Patreon has unveiled a massive update to its service, and we’ll discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly.

ON THIS WEEK’S SHOW…

The Good

• The user experience has some significant improvements
• Collections
• eStore — Buy digital goods.
• Find Creators You Love — a somewhat improved attempt at discoverability
• Member Posts section is being sunsetted

The Bad

• Anemic analytics. Graphtreon still beats Patreon’s own data.
• Patreon’s pivot to social media. I have lots of places to talk to my fans. Social media is where I go to make NEW fans. That means Discoverability. Where’s that??
• Patreon Chat. It’s a straight 50-50 split. Half of my patrons can’t see/access the chat, and the other half don’t care.
• Making a new post: BAD interface. Separates different parts of the process to different screens. It makes it super awkward to select tiers.

The Ugly

• That logo is laughable. Whoever designed it belongs in the Witless Protection Program.

Sure, making comics is fun, but do we ever do serious work, like painting, sculpting, or other classical art forms?

ON THIS WEEK’S SHOW…

• Do we ever do “classical” work?
• If tenacity is #1, what’s #2?
• UPDATE: Dave’s booth cost for SDCC ’24
• UPDATE: NCS networking
• UPDATE: Alaska Comics Camp
• Which to work on… popular, fun Series A or almost-done Series B?
• Black gutters

The Gannett newspaper chain, which includes USA Today and about 200 other daily newspapers, has selected 34 syndicated comics. Each of its newspapers will be limited to running comics from that list. Any comic that didn’t make the list has been shut out of roughly 20% of the existing market. Not surprisingly, most of the 34 are legacy comics whose original creators are long since deceased. This is the end of syndicated comics.

ON THIS WEEK’S SHOW…

• The Gannet 34 signals the death of syndicated comics
• UPDATE: Mastodon Aint it
• Why no ComicLab website?
• Relaunch a failed Kickstarter?