Sunday, October 4, 2020

Lucrative Orthography

French has too many letters


Read this week's comic exclusively on:


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Change is in the air!

Loyal reader: I'm trying something new, and I hope you'll come along with me. I'm going to test the waters of publishing Itchy Feet exclusively on Tinyview.

The kind folks at Tinyview approached me a few months back about hosting comics on their app. They genuinely want to make the online (especially mobile) comic-reading experience better - and they want to support comic artists as well. They're good people.

Tinyview is paying me to publish on the app, and for the first time in my life I am facing the possibility of actually making a living off of this web comic. How crazy is that!!? Yes, I've had my Patreon going for a while, and it's absolutely helped - but it was never a living wage, and I never expected it to be. This whole Tinyview thing came out of the blue. I never thought of Itchy Feet as a job. I never had aspirations of "making it big in webcomics," haha. It was just something that I did for fun, and it kinda snowballed all by itself, and now here we are.

In February 2021 I'll have been making Itchy Feet for ten years. That's a decade of consistent weekly comics, rain or shine. Almost 500! And I still don't have plans to quit my day job and make comics all day long. But you know what? I'm open to anything. If you're anything like me, you're a traveler, and that means you're always eager to see what's around the next bend. You're willing to be flexible with your plans, to adjust with the challenges and opportunities that come along. 

So, I want to see if this will work. It might not! Worst case, I'll come back and publish comics here like I always have done. But there's a chance this might take off, and that's new territory that I'm keen to explore.

I want to thank you for reading this comic, especially if you've been here for many years. This has only been possible because of you. 

And Itchy Feet is not going anywhere! It just has a new home base. I hope you'll join me there.

Your pal,
Mal

25 comments:

  1. Does it allow RSS feed follows? That's how I've been following all my web comics. I couldn't find an option for it on Tinyview yet, though.

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  2. Congratulations on making money. Hard to ignore that path! However, I just chafe at the inevitable trend to cater to "thumb zombies". Reading the comic on a laptop screen is like reading some oversized "easy print" offering for pre-schoolers. (which most phone users sort of are)

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  3. I agree with both comments before me. I'm using RSS feed to keep up with your comic and it is SO huge on tinyview. Not everyone is using their phone for everything, lots of people use desktop/laptop for everything, so this is quite annoying change. I started to support you on Patreon, because I think you are really good, but I might need to revise who I'm supporting soon, the number is getting a bit too high.

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    1. Thanks for becoming a patron Jana! That's great. I'll talk to them about making it more readable on desktop!

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  4. I'm using RSS too. I hope Malachi will still post weekly links to the Tinyview comic on this blog.
    By the way, I can't find any bell icon on Tinyview webpage.

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  5. Hey everyone! Yes I'll still be posting weekly here with a link, and I'll talk to the devs about making it more desktop-friendly. The previous version worked fine on desktop so I guess it's their new design. I'll also ask about RSS feeds.

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    Replies
    1. I hope you will also send the emails.

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    2. Please, please, please keep a desktop version! Cellphone screen styles are not made for people with vision problems.

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    3. thanks for the future link. I don't think I'll have the app and would love to continue reading itchyfeet... and if it helps you living (a little) of it, it's really good :D

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  6. personally would hope you publish here as well, tinyview sucks on desktop and I read your comic on desktop and not mobile phone (on tiny view desktop images are super large and you cant shrink em by zooming either)

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    1. mean, tinyview more like extralarge view, fonts and everything are 0x larger there than on this site

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  7. Another RSS reader here. I don't see any feed on the new site, so regrettably I'll probably stop reading the comic now. I don't have the memory, discipline, or patience to periodically visit the new site just to check for updates.

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    1. Ah, I've just now seen the responses to the other RSS-related comments here. (I had typed my reply a couple hours ago but didn't get online to post it until now.) Yes, it would be great if you continued to post updates here when a comic is available on the new site, or better yet, if you could persuade the new site to start offering an RSS feed.

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  8. Personally, I don’t want to bother with another app. If I can’t get the comic in email, Facebook, or even by going to the website (seriously?), then I’ll probably have to miss out, sadly.
    I just clicked through to Tinyview to give the format a chance, and nope, not interested. I read Itchy Feet on my tablet, where they look great and I can see each comic as a whole without scrolling through panels.

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    Replies
    1. I understand. It's just an experiment, and if it doesn't fly, I'll go back to doing things the traditional way ;)

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    2. please just post here and there, because on desktop environment this site is good to read at, new site is horrible to read at ...might need to stop following this comic if you move there because tinyview is such bad site on desktop environment

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  9. Never been a fan of mobile websites on desktop. Or even mobile websites on mobile.
    They always feel so clunky ...

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  10. That's a shame, I read on desktop through RSS and it looks dreadful on the new platform. Hope you come back to normality soon.

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  11. Chiming in as somebody who would actually be very happy to read on mobile.
    I gave Tinyview a go when you started publishing there and tried it for almost two month. What lead me to uninstall it eventually was that no matter how hard I tried I didn't manage to set up notifications for only the content I want to be notified about. Even though the interface looks like this is supposed to be possible. It just kept notifying me about every single thing published on the platform, every day. And that I just don't want to deal with.
    So yeah, I would be happy to use it, I'm fine with how it looks on mobile, but only if the app gets some updates.

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    Replies
    1. I had the same problem actually. I just checked in with them and they said they fixed it about a week ago, now it only notifies you about the comics you're actually subscribed to.

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    2. Thanks, that's great to hear! I'll definitely give it a try again then.
      And good for you to make money from this little comic!

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  12. I like the idea, but I don't really like how tinyview displays the panels so (ironically) large. To be able to take in the whole panel at once, I need to hold my phone quite a distance from my face.

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  13. Desktop reader and unfortunately the site just does not work out well for a variety of reasons (very narrow, horrible navigation). Also when on mobile, I don't understand why everything needs to be an app vs. being able to access websites in my browser.

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