enoch's rambles

People Read Series, Not Authors

Even with a beloved series it is monumentally hard to get readers to read other works by the same artist. I thought with Honey Come Chatka there'd be a built in audience because of how monumentally popular bkub's Pop Team Epic is but that's simply not true. Honey Come Chatka's peak popularity on Mangadex was sirlorence's first upload at ~1500 views and immediately went off a cliff to the ~250-700 range. And this is true across the board. Friends will know I've become obsessed with Mousou Telepathy and have started reading her first series, My Alien Days. Both are scanlated by Helvetica Scans and while Mousou readership has grown to 25k views per page, MAD peaked at its first chapter of 14k views and dropped to the 400 range since reaching the post-paperback publication chapters. Really, ain't this true of all art in general? The sophomore slump, the one hit wonder, the viral hit. We're conditioned to think that when we find success, it is because others are attracted to our vision, when that's really not true at all. It feels more correct to say that we are used as vessels to bring different concepts and ideas to life, and they have a life outside of our own. The only problem is art doesn't need a salary to maintain life, but artists do.