fundamental how-easy-is-this-to-read level, I think this is a factor at play. Even in webcomics it probably is - I stay longer reading a webcomic that's formatted for screens (wider) than for pages (longer) because it's easier to advance when I don't have to scroll.

Oh, and one more thing - I think e-readers will advance our plight a lot as they get easier to procure. It really makes the reading experience easier and eliminates a lot of distractions. Now that I have one, I want to push out PK ebooks ASAP.

Doesn't everyone use a wheelmouse these days? That's how I read stuff on the net. Easy as or easier than clicking.

Using a wheelmouse is still scrolling. I'm not talking about clicks being scrolls - by clicks I meant the clicks to go to the next page. If you're reading by scrolling, you're finding the next bit of text each time by searching up and down the screen, whereas with clicking next and it being in the same place every time you load the next page, the action's more automatic. (While page-down will bring text in generally the same area at the top of the screen every time, it's not always the case, especially between different browsers - sometimes it'll be the second line from the top that's the next one, sometimes it'll be the third, sometimes it's actually cut off a little, etc. Also, when you scroll a comic page you're not going to page-down as much as manually scroll because a frame or something has probably cut off mid-image.)

This is a quick sum-up of clicking next versus scrolling and how the actions are different, not an all-instances all-details treatise - I just wanted to introduce that general angle of the reading experience as a contributing factor. It's also a defining difference between printed books and weblit - I read a book a page at a time, no scrolling. I'm pretty sure if scrolls greatly enhanced user experience over books with pages, we'd still be using them.

hrm. I wonder how this compares with the pornfic that's been on the interwebs forever - the stuff with the auto-scrollers built in?

~Lyn

What's an auto-scroller? Got any non-pornfic examples?

(Not that I won't touch porntastic fic ever :cough:fanfic:cough:, but that ain't the kind of mood I'm in =P)

So here's the issue with scroll-less design, which is essentially what we're talking about (numbers from Google):

At 960x550 window size, 10% will have to scroll.

At 1024x768 window size, 20% will have to scroll.

If you're going for no scroll at all, or minimal, you're going to have to jettison a great deal of stuff: advertising, logos, graphics, etc. Pagination rather than scrolling might be a better solution. (I bow to Irk's much more finely honed book design skillz in general.)

Okay, Irk, I see what you mean. The mental effort of tracking text when you have to move it on the screen. It's easier when it just stays in one place.

I don't have an e-reader but from what I've seen there's no scrolling, just click to turn the page.

MeiLin, on the web, with a long entry, don't 100% have to scroll downwards?

We're doing up my site anew so if it's possible/easy to paginate, I'm willing to experiment with setting it up that way. My work is not an easy read so anything that makes it easier is good.

Karen, yeah, with a long entry, 100% do have to scroll, but blog posts in general are well under 2k. I'll install the paginating program on DN pretty quick hyar.

Not off-hand, auto-scrollers by nature started as a pornfic thing because *blush* ah, they leave the hands free.

I tapped my librarian but she didn't have any examples; I'll tap another resource when he wakes up and see if I can find a link.

~Lyn

Hahahaha!

That might be useful for a fair amount of our work!

I don't think we're late to the party. I've been reading good, original non-porn fiction on the Internet since I discovered the Internet.

And how long ago was that? Well, let's just say I remember looking over a friend's shoulder and seeing this new-fangled thing called "Mosaic" on the screen, and asking what it was. I remember tearing my hair out trying to install winsock on my pv so I could access this web thing via my internet connection. I also remember a load of geek friends being absolutely certain gopher would win out against this new web thingy *giggles*. I was on the internet before the web (just).

I've been thinking about this and I've come to a conclusion.

It's not that we're new at this per se. As I said there's always been original fiction on the net. It's that the web offers us few of the advantages the comic artists found here. Sure we can pretty things up and it's easier to monetise in theory, but in one important respect we're actually at a disadvantage to where we were before.

Let me explain. (And excuse me if I lapse into incoherency I'm thinking this through as I go along and that can be fatal)

I used to find original fiction on mailing discussion lists, bulletin boards and usenet - you know those places we used to network before someone invented social networking.

And the thing was the original fiction was being posted where the readers already were. And there was awesome interactivity with the readers.

Conclusion: plenty of people are perfectly happy to read on a screen. So the 'people don't read on computers' argument is incorrect.

Then everything moved onto the web, and suddenly you had to attract readers to your fiction instead of taking it to them. That's a whole different ballgame.

Now there were people posting comics on UseNet, but prior to the web it was a bit of a pain to read them. The web made handling graphics easier. So while they had the same issue of having to attract readers to a site now, the fact that there'd always been an extra step involved in viewing a comic made the migration easier.

We are late in defining the problem. "Where are the readers, and how do we get them from there to our stuff?"

And we're definately late in getting organised to try and find the answer.

Fanfiction doesn't have this problem because the writers in general still go to the readers (at least to start with) via sites such as the pit of voles or specific fandom archives.

I believe erotica has similar archives and sex sells anyway.

Such archives aren't really an option for us for various reasons - even digital novelists isn't an archive really. Though with the new front page it's getting closer.

Funnel sites like WFG and Muses's Success have a role to play as well. We need places where readers will congregate en masse, so we can find them and entice them in.

Conclusion: We can define our problem, and it's certainly not insoluble. But we're not sure what the solution is yet.

Yeah, that was really helpful wasn't it? I'll shut up now.

Becka

No, Becca, that actually WAS helpful. It's why I'm taking DN to more of a collective approach; I'm hoping that making it more of a group destination might improve things. I'm waiting for one more site to go online before I start the Campaign of Doom.

I think you should call it the Campaign of Destruction by Seduction, Meilin, fits the bill way better

One more site, huh.... I think I maybe know whose that is (face reddening)...