Gifts and Promises

As an artist, especially one who gives their work away for free and on a regular basis, I think the most important and most ignored subject is distinguishing between gifts and promises.

If I have a webcomic, and I say that I update two days a week, then I am promising two updates. When I say it is every Tuesday and Thursday, then I am promising that my updates will happen on those days. Surprisingly, updates are a point of contention among webcomic makers.

Some creators feel that they don't owe the audience anything because they are giving away their work for free to the people. I happen to disagree with them on every point they make. For one thing, the audience gives the creator traffic, fans, support, and occasionally money. For another thing, the moment you say that you update, you are promising to update. You owe it to yourself, even if not to the audience, to update when you say you will because you gave your word.

So if a promise is what you say you will do, then is a gift something you don't say you'll do? Sort of. If I feel like giving people an extra comic on Sunday just because I felt like it or because I wanted to thank people for checking the website on non-update days, then it is certainly a gift. If I tell people people that I will occasionally put up extra comics on my twitter feed, I would still call that a gift because it is on occasion. I promised that some will be there, but with any regularity.

The more important thing to realize is that it is easy to turn a gift into a promise, and that it is very destructive to have that happen. Gifts are fun bonuses. extras are the bare minimum of work. If, instead of having one promise and several occasional gifts, you simply have seven promises and no gifts, the fans may love all of the content, but if you miss any one of those, you are now breaking your promise and the audience is upset that you broke your word.

If people loved my Sunday special strip a lot, they may ask for another. Since I like making my audience happy, I do another one next Sunday. Eventually, I decide that I will start updating my comic every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. My gift is now a promise. If I don't produce a strip on Sunday, I will get emails and other messages from my fan asking what happened and where the Sunday strip is. Even if I leave a message on my website that says that there won't be a trip today, but there will be a make-up strip on Monday, I have broken my promise. Now doing an extra strip on Monday isn't even special; it's just an apology. What a terrible way for people to treat your art, as an apology.

In the Webcomics Weekly Podcast #54, the Halfpixel guys discuss ustream, a website that allows people to stream videos (basically airing their own live TV online). One of them said that he uses it as an apology. The idea is that if one of his strips is going to be late, he will do whatever drawing and inking needs to be done for the comic and the audience will see it live. Although it is a nice bonus to see a strip drawn live, it is sad that it is only done to ask for forgiveness for being late.

They went on to talk about Lar DeSouza of Least I Could Do, saying that his method is the most perfect use of ustream. What Lar does is do a stream showing how inking and coloring a strip from Least I Could Do or Looking For Group, then continues to draw for fun for the people there, taking requests and answering questions. More importantly, he doesn't do it on a regular basis. He announces when he is going to do it and it becomes a special event for the people who get to join in. I believe that this is the perfect example of giving a gift to your audience and keeping it a gift.