Creator Tips and Tricks #27: Publishing Schedule and Merging Releases

Deciding your publishing schedule, and then being able to follow through, is one of the most difficult, yet critical parts of being a comic creator. With the wide number of strategies to this, there is an option out there for everyone, and of course, you can always opt to create something completely different.

Today’s Creator Tips and Tricks is dedicated to offering suggestions to creators wanting to set a schedule and need some advice on the options. GlobalComix offers tools to help you manage your schedule and releases in a way that suits you.
 

With the state of webcomics over the last few years, plus the effects of on-demand and streaming, there is a large feeling from creators to publish as much as you can, as fast as possible. While this is, of course, ideal from a consumption and growth perspective, it’s usually far from practical for the average creator of a comic or manga.

Let's break this down with a few smaller points to consider:

GlobalComix has multiple algorithms to discover comics for different reasons. The Community Team, such as myself and @Kevin, put together feature articles to surface comics and manga from those algorithms. This helps ensure that it isn’t the same comics featured over and over again.

Additionally, those who are browsing can search for comics by dozens of themes, tags, and even categories: comics, graphic novels, manga, and webcomics. Readers can also browse by timeframe to see what has been popular in the last week, last 30 days, last 3 months, or the last year! It gives the power to the reader and creator in the form of greater discoverability.

The promotion strategy you take between posts matters more than how often you post. Self-promotion is tough, that’s why I’ve written these articles to help creators become more empowered in their own marketing. As a creator myself, with full time employment that isn’t making comics, I can relate, and understand first hand, how hard it is to find time to do everything. Mastering the schedule and becoming efficient at self-promotion takes practice. However, it is critical.
 
If you need some extra assurance to this, of the comics on the 12 most-popular comics of 2022:

• 1 Updated weekly
• 5 Updated once or twice a month
• 6 Updated less than once a month or no pattern

Only one comic updated each week. More comics updated every few months or with no consistent pattern (usually once a month or less) and STILL made it to the top of the list for the entire year of 2022. If you only looked at the Top 5 comics on that same list:

• 0 Updated weekly
• 2 Updated 2-3 times a month
• 3 Updated once a month or less

This alone should be proof that you don’t need a weekly schedule. Views aren’t everything on GlobalComix and multiple factors go into calculating a popularity score. If you want to do that, you totally can, that’s your choice. Do not feel compelled to do so.
 

While you don’t need to post weekly, some better performers posted on some sort of schedule with a minimal type of consistency. You are fully able to schedule your releases in advance so that you don’t have to upload and publish them the day of.

Being predictable is valuable as it builds trust with your readers. The more trust you can build with them that you’ll post regularly or be predictable, the more likely they will want to make you a regular part of their lives. Before on demand television, shows appeared at the same time on the same day each week. Many still do.

Viewers would build their lives around being able to watch their favorite shows, or watch their regular sports games. How many of us stayed up late (or got up early) to catch our favorite shows on Adult Swim or Toonami? The same thought applies here.
 

Now, how can you be consistent? What if life gets in the way?!

Have a buffer, a big one. Having a buffer will allow you to have a cushion should you fall behind in your production schedule. It’s also always a possibility that you might become unable to make pages for a period of time. Illness, a personal emergency or injury, maybe art block, school or work obligations, there are all kinds of things that could get in your way to produce pages on a schedule. Anticipating that ahead of time, as it is likely to happen eventually, is super important.

How much should you make in advance?

Well, that’s up to you. Usually I suggest to have at least 2 or 3 months worth of releases done in advance, if at all possible, before you even start posting. Why? Going on hiatus is something that creators do from time to time. If you have a few months of releases done in advance, it gives you the ability to step away and have peace of mind that it'll be fine without you.

That said, if you have to go on hiatus, be upfront with your readers. Let them know and keep them updated. Remember that you always come first, not your comic. Never put a comic above your own health, especially if you aren’t being paid or compensated for making those pages and your own deadline is self-imposed.

What if I've already started my comic?

If your comic is already in progress and you don’t have a buffer, or you want to make it larger, you have to produce more pages than you post. For example:

If you post 5 pages a week, you’ll need to make at least 5 to maintain the buffer, 6 to grow it.
If you post 10 pages a month, you’ll need to make at least 10 pages a month to maintain the buffer and at least 11 pages a month to grow it.

Basically the rule of thumb here is whatever amount of pages you post, that’s what you need to make (in the same time frame) to keep that buffer so that it is used as emergency only. If you want to grow it, you need to make more than you need. For example, I  can make about 4 to 5 pages a week (12 to 15 a month). I only post 10 pages per release so that each month I grow my buffer.

“Well I don’t want to have a bunch of incomplete releases. I want one chapter / season / volume per release!”

Do I have some good news for you! You can have it both ways with a feature of GlobalComix called the Merge Releases Tool.

The Merge Releases tool allows you to combine published releases. This is incredibly helpful if you have a bunch of smaller releases, that, when combined, would form a complete chapter, volume, or issue. The primary purpose of this tool is to give creators the option to post more frequently yet, still maintain a “gallery” that looks well organized if they prefer that. The additional benefit is that it allows creators to sell PDFs of Chapters or entire volumes when they are ready to offer them for sale!

Let's walk through the process of merging a release so that we can see how it works. I’ll be using my Godsbane Pilot manga (Ghost Child) as an example.
 

You can find the Merge Releases Tool in your "Manage Series" Page. To get there, you can click on your avatar in the upper right screen on any page of the platform and scroll to "Manage Series". You can also click on "Manage title" on the comics "homepage" underneath the cover.

On the right side of the "Manage Series" page, you'll see a "Merge Releases" button that you can click. That button will take us here, with a very important warning.
 

I'll list a copy of the warning here for those who need Alt Text.

WARNING: MERGING RELEASES CAN NOT BE REVERTED!

Double-check your choices before continuing. The following will happen:

•     Analytics and readership history for the old releases will be lost forever.
•     All pages in the selected release range will be migrated to the new release.
•     New page order will be in ascending order through first to last release.
•     The new release will take the chronological order of the first source release.
•     All releases after the last release will have order shifted to match new chronology.
•     Your series popularity score will NOT be negatively affected by this merge.

What does this all mean? Essentially, the releases that you will choose in the next steps (and everything between them) will be combined into a new release. The analytics and data for the releases you merged will not be available to you afterwards as individual releases. You can still see your past data by choosing "All" for the release data when prompted to choose in your analytics.

Because merging releases generates a new release, the stats start at zero, like any new release. As an analytics person, it is really important to me that I captured any information and analytics I wanted to keep before merging. I have now saved those as screenshots and in a data spreadsheet.

After we've grabbed any data we want to keep, we can move on to actually start the process.
 

Our first task is to choose which releases we want to merge. You'll select the first release and then the last one. Everything in between will also be merged, so it's important to select these carefully! The "name or context" of the merge is NOT the new release name. It helps us identify the merge and provides information on the context/reason behind the merge.

If you'd like to tell us why you are merging you can. Giving us the reasons allows us to better understand how creators like to manage their releases. It also helps us improve the tool over time as we see how creators use it. It is optional, so don't feel like you have to. It's always appreciated though! Let's look at our next steps.
 

Next we'll go through and add our new Release Title and Synopsis. Then we'll be able to mark it as Mature Content and its monetization status. This particular release won't be for sale and is always free, however if yours is for sale, you'll be able to set the price with the drop menu under "PDF Sales Price". You are able to change all of this later after publishing the release, so it's ok if you change your mind later.
 

If you were worried about losing your comments, reactions or all those frames you added for the immersive reader, don't worry! All of those can be transferred over to the new release! Please note, however, that if you don't transfer them now, you will lose them. All of these boxes are checked, as I'd like to keep mine, but you can turn any of these off if you wish. Lastly, we'll look at the notification options.
 

You are able to choose if you want to make the new release public or not. This is a great choice for people who might not feel ready to publish or want to make a few other changes before that. You can also choose to trigger notifications to those following you or your comic as well as emails for your followers.

If you don't want to, that's fine, but keep in mind that once a release is published, you cannot unpublish or re-send notifications! That's why if you are at all uncertain, leave it unpublished, check anything, make any last minute changes, then publish the release as normal!

I'm leaving notifications off as this is only a demo and I don't want to confuse any of my readers! haha
 

After hitting the "Merge Releases" button, you are taken to your new release. As you can see, all of the information I put in is now in my release's metadata.

That's about it for today's education article! I hope you were able to learn more about scheduling, buffers, and taking advantage of the tools here on GlobalComix to manage your releases. It's something that's a bit different creator to creator, but once you find what works best for you, and you find that rhythm, try to keep it!

However, make sure you also schedule in times for breaks. We all want to keep our readers happy, but it should never be at the expense of our health and happiness as creators.

As always, you can check out more Tips ad Tricks articles here, and if you have any questions, please drop them below! Have a wonderful week and we'll see you soon for the next article!

~@ArtCrumbs and the GlobalComix Team