This is something I've been wondering about since the first pros starting showing up on Usenet. I'm not really sure that interacting with fans online is a good thing for pro creators. Or at least, it seems like a very double-edged sword.
It's easy to point to guys like Mark Waid who often come off poorly whenever they interact with a fan who criticizes their work or disagrees with them on some point, turning such interactions into angry, vitriolic arguments. But I've even seen well-known nice guys like Kurt Busiek get testy and come off poorly in discussions where they feel a fan has crossed some line or simply refuses to come around to the pro's point of view. Then you have someone like Peter David, who, IMHO, often comes across as poorly as Waid does, but he isn't taken to task for it to anywhere near the same extent Waid is (and it seems to me that this has largely been because David is simply more popular with the body politic in question).
It's well-documented that online interaction lists to anger and insults more often and far quicker than face-to-face interaction for a variety of reasons (and lord knows we've seen it here, too). My gut reaction is to say that if I were a pro I'd hit as many cons and comic shop signings as I could manage, but I would generally avoid online forums because they're more grief than they're worth (plus, I know that I don't have the self-discipline to ignore someone who ticked me off for whatever reason, and I too would come off as an ass in the ensuing digital catfight).
But would that be a mistake? Do you think that pros win over new fans through interacting with fans online? Do they make existing fans more loyal, more apt to try any new book the creator works on? More than they lose by coming off jerky in the inevitable online arguments?
Posted by Chris M. at April 12, 2007 1:08 PM
I personally dislike fan/pro interaction on any levels. As a fan, I don't seek to meet the pros, and in the rare event that I am considered a pro (I did one convention for my book) I find it uncomfortable to deal with fans.
Warren Ellis seems to have done all right for himself online.
Further complicating the question is the web's replacement of fan letters and letter pages. By abandoning printed letters for online forums, are companies driving creators to get online in order to get the feedback letters pages used to provide? And are web forums a good substitute for letters pages, as far as criticism and interaction go? (I'd say no, personally, but I also tend to keep off general forums.)
As a creator, you might get online just to get the feedback that you couldn't read anywhere else. On the other hand, I think you're right about most of us not having the discipline to ignore brickbats thrown our way. It's a lot easier to not reply to a written letter (which would take time to write, mail, etc., time that could be used to cool down) than it is to reply to a post on a message board (which can be instant, with no cool-down time).
So, I guess I'm saying creators might not want to get online, but might feel they have no choice if they don't want to be writing/drawing in a vacuum. Damned if you do...
John Scalzi is an SF pro with extensive online experience whose career has been greatly enhanced by interaction with fans; it is reasonable to argue that he would have no SF career at all were it not for his online activity.
Warren Ellis and John Byrne both appear to have a legion of devoted online fans at their respected fora, though the latter is as ill-tempered and arbitrary as Waid.
Priest's career in comics lasted about five years longer than it would have had he not had an online presence that led to loyal fans.
Gail Simone's friendly, open online presence gains her a lot of good will (like Scalzi, her transition to prodom occurred in significant part because of her online history).
I think a lot of it (counter-example: Byrne) boils down to this: Online communication is a separate skill. If you are good at it, then your online presence will enhance your career without a doubt. If you're not good at it, and you try it anyway, you may hurt your career.
Byrne may be explained away by re-evaluating him: He's not unskilled at online communication, but his skill takes the form of polarizing the people he communicates with.
I have never stopped reading a book - or watching a tv show, or listening to music - because of the creator's on-line persona. Dan Slott may be whiny, Warren Ellis a pompous git, and Mark Waid the poster child for internet addiction, but it doesn't effect the work. (Except when it does, in the form of a character making some comment that takes you out of the book. But that is so rare I can't come up with an internet specific example.)
On the other hand, I have met any number of creators on-line whose work I hadn't gotten in the past, that I then picked up because I recognized the name ("Oh, *that* Dan Vado!"), or thought to give them a second chance ("It's that nice Lieber boy, we should at least look."), or was simply aware that they had something available ("Steven Grant has something out this week? Funny, I never saw any ads from his publisher...")
And face-to-face interaction isn't neccessarily an improvement. I have had direct encounters with some creators that were so noxious that they *did* poison any appreciation of their work. (No, no names.) And I have also found that many of the most open, friendliest on-line personas turn out to be very distant, even aloof in person. (Probably because they weren't comfortable "off-line". Just as some cute kids become monsters on line, so too can shy ones blossom. Anonomity is as much a DES as Fan-Pro interaction.)
I like interacting with people in general, so if I were a pro I would definitely like to interact with my fans. As a fan, I have enjoyed interacting with pros in person (with the sole exception of Chris Claremont to date) when I've had the chance, even pros whose work I don't particularly like. That said, different strokes for different blokes, and I can completely understand if someone from one side of the fence doesn't want to interact with anyone from the other.
I've only seen a little of Ellis' online interaction, but what I've seen has struck me as very Byrne-like. As a former long-time Byrne fanboy, I can speak to Byrne with a little more authority. I think Byrne has always been polarizing, and as such, has always had a legion of people whom he attracts and who support him. But I think Byrne has hurt himself as much as he's helped himself with his act, in letter pages (probably starting with Next Men, where he began saying whatever he felt like) and now online. I know people who will not go anywhere near anything Byrne has worked on because of Byrne's interaction with fans via said outlets and his con appearances as well. I don't think Byrne has gained many fans he would not otherwise have had, while losing some he would have gained or kept. Fortunately for Byrne, he is a big enough name (a status that was actually deserved at one point) that has more or less withstood this effect.
Greg, I think you are very wise when you posit that online communication is a separate skill, and I can see where being good at it, and properly utilizing it, can boost one's career.
> Do they make existing fans more loyal, more apt to try any
> new book the creator works on?
http://www.comicboards.com/birdsofprey/view.php?rpl=070410150042
In part, yes. That's been my observation anyway (It's not a 100% thing, but having just seen that post today it seemed apt to share here.)
I have noticed, purely personally, a similar but opposite effect: I have been definitively put off some writers' work, even when I think it might otherwise have appealed to me, because, having come upon them via their Internet presence, I cannot read their stuff without being reminded of their depressingly conventional political opinions, hysterical tantrums, etc.
Case in point: Cory Doctorow. I would have thought that any book that Gene Wolfe thought worth a blurb would be attractive to me, but I can't overcome my dislike of Doctorow's online persona. (Considering Doctorow's artistic stance, his online persona is probably a good deal more important to him than any other.)
Counter-example: Warren Ellis. His web presence is repulsively, tediously self-satisfied, but I've enjoyed many, if not all, of his books.
Ah, I actually have relevant expertise here. The single most valuable thing for any creator interacting online with fans is one or more trusted friends who can say "Stop now for a while", whom you'll heed. Some creators shouldn't be online at all, for a variety of reasons - I have a friend in roleplaying game development who's wonderful in person, but whose persistent depression combines with random stuff and makes routine banter without face-to-face support a misery to him. Fortunately, he knows it and stays the hell away from places likely to hit him like a wet cod of malign correction. More creators should be online but with more breaks than they actually take. Stepping away for an hour, a day, a week, a month, is a survival skill that takes practice.
The second most valuable thing is a willingness to apply some flavor of what I call the Mom Test: Would I want to say this in a conversation about my work if Mom were in the room? Sometimes there is a valid reason to say things I would prefer Mom not to hear, but very often not, and most particularly when it comes to insults.
The problem arises when people expect deference like John Byrne or Pat O'Neill. (I'm sure I'm insulting at least one of them by putting them in the same sentence, especially since Pat isn't a creative type. At least, I hope so.) If pros just act like regular participants, then it doesn't come off badly when they engage in the occasional flame war. Peter David had some knock down drag outs, as did Priest as did Lawrence Watt-Evans as has Kurt Busiek. But they generally act like just one of the gang, and they get treated that way generally.
To me, the important thing about creator/fan interaction of any kind is the amount of care the creator takes not to be unduly influenced by the fans. Because most fans don't know what they're talking about.
It's like baseball. There's an old saying about being a manager or GM of a baseball team, "If you listen to the fans in the stands too much, you'll end up sitting next to them."
Mike: One of the best bits of advice I ever got was a simple one, "Share your enthusiasms. You're a fanboy too." I think that regular participation builds up others' sense of the pro as a person, and makes a good context for those times when the pro needs to say, "No, you're wrong there, here are the facts of this situation."
I think people are more surprised to see Mark Waid in a flame war than Peter David. Waid's the one who's filled with childlike wonder. People expect Peter David to be abrasive.
I think the problem is that Waid aggressively sells himself as Mr. Happy Silver Age, when his work and his online shenanigans are anything but happy.
Tony, if people are surprised to see Waid in a flamewar, then people have never seen Waid online before. He's quick to assume hostility and poor at editing his own text to avoid the appearance of hostility, both of which lead directly to flameage.
And the sad thing is, Greg, he's been complaining about the internet for 10 years and still hasn't figured out that his computer, you know, has an off switch. I find it difficult to have sympathy for a guy who continually picks fights with people he can't stand to begin with in a place that as far as I can tell does nothing but make him miserable.
My experience isn't as extensive as Bruce's, and I'm just barely on the pro side of the pro/fan divide, but there have been a few online communities where I'm a pro, more or less.
The end result? I've got a lot more sympathy for Waid, Busiek, et al, than I used to, regrets for anything I ever wrote to anger them (I'd like to apologize to them personally, if I could), and a sincere desire never to have anything to do with online comics fandom again, saving this page.
In my case, at least, online interaction with fans is foe, not friend. I think the biggest problem I had--I mean, apart from the anonymous death threat, the abuse, and the various accusations which were lobbed my way--was that online fan communities simply didn't police their own. Bad behavior on the part of fans was not rebuked by other fans; abusive posts were not deleted by moderators. The apparent assumption was that, as a pro, I was expected to simply put up with bad behavior.
Now, my response to this was to leave the communities and not return. I don't know if Waid, Busiek, et al can do that. Does DC or Marvel require them to maintain an online presence? If I had to continue to be a presence in these communities, inevitably I'd have flamed the fans who were, for example, accusing me of making up quotes from Alan Moore--and they'd have flamed me back, and I'd end up looking like a prick. So I left. But perhaps Waid et al don't have that option.