Wednesday 26 June 2013

Important Announcement

If the only way that you interact with Thunder Brother: Soap Division is via the weekly updates I post to this site then I have bad news and good news for you. The bad news, I'm afraid, is that the Sunday updates are ending once the current story, Wife Swap, concludes in a few weeks time. This is because I'm disappointed by the visitor stats and, apart from Twitter re-tweets and Facebook likes from the same loyal few, receive very little feedback. It may surprise you to learn that I earn no money from TB:SD, and so every morsel of acknowledgement is like a three course meal in an expensive restaurant to me.

Quizzing uncomfortable friends, acquaintances and strangers on the matter has often resulted in the reply, “I like to wait a few weeks and read a bunch of pages at a time”. So, in an attempt to encourage people to visit the site more often, I removed previous episodes and only made available pages from the current story being serialised. This seems to have made no difference to the stats. In fact, the steady slide has continued and left me wondering if what these people actually meant to say was, “I intended to wait a few weeks to read a bunch of pages at a time but it slipped my mind and I never got around to doing it.”

The good news is that my enthusiasm for Thunder Brother: Soap Division remains as virulent as before. The strip will continue in print form and will be the definitive method of delivery from now on. This is because I find interacting with readers buying the print edition a lot more satisfying. For all I know, the already disappointing visitor stats for my website might be made up mainly of people accessing it by accident and quickly clicking away. A monetary transaction, even one that takes place online and has no social interaction, seems a lot more sincere to me.

I hope I can persuade you to try the physical comics. If you haven’t seen a copy before then you should know that I think that the reproduction of the material by the printers I use is really good. Each issue is A5 sized, twenty-four pages long, features a complete TB:SD story (twelve pages) and extras including original cover art and previously unseen comics also by me. It retails for £3. You can buy copies from selected comic shops such as GOSH, Orbital, NicheComics, Chaos City, OK Comics and some Forbidden Planet stores. If you buy copies directly from me using my shop, the £3 cover price includes the cost of postage to you if you live in the UK. I also appear at events selling my comics. My next scheduled appearances are at Caption, NICE and the MCM Expo. If your preference remains to read my comics via your  desktop computer or portable device, I am currently looking into making pdf versions available. Please ensure that you continue to visit my website for information as it becomes available.


Many thanks to you if you have ever re-tweeted, liked or shared links to any of the weekly update announcements I've made. They have meant a lot to me. I hope you will continue to visit this website for announcements, artwork and other comic strips from me and I hope you will consider buying the comic book version of Thunder Brother: Soap Division available from my shop.   

4 comments:

Gladys Badhands said...

I will pop into OK on payday; they kindly introduced me to your work in the first instance & I prefer print so it seems like an all round good deal; I am sad the weekly updates are no more, but glad you are continuing in a different format. Ta very much and all the best!x

Paul B Rainey said...

Thanks Gladys. OK Comics are very supportive of my comics. Great people there.

Phil Hall said...

Maybe we could talk?

Paul B Rainey said...

I'm always available to talk, Phil. I can be emailed by clicking the "contact me" link. (Sorry for the delay in replying, mate. Just seen your comment.)