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The Future of Exiern: An Update
🕑 Added 2023-02-25 23:00:17 +0000 UTCRemembered we have a blog tag and that I haven't used this in a while. Work and family occasionally takes me around the world a bit, in a short space of time it's taken me from Sydney, Australia (where I'm from) to Seoul, South Korea (where I'm writing this) to final stop Sapporo, Japan where I have a conference. So, I thought I'd better write this now in case I had any computer or Internet issues (had to run around to buy new adaptor plugs and just in case I'm not as covered for Japan as I thought, you might have an idea of what happened.
Once I get this last trip out of the way in the first week of March, I should have some free time to get back more to Exiern than I have. Just wanted to let you all know that we never stop thinking about making sure you all get value for your money but also how to ultimately get Exiern to pay for itself.
Patrons on the higher tiers ($5 and $10 especially) haven't been forgotten and you know I'm good for making up for any months of inactivity such that you ultimately shouldn't be any worse off than had things being run regularly. For the $5 tier, we do want to make sure something of at least equal value to Neese is up and running as soon as possible. We're working on everything as quickly as possible.
In the longer term, I do want to have a discussion about the operational future of Exiern and how it still runs at a financial loss. Don't worry, this isn't an attempt to fundraise or guilt trip to fundraise or anything like that. We've all been very grateful for any and all financial support and free time alone is valuable, there's so much competing demand for what is also a limited resource and we have to ear that from every one of our readers as well.
So, the TL;DR of the above is that I'm hoping to brainstorm some more ideas with everyone, there has to be something we haven't tried to start closing the deficit gap. Lots of other webcomic and other creators have expressed their willingness to help and many have been doing so already (looks like Exiern's age and reputation is still worth something to all those admittedly more financially successful webcomics at this time than ourselves, hopefully some of it rubs off!).
Anyway, on top of everything else, hopefully more content from existing stories soon but also entirely new things as well. More news about what's going on coming soon as well!
Best wishes and thanks again everyone!
Comments
Shan from 1st January 2021 and Scott from before that.
Believe me, all the excellent points you have been raising have been weighing on our minds for a long time now as we try to dig ourselves out of something very much in danger of collapsing under its own weight (or would it have to collapse first before we could do that? That's the problem with metaphors and how literal they have to be). <br><br>As for how Exiern got its name, it would be believable to say that if we don't know exactly when it started or even how many pages it has, we wouldn't know that either but I think I've seen an explanation somewhere which is about as bizarre as you'd expect!
Kaffeyette Lektor
I don't want to seem like a heretic (this time), but as someone who came to the party late in its history, I was just wondering how 'Exiern' got it's name? One issue may be that 'Exiern' doesn't really tell the new potential reader / supporter what the hell it is about. WTF is an ‘Exiern’? I'm not saying, "Lose the 'Exiern' moniker," but you might want to qualify it somehow, e.g. 'Exiern: A Fantasy Tale with Serious Personality Disorders', or something like that. 'All the Queer Stuff Other Fantasies Forgot to Mention'. 'A Tale of Friendship, Frustration and Fatality'. Again, because it has such a long history, now with parallel alternate timelines and spin-offs, you may want to 'chunk' the back story into easily accessible, digestible, bite-sized pieces, so people aren't faced with the intimidating prospect of reading 15+ years worth of convoluted plot lines, which don't have many distinct break points, as fun for some as that may be. I know it used to be divided into sections, maybe it still is, but some of those sections were quite long and the way they were presented in the Archive (where I originally accessed them) was quite expansive and hard to navigate. Most new readers won't bother scrolling or systematically working their way through individual files. If it looks too big or too complex, they'll just pass and move on to the next story with big boobs.
