Reduced update schedule
└ posted on Friday, 22 February 2013, by Novil
Unfortunately, I have to announce that we’re going back to a “Tuesday – Friday – Tuesday” update cycle with just three new Gaia pages in two weeks. There are two reasons for this:
- We need to build a larger buffer of finished comic pages.
- Our partnership with MangaMagazine.net (Gaia on MangaMagazine.net) may turn out to be very profitable for us. Therefore it’s my plan to gradually increase the amount of pages which are available on MangaMagazine.net, but not yet on our main website. We also have to publish 15 pages, which aren’t available on our main website yet, every second month to qualify for the very important “premium comic” category. Note that we will soon reach the point where only subscribers of MangaMagazine.net will be able to read the new Gaia pages posted on MangaMagazine.net. Subscribers must pay a small monthly fee of $2.99 to be able to read the later pages of all premium comics on MangaMagazine.net. See the MangaMagazine.net FAQ for that.
UPDATE
I thought I was clear, but maybe not clear enough:
- Gaia will continue to be available for free on this website. But it will update only around 13 times per 2 months.
- On MangaMagazine.net, Gaia will update at least 15 times every second month. This way, it qualifies as a “premium comic” in that month. But not in the other month with no updates.
- Since Gaia’ chapters are so long, the subscription threshold on MangaMagazine.net won’t be 8 chapters for Gaia but a certain number of pages. After that, only MangaMagazine.net subscribers will be able to see those pages after the threshold.
Wait, are you guys saying that eventually you’ll stop publishing pages here all together and you’ll have to pay to read the webcomic at mangamagazine? I can certainly wait a bit longer for new pages to pop up here (hell I’ve been doing that for anime for two years now) but I would rather not have to buy a subscription to read an online, digital only comic.
wandering-dreamer wrote:
well, there are donations…. and considering they never have gotten to 100% (for the month) I can see why – this way we can support the comic properly (at least, that’s how I feel)
I feel that taking the comic to pay-to-play will lose a lot of the readership base, myself included. I understand the need to support yourself with funds, but in my humble opinion, there are better ways to do it than completely cutting off the free-viewers, as they make up an important part of the community. They comment on pages, show their friends, and post on forums, providing not as tangible but just as important functions to the survival of a webcomic. There are many alternatives, such as having a slower update schedule, having the free-version lag behind the pay version, or having extra benefits for paying readers.
I’ve become very caught up in the story of Gaia, but on a college student lifestyle I don’t have the means to pay for one of the many webcomics I follow. So I will bid this comic a sad farewell, as I’m sure many others will.
The FAQ says that you can always see the latest pages on a delay, it looks like a Huluish thing, but this announcement makes it sound like it’s only possible to read the whole comic if you pay and the rest of us get dead air. I’m not happy with that arrangement, but given that we’ve gotten what we’ve got for free, it’s entirely reasonable. Here’s hoping I have a job by that time.
@ Gabe:
I like Gaia and enjoy reading the comic. I also support the idea of netflix-style option for manga, I think that it helps to resolve a lot of the issues publishers and artists have with the realities of the modern online environment, i.e. rampant and LEGAL fan translations.
At the same time, if Gaia moves to a closed environment I will almost certainly just stop reading, not because I don’t like the comic but simply because I already follow 100+ webcomics along with blogs, manga, blogs, novels, etc. Gaia and Sandra&Woo are low-hanging fruit – I subscribe via RSS and read them on my android on the way into work every morning. If mangamagazine cannot support that style, paid or not, I will not even notice.
I hope things work out. I don’t begrudge a small fee, but it may not be worth my effort to read it.
I sure do understand, that you may want to earn money with the comic. But unfortunately that means for me to stop reading the comic right now, because I won’t be able (and if it means to be forced than I also not willing) to pay money for reading the full comic (or to read it at all).
Relax you guys. I think the free comic will be here, it will just continue to be slow.
I am curious about the exact numbers for your new update schedule.
it sounds like 6 pages a month at SandraandWoo, and at least 15 a month at Mangamagazine. I find that hard to believe! A page every other day! That is a lot of content, and your standards are high.
I will consider the subscription, especially if it really means getting 15 pages a month. That’s less than the price of a latte. I’m just not convinced there’s anything else on on there that I would read.
Interesting… Novil says they have to publish 15 pages on MangaMagazine every second month that aren’t yet available here, while MangaMagazine say 15 pages per month have to be uploaded.
Currently we have about 8-9 pages a month published here, which could feasibly drop to 4-5 with weekly updates. So it may be that MangaMagazine requires 2 originals a week (about 8 per month) but 4 uploads in total – their FAQ doesn’t appear to mention the exact requirements for original content (other than the first 8 chapters will always be free – do they mean the first 8 chapters or the first eight strips?)
As Sabriel mentioned, while that may be achievable in the short term while there’s an archive of past updates, it’s going to be a punishing schedule to meet once the archive is used up – especially as Novil’s also writing Sandra and Woo (which I assume isn’t going to be published on MangaMagazine… yet).
My guess/hope is that Sandra and Woo will be reduced to once a week (it’s not like it was going anywhere fast, anyway,) to help make up for Gaia. And it sounds like everything will be released here eventually, we’ll just have to pay if we want to see them sooner. That’s the impression that I got, anyway.
No. Just no. Webcomics are supposed to make money in the following ways:
– Ad revenue
– Merchandise
– Commissions
– Kickstarters
– Donations
Not “pay to read the main comic.” You’re not at that level. Actual mangas tend to produce a chapter a week. You tend to do 2 pages a week…usually. So if you do this, you’ll be losing around 90% of your reader base.
Here is what I think is happening:
(1) This site will continue to update two or three times a week. It will ALWAYS be free.
(2) Per MangaMagazine’s FAQ:
Gaia is still in Chapter Two. There is still a long way to go before we reach Chapter nine.
(3) Novil says MM requires 15 pages every other month. MM FAQ says 15 pages every month. This is the exact wording from the FAQ:
So either the MM FAQ or Novil is mistaken.
So after all is said and done, nothing much if anything is going to change here. The pages will continue to come out here at their two or three a week as they always have. The content here will continue to be free.
So the bottom line is, if you wish to continue reading Gaia for free, nothing will change for you. You won’t notice any difference. If you are willing to spend three bucks a month, you’ll get it faster.
I do have one big concern. Half the fun of Gaia fandom is guessing what happens next. People who read the comic over on MM will know. It will be difficult to comment here without spoilers. It is unavoidable that the community here suffer attrition.
I thought I was clear, but maybe not clear enough:
I can understand why you’d want to make it paid for, but I agree with Landbark: It is really annoying.
However, I am going to still support this comic, and you guys are doing a great job.
Novil wrote:
The first part is… okay I suppose. Those who don’t want to subscribe to an online-only pay-for-play comic strip will get the content, albeit slower (at least that’s how I read it; if this means there will be storyline pages that are not available on this website free of charge, this comic is done for).
The second part, however, means no free archives. Please prepare to say goodbye to *new* readers. You aren’t going to build a following if people can’t read your comic strip from the very beginning. Gotta get those people hooked, you know? And you can’t do that without keeping your archives open. So you’ll hemorrhage your readers gradually until the comic sinks into obscurity. There are plenty of precedents for that. Pity… but hey, it’s your own creation to kill.
MC wrote:
As I understand it, that is not what is happening. If I am correct, this is what Novil is attempting to do:
(a) Two distribution channels for Gaia are being supported — one free, one not so free.
(b) This site, SandraAndWoo.Com (S&W) will always be free. So will its archive. It will be updated slowly but steadily at a rate of 3 updates every two weeks or thirteen every two months.
(c) MangaMagazine (MM) will be free for a while yet, but in a short time only MM subscribers will have full access to the latest updates and the full archives. It will be updated on a two month cycle. One month will get 15 updates. The next will get none. This works out to 3.5 updates every two weeks or fifteen every two months.
(I suspect that Novil will release an extra update every month here at S&W in order to keep the overall upgrade rate of the two sites the same — 15 every two months.)
It sounds to me like we are going to see is something similar to a “tortoise and hare” race. S&W, the tortoise, will slowly yet steadily gain on MM, the hare, until S&W almost but not quite catches up with MM. At that point, MM will sprint ahead 15 updates where it will pause once again. S&W meanwhile will continue to plod along until it once again almost but not quite catches up with MM. At that point MM will spring ahead again with its 15 updates. This cycle will repeat every two months.
You must admit it is a creative solution to a three-horned dilemma:
(1) Novil wants access to the cash that MM provides, but they require him to publish at least a page every other day to do so. He must also always have more pages available there than anywhere else.
(2) He also wants to maintain the quality that has attracted us fans to his strip in the first place. I doubt he, Powree, or their editors could maintain the same high-quality under such a pace.
(3) He wants to continue to maintain full access to his free customers, helping to build the strip’s following as you pointed out.
I don’t know how it will ultimately work out. The scheme sounds like it is more trouble than its worth. For example, how will MM react to his on-again-off-again qualification for premiership? I would guess that it would be a big hassle to pull one strip off the Premier list one month only to return it there the next. I doubt they will be too please with the situation. However, if they want to feature a top quality comic like Gaia, they are going have to make allowances. I am going to be curious as to how they deal with it.
I wish Novil luck.
@ Reavijinoo:
Actually I just prefer paying for a physical, print copy over an online one so I’m hoping someday I can support that comment that way (plus click on ads and try to recommend it to people so they have more readers to do all of these things), I’m still getting used to this new fangled idea of buying a digital copy of a story.
I think people are panicking prematurely 😛
All this means is that MangaMagazine gets a few pages before they are posted here.
Basically, MangaMagazine is the cinema, and here its on TV. Same movie, but just released later.
The pages will all still be posted here, still free, just a little later so you can relax 🙂 (subscribe to MangaMagazine for early viewing)
Hope that clears it up for those in a panic 🙂
Novil wrote:
Novil,
Apologies, but I didn’t find this completely clear. Let me ask a few questions:
1) will there ever be content on MangaMagazine that will never be available on this website, for free, after a delay?
2) Will it be always possible to get the ENTIRE story here (full archives) or will some content never appear in the archives?
Reason I ask, David Willis (of Roomies/Its Walky/Shortpacked fame) tried this, with some of the continuity hidden behind a paywall. Because of this, now that he is finishing up his story, some of the content that is behind the paywall is necessary to understand parts of the story that are being published now– and it hurts the storyline, a lot. I noticed that Willis no longer uses the paywall any more, but may not be able to reveal the hidden content without irritating the paying customers. (I am conjecturing at this point)
Note that I’m not trying to tell you how to handle your comic– this stuff is expensive, I understand that. But there are pitfalls to taking part of the story and hiding it, and you’re spinning too good of a story here to screw it up.