TWCL

[4LS]

Friends are probably one of the worst groups to look for fans. You want to find people who like comics, and who enjoy the specific comic that you happen to be writing - and being your friend or relation doesn't mean they're going to fall into that group. Most of the people I know do not read comics, full stop.

Look at it like this - say you've got 100,000 readers who all think your comic is the best thing. Sounds like a lot of people - but they'll most likely be spread across the world, which has a population of maybe 7 billion. So what are the chances of you running into any of them by accident?

My advice is do what you're doing now: post on forums, actively talk to people, tell people who like webcomics that you have a webcomic - because these are the guys who will actually read it, and will give you useful critique. And yeah, put your banner in your sig somehow. Good luck!
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[topjimcomics]

A fun statistic in regards to someone's comment about Facebook being an unreliable way to disperse information. I posted a "question" on my Facebook page where all people had to do was click an answer if they saw it. In 24 hours, it received 4 clicks. So I went over to a co-worker's desk who is a friend of mine that rarely ever uses Facebook (but "Likes" Nate's page), and he checked his feed. Nothing, that post wasn't there. So then he clicked on the Pages feed from the left sidebar. It showed one Nate update, but not the question. The only way he saw my post was to click directly on the page! I knew it was bad, I just didn't know it was THAT bad.

However, one of the most confusing aspects of this is my page manager says 108 people saw this post. Since I only have 92 likes, and the page is public, I assume that somehow more people that DON'T like my page saw my post than people that do? Way to go, Facebook!
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[Gar]

It seems to be a common trend that close friends and family members of cartoonists tend not to read their comics. Very few people I know in real life read my comic on a regular basis. Heck, my own family don't read it.

I think the psychology of it is fairly straightforward: The comic is important to you, it's important to you that people read it, therefore reading your comic is a favor to you. Basically, they can't read your comic without imagining you watching them read it, and that creeps them out a little bit.

Don't take it personally. People don't relate to entertainers the same way they relate to friends, so it's easier to avoid that disconnect than it is to reconcile it