Two things every longform comic needs

You're getting new readers every day... these strategies will help you KEEP them

If you're writing a longform comic, you know the challenge all too well. You're telling a continuous story, but many of your readers are coming in at the middle. Every day, someone is reading your comic for the first time, and that might mean they're discovering you on Page 12. If you're going to build an audience successfully, you need to include two things in every update.

What's an update?

Before we get to that, we have to define an update. That sounds dumb, but it's an incredibly important concept. Your update is the chunk of your story that you're choosing to share on any given day. Many cartoonists assume they should post a page when they update their comic — either on their website, their chosen comics platform, or social media.

page ≠ update

That's a big mistake. Sometimes, your update should be half of your page. For example, most of my Evil Inc updates are one-half of the page that will appear in my eventual book. And sometimes, using two or more pages in an update is more advantageous. How do you decide? That's where the two core concepts come in.

Entry Point and Point of Significance

To build an audience on the Web, every comic should have two things: an Entry Point at the beginning and a Point of Significance at (or near) the end. To put it simply, these features help a new reader first understand what's going on and then reward them for making it to the end of the update.

Let’s talk about how to implement those concepts wisely…