The Buffer Debate Part 2: You Need a Buffer

Yesterday our guest writer, Drowemos Eseotevahi of Exiern, gave a considered argument against worrying about putting together a buffer when planning your comic. Today I’m here to argue for the humble buffer, and to explain why you really do need to get one.

Buffers come in a variety of shapes and sizes, depending on what kind of comic you’re writing and why. In essence, they are a collection of comics which are uploaded to your website but are not yet live. They serve a variety of purposes, each of which will be more or less essential to you (again depending on the type of comic you have) if you’re serious about being a webcomic creator.

Buffers Give You Breathing Space
Let’s start with the main reason many of us have a buffer: it means we can fall behind on our production schedule and the readers won’t know about it. This, for me, is the main reason you should have a buffer and in most cases it’s the first and last part of the argument. Essentially, you need a buffer if you want to look professional.

I speak from experience here. In 1996, I started a webcomic without any kind of forward planning and I soon fell behind even with my one comic a week update schedule. By 1999 my comic had dropped down to “updates when I can manage them”, and then the comic went on hiatus for eight years.

A buffer would not have covered the whole of the time the comic was on hiatus but it would have helped reduce the impact of my schedule slips and maybe even helped keep me going with the comic. Howso? Well, taking the pressure off a little would have meant I wouldn’t have been constantly thinking “I need to update, I’m falling so far behind!”. The comic would have remained a hobby instead of feeling like a chore. When you’re young, that helps.

Conversely, my second comic only launched when I had 50 comics already completed. At an initial update schedule of two comics per week, that gave me almost half a year’s worth of buffer. I had a hectic time with work for a while that meant I didn’t have a lot of free time to draw the comic for several weeks but thankfully the buffer was there and I was able to run it down a little while I got my life sorted out.

Without the buffer, I’d have lost a lot of the reader loyalty I’d managed to build up because for a fledgling comic, a month of no updates can mean death.

Buffers Give You Time to Edit
I’m sure the majority of us has experienced the joy that is brinkmanship; that wonderful feeling you get when you just manage to get a comic up before your self-imposed deadlines hit home. It’s an experience I always swear I’ll never repeat, but it always happens to me because I have so much going on that I can’t always keep to my schedule. I need a buffer to protect me from myself, if truth be told.

Not only does the buffer save me from last second updating but it also means I can come back to my comics a day or so after I’ve sketched it, or written the dialogue. I get to have another look over what I’m going to publish and tweak it, making it better. If I was updating the comic within hours of me finishing it, I’d lose that option and the comic would suffer.

Remember that the majority of people don’t have the luxury of an actual editor, so they have to do it themselves. Buffers give you the time you’re going to need.

Scheduling Issues
Contrary to what Drowemos suggests, a buffer will help with your scheduling. There’s no reason you have to stick with a schedule you’ve set just because it turns out you can’t keep up with it. The fact is you decide when you update and you can change that as needed. A buffer doesn’t alter this, and if anything it helps you maintain that schedule by giving you the breathing space you’ll need to catch up when you’ve fallen behind.

As Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary said on a recent episode of The Webcomic Beacon, he was able to burn off a week or so of his buffer in order to work on projects that were more time-limited. Because he had a buffer, he didn’t face a scheduling crisis when real life hit. Real life is going to hit you too, so why not prepare for it while you have the chance?

You don’t need a huge buffer
I’m not the greatest at getting ahead of myself (as the occasional slip-up with the articles for this site have shown!) but I’d come across a lot worse if it wasn’t for my use of buffers. I don’t have a massive buffer, it usually measures about two weeks at most, but it means I can keep my comics running even when I fall ill or have a lot of work to do.

The buffer doesn’t have to be big to be effective, it just needs to be there. If it’s not there, you’re going to be playing catch-up constantly the moment your life turns up something unexpected. Your comic will cease to be a job or a hobby, it will become a millstone around your neck until you get back on your feet and I’ll tell you this from experience: it’s harder to catch up than it is to pull ahead.

So why set yourself up for a problem like that? If happiness and success mean delaying the launch of your new baby by a week or two, surely that’s a good price to pay?

The Buffer Debate Part 1: Why You Don’t Need A Buffer

Today’s article is the first of a two-part debate. Guest writer Drowemos Eseotevahi of Exiern presents his views on why webcomic writers and artists don’t need a buffer. Tomorrow, I present the opposing view. It’s up to you to decide which side you come down on.

Friends, webcomicers, Internet workers, I come before you today to burry buffers not to praise them.

It is one of the few orthodoxies of webcomics, the one rule we tell one another, the thing we believe is essential over all other things. A webcomic can have any art style, any topic. It can be family friendly or pornographic. You can do anything you want with a webcomic. But you must have a buffer.

That’s what we tell each other. We post it of forms, proclaim it podcasts – even write it in books. With out a buffer you’re setting yourself up for failure. That’s the one rule of webcomics.

And it’s a total lie.

In fact, with a buffer you’re setting yourself up for failure not the other ways around.

The way I see it there are 5 reasons buffers are bad for webcomics:

1. Buffers delay the launch of the comic;
2. Buffers cause you to fail later when more people are watching;
3. Buffers create an unrealistic update schedule;
4. Buffers separate the artist from the readership; and
5. Buffers prevent the comics being topical.

Delaying the Launch

Delaying the launch of a comic is one of the cardinal sins of buffers, if you ask me. It takes time to build up a buffer; time where the creator is not getting feedback from a readership or money from advertising. It makes the task of creating the comic that more unpleasant because the simple rewards of sharing the story are not there. We all know the story of the really talented artist who is forever planning and refining his comic; always getting ready to launch and never actually posting something on the web.

The simple praise of someone saying “I like this” is the lifeblood of a comic creator in the early stages of creating a comic. It gives you hope and the will to move on.  A buffer starves the creator of this lifeblood and kills a comic in the womb. When you are creating a comic, you should set up a system that makes success easy if not unavoidable. Toiling away in obscurity when you could be getting the support of a community is not making success easy.

Delay Now, Fail Later

So let me tell you a tale of two comics: one about a grasshopper, and one about an ant. The creator of the ant comic toiled away all summer to create a buffer where the grasshopper creator just launched his comic after he drew the first page.

Well one week after launch, the grasshopper comic ran into trouble and had to go on a hiatus and reconsider how his comic was done. The ant comic on the other hand updated regularly for a full year even though he had the same troubles as the grasshopper comic. Instead of going on break and fixing the problem the buffer slowly got used up. At the end of the year, the ant comic had to go on hiatus because the buffer was gone and the troubles of the comic were now apparent.

Well the grasshopper comic was able to change the method of production with no negative effect. The problem happened before many readers had come along and the few readers that it did have were friends of the creator and very understanding.

The ant comic on the other hand lost half of the readership it built up over that year before it went on hiatus. The creator was deluged by nasty letters from readers who were upset over his “unprofessionalism” in making his comic. The changes that were necessary to get the comic to be sustainable produced another wave of nasty comments and another loss of readership.

Both grasshopper comic and ant comic had the same “trouble” but grasshopper was able to correct it early with little negative effect whereas ant suffered greatly for not fixing the problem at the start. The buffer magnified the problem because it delayed the point where it need to be dealt with and fixed.

The moral? When it comes to webcomics, be a grasshopper and live in the moment so you can see the problems now, not later.

Unrealistic Scheduling

I was sort of vague about what the problem was in the previous example but the problem that buffers make worse all the time is an unrealistic update schedule. New webcomicers make this mistake all the time: they update their comic at the exact rate they can produce comics. If you have no buffers you soon realize that your optimal rate is not the same as your average rate. Buffers by their nature cover up bad schedules by slowly getting used up while the creator keeps on telling himself that he will replenish the buffer… later. Of course later never comes and eventually the creator has to slow down his update schedule. Slowing down once people have gotten used to your schedule upsets them to no end.

Separating the Artist From the Reader

Webcomics are an interactive medium; the readership has a direct line of communication with the author. This is a major part of the draw of webcomics for readers: the knowledge that they have influence over the story.

Many, many times I have changed my story because the readers liked or disliked something in it a lot more than I expected. It has always made the comic better and the readers love it. This is the power of webcomics.

A buffer kills this interaction. The stuff that the readers are so excited about will be a chapter behind what you are creating. You will not be able to change the story and, honestly, you will not be that interested in what the readers are talking about because that’s not what you’re work on. The buffer creates an wall between the creator & the reader and undermines the fundamental power of webcomics over traditional comics.

The Barrier to Topicality

In the same way that a buffer separates you from the readers, it also separates you from current events. Granted sometimes you can slip a topical comic in front of buffer pages but if you engage in any sort of story telling in your comic, this can destroy the flow of a story.

Why should it matter if you can’t slip topical events into your comic?  Because comics are viral and if you can say something funny about the latest hot topic, you can get your comic shared all over the world in an instant. Working a month ahead deprives you of this potential and decreased the viral potential of your comic. Yet again you are making success more difficult.

So why?

If buffers are so bad for comics, if they increase the suffering in producing them and makes success more difficult, why do all the professional recommend them? I believe there are 3 reasons: ego; tradition; and broken hearts.

Ego because we want to make the creation of a webcomic more difficult, thus increasing our status for accomplishing that task.

Tradition because that is what the print publishers always asked for, so why not ask for it in webcomics.

Broken hearts because we love to read comics and our hearts are broken when a good comic stops. We don’t want to be hurt again, so we want to make sure a creator is going to follow through.

But here’s the thing: the psychological problems of webcomic professionals are not your problem. A buffer is a bad practice and you shouldn’t have to create one just to make the professionals feel better about themselves.

Instead I would like to propose a new type of buffer. I would like to propose a buffer that is not a collection of comics, but a collection of time. 15% of the time you could spend on making and publishing a comic, you don’t spend on it. Instead you spend that time on yourself; making sure you are happy and sane. Go for a walk, read a book, spend time with your family and feel good about it because that creates your “buffer”.

If a problem arises, you can reach into this time reserve to maintain your schedule. If it’s a really big problem that eats up all your time, well then a buffer of comics wouldn’t have saved you either

Work a couple of comics ahead. Have a modest buffer of 3 or 4 comics. But a 30 page buffer is a determent, not an aid. The true key to success is time management and having a reserve of time, not a reserve of art.

I say now and forever: down with the comic buffer! Long live the time buffer!

Guest article by J.G. Fisher of Smyzer and Blyde

For many UK-based webcomickers, the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing is a regular fixture on their schedule. For the past seven years, the event has been staged on the campus of the Queen Mary University in London.

It’s a small press convention aimed at independent comic creators and web comic artists. Means, the chances that  you gonna see talent scouts from 2000AD, Dark Horse or the two Big Ones  are slim.

The organisers know this,  too,  and keep The Things real. Visitors pay £3 (£4 on the day) whilst exhibitors can get a table for about £40 and two exhibitors sharing a table is common.

“I mean , visitors of the Birmingham International Comic Show later in the year will fork out £40. And booking a creator’s table there is going to set you back a whopping  £110,” says Gary who’s stopping by for the fourth year in a row.

“Sure, it’s about getting exposure, spreading the word, networking and all that. But here at The Thing it sort of all happens in a familiar atmosphere, people are happy to talk to you and everyone seems to be totally at ease.”

Time to join the crowd. The 2010 venue is the Great Hall on the QMU campus. The exhibition area is roughly the size of one and a half basketball fields  including the  stage area, comprising a total of 83 tables by about 100 exhibitors.

I’ve done a bit of homework. There are some familiar names around, for example at #39 where Tom Siddell from Gunnerkrigg Court is busy signing copies of his latest print edition whilst answering visitors’ questions . Hard Graft and Red Moon Rising share  #64. Unfortunately, Rose  Loughran who draws Red Moon couldn’t make it this year.

First impressions

People have put a lot of thought into how to display their tables. Despite the sometimes limited space, everything is neatly arranged. There’s all the classic merch, such as buttons, leaflets, posters, pieces of original art, mugs and t-shirts.  This year, give-away postcards seem to be it. “Goes down well with the visitors, ” Peter Vine from Hard Graft laughs.

And there are the comic books.  Most exhibitors have opted to go for colour covers with B/W interior. All are good quality products and most of them are priced between £1-£5 on the day.

“We used a local printing shop in Essex,” says Tony Wicks from C2D4. “Apart from the low production costs per unit, they were able to tweak things according to our demands. ” He laughs. “On the other hand, I must have spent weeks converting my full colour pages into gray-scale files.  But then, the full colour option would have quadrupled the unit price. ”

“Lulu,” says Luke from Luke Surl Comics at #37. It’s his first con. “And they delivered a product I am happy with.”

“Full colour glossy”. Amy Letts hands me a copy of Epic Fail. It’s her first con, too. She’s here to launch the first print edition of her web comic.

Table #58 and #59 provide some continental flair.

“I really enjoy being here.  Lots of interaction between comic artists and visitors. ” Sarah Burrini, the writer of  the bilingual comic Life Ain’t No Pony Farm, is one of two exhibitors who came all the way from Germany.

What about the web comic scene in German-speaking countries?

“So far, there are only a few who publish their stuff on the net,” she says with a grin. “But we are working on it.”

The guy (who represents a German indie comic publisher) at the table next to Sarah’s nods.  “In Germany, and if you are into comics, whether as an artist or a reader, it’s still predominantly about print.” I flick through a sample of comics in German. “But a lot of comics are now being translated into English, ” he adds. “And many artists are expanding their web presence, too.”

I had been planning to listen to some of the panel discussions. Unfortunately, they weren’t on this year. Cancelled due to a lack of participants.

So, what were the highlights from a first time exhibitor’s point of view?

“I’m a pretty massive comics nerd, and so meeting a whole load of other massive comics nerds (in front of, and behind the tables) was pretty awesome,” Luke Surl says.

Any tips for first time exhibitors at The Thing 2011?
“Table location is pretty influential,” Luke explains. “I chose a table in the middle thinking that would be a fairly high-traffic area – which is actually wrong. Wall-side tables are the best for a variety of reasons – you can display stuff on the walls, more foot-traffic and you can get electricity.”

“In terms of merch, I think I should have had more variety. I mainly had the one product (the book) with a few small prints. The best tables I saw had a variety of merch type and prices. If I go again, I’d like to share table with someone else – I think it would make things easier in terms of organisation and running the stall, and would also allow more time to appreciate the con as a visitor.”

“It’ll take days to prepare. You almost certainly will lose rather than gain money. It’s as tiring as hell.” He grins. “But it’s also brilliant and addictive, and you’ll be hooked.”

Thanks to everyone at The Thing 2010 for their time and for answering  my questions.