The End of Exclusivity?

I get it. Partially.

What am I on about?

Well, it’s in light of that pirate site playing 4-dimensional chess and brazenly announcing on bluebird social media whose content they acquired and why you should use their website. Predictably, an outrage mob manifested and a few days later, the orchestrator(s) tweeted that they got what they wanted: attention and traffic.

Well played, me hearties.  Especially given by writing this journal, even I’ve fallen for the “don’t look where I’m pointing!” routine.

In any event, it’s made me think about what to do going forward. I still stand by what I said in the last journal (the fact I’m worth cribbing from is as a badge-of-honour and I have to directly acknowledge the inevitability of this; it’s what led to this post  the other day) but even a dinosaur like myself has to acknowledge how rapidly the methods of content have evolved over the past few years.

Once upon a time, generating content and exclusively hiding it away on your platform was considered a key selling point to attract an audience. Nowadays I’m not so sure, since one can interpret modern times as a bit like this:

Therefore, I can understand where some buccaneers are coming from. It’s not fun to be met with pay walls, and times are financially very difficult for a lot of people (honestly, please no one put themselves out of pocket for my sake). And so on. No moral/ethic debates here.

Unlike some poor unfortunate souls ‘among which but I digress’, I’m not going to pretend to be a victim. I’m a literal “who?” outside of the niche audience I’ve acquired (thank you so much for being a part of it!) and the illustration at the top of this entry says it all. And I’m honoured some would give me the time of day, given how much of an awkward outlier I am a lot of the time.

So blah-blah, what happens now?

I’m thinking about scrapping the exclusivity thing for the Flora-Fauna-Fen SURVIVE and Infurlation comics. It seems redundant since I don’t have a strictly defined schedule for them like ‘proper’ web comics (like, I don’t commit to a “posted every Wednesday!” thing).

In fact, maybe the $1 tier should be just a tip-jar thing, like that coffee thing? (I had a really bad experience with that site, so I refuse to use it; I work hard enough trying to produce content here, never mind also producing blanderised equivalents appropriate for there). So anything there goes public anyway?

I’m rather reticent about doing anything with the higher tiers however; the advantage I have with Patreon is that I feel I have more breathing room to produce the content I want without having to pre-emptively worry about cheesing off the wrong person, or attracting unwarranted attention from certain fandoms.  Of course, I’m not producing manifestos or anything… really off-colour, if you know what I mean. And I concede, maybe I am paranoid, and self-centred, and spend way too much time online in weird places and not actually interacting properly…

Anyway, I’m scared attracting too much attention will be the end of me. As self-serving as this is, I loathe the possibility of surrendering this means of making a living. Thank you so much affording me this opportunity, propping me up during the worst years we’ve all had to endure collectively.

I haven’t yet made up mind on what to do.

Maybe I’ll do bi-annual Art Packs in public or something, a collation of past artworks? At least then if there’s nothing locked away, there’s no reason to break in, figuratively speaking. Or should I just be based (carefree) and simply do away with exclusives altogether? Roll with the punches and lean into the ‘thanks for giving me free advertising’ model? Or just simply carry on as I have done and don’t sweat the small details? (which I’m more inclined to do because it’s the least amount of effort, ha, just kidding.)

What do you think of all this?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Special thanks go out to ferretsage, and thank you for reading.

P.S. To those who just joined/resubscribed (and are an actual legitimate True and Honest people), the archive keys go out next month – Patrons voted on the frequency of which I send them.

P.P.S. Sorry for how “how do you do, fellow kids?” this entry turned out to be.  I’m old and tired.

But stay safe, stay well, and thanks for the support as always.