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Follow De Money
16 years ago
General
Many artists, authors, and the like have asked their fans what they like in a story, what they'd like to see more of, and so on. I'm fond of asking as well because there are many times that an author stops and wonders how their interpretation of their own vision is being read by others, and whether or not they're doing things correctly.
Universally, when asked, 'what do you look for in a story'?, people answer 'good characters, a solid plot, and sound pacing'. This seems a sensible, predictable answer. I don't have any doubt that it's honest. Well, maybe a little doubt. Okay, considerable doubt. Why?
It's the money. It's what we're willing to pay for. It's like taxes- we love roads, we say we honor the educational system, but when faced with higher taxes to pay for these we gnash our teeth and clamp our wallets shut. It's the same in the fandom. I have no doubt that people love a good story, but what exactly is it that we're willing to pay real money for?
This is probably a question with no 'right' answer. I'm mainly interested in an honest answer. When (or if) you buy anthropomorphic content, what do you really look for? If faced with a great story or a great pubic mound, what choice do you really make, and why?
I have a hypothesis here, but I'm interested to see what folks say. I believe that there are a lot of folks who say they love and actually do love a good story, but when it comes down to feeding the artist feel that it's someone else's job. I also believe that things that grab our attention are very different from things that we're willing to pay for.
At this point, though, I'm not expecting an honest answer from most folks. In fact, I'll wager that only a small number will make it this far down the post and will immediately segue into something on their mind that's not related to the topic at hand.
Universally, when asked, 'what do you look for in a story'?, people answer 'good characters, a solid plot, and sound pacing'. This seems a sensible, predictable answer. I don't have any doubt that it's honest. Well, maybe a little doubt. Okay, considerable doubt. Why?
It's the money. It's what we're willing to pay for. It's like taxes- we love roads, we say we honor the educational system, but when faced with higher taxes to pay for these we gnash our teeth and clamp our wallets shut. It's the same in the fandom. I have no doubt that people love a good story, but what exactly is it that we're willing to pay real money for?
This is probably a question with no 'right' answer. I'm mainly interested in an honest answer. When (or if) you buy anthropomorphic content, what do you really look for? If faced with a great story or a great pubic mound, what choice do you really make, and why?
I have a hypothesis here, but I'm interested to see what folks say. I believe that there are a lot of folks who say they love and actually do love a good story, but when it comes down to feeding the artist feel that it's someone else's job. I also believe that things that grab our attention are very different from things that we're willing to pay for.
At this point, though, I'm not expecting an honest answer from most folks. In fact, I'll wager that only a small number will make it this far down the post and will immediately segue into something on their mind that's not related to the topic at hand.
i really do try to support all my causes i feel strongly about when i can, but i don't have a job right now so i have resigned myself to the ways of penny-pinching
When it comes to paying. How much is one willing to pay? No one wants to pay too much. But what is too little?
Prices set by the economy can also dictate as well.
I believe mostly people want good stuff but at the cheapest price or free. But the reality is artists and authors must eat and other things. So in order to continue to enjoy that entertainment. One has to pay price or else.
You are correct there is no right price. It all depends on the artist and/or writer. What do they feel their art is worth?
Well, heck, I'm trying to take risks with this title, I might as well keep with the spirit and keep shooting for publication.
And anyway, most people don't even know what they want. I'm pretty unable to analyze what I enjoy in a book. Fantastic TED talk by Malcolm Gladwell on this subject:
http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gl.....tti_sauce.html
I wish that I had the know how to conduct studies on what patterns furries have. However if Gladwell is right and our needs are intrinsic and intimate, and seldom cross our lips or fingertips, then asking questions about consumer habits is a purely rhetorical exercise. I kind of had this feeling that, especially with furry fans, it would be impossible to get an honest answer, but the concept that this is so because people are simply unable to express their desires is sort of a revelation.
With a little luck my gamble will pay off, if only because there aren't a lot of comics like mine out there right now, but I have a newfound respect for variety and its ingenuity of concept.
That sounds like an invitation!
One of the classic difficult problems in statistics/economics/sociology is getting survey subjects to answer open-ended questions well. The off-the-cuff answers that people usually give to questions like "what do you like about the place you live," "what would you do with more money," and "what do you like in a work of media" - the quick answers are usually useless. They tend to be nonspecific enough to be useless, or specific and of extremely dubious accuracy. So you have to get answers to those questions in other ways. The sociology side of the matter stereotypically asks "why do people want what they want?" and the economics side stereotypically asks "what are people willing to give up in order to get what they want?" Both of these spawn a lot of interesting questions. Of course, they also spawn a problem that looks like a fractal copy of the one they're trying to solve: to explain the answers to complex sociological or economic questions, you often have to dumb things down enough that they're nonspecific enough to be useless, or you have to heavily qualify your answer so that it's hard to broadly apply whatever lesson you're trying to impart. This is sub-optimal.
The short version of the above is that market research is its own full-time job for a good reason, and if you as a creator decide to take that on, you're going to have to make more trade-offs. Specialization works. It is awesome to be a full-spectrum creator who creates their own work, self-publicizes, and self-publishes, but it's a lot of work and at some point you're likely to think - could I spend more time on the things that satisfy me if I got someone else, a specialist, to do this thing that bores me?
Good luck! :D
Then again, when it comes down to it, it's not like I'm investing my fortune in this endeavor, just a big chunk of time. If Fred Savage fails, it won't render me financially destitute. Emotionally destitute, maybe, but that's something one can suck up.
Joking. When I go into a book store and I'm looking at books by authors I've never read before or belong to an IP I've never come across before, there are a few things that I look out for to help me select books. First and foremost thing that grabs my attention first is the cover and title. If it looks bland or boring, I won't spare a glance at it. After that it's down to plot, setting and if it's got any, comedy. I have a particular love for humours books, but I still go for more serious works. The plot got to stand out, I'm not going to buy a generic sounding high fantasy book that has names of places and things that involve hacking up a good deal of phlem to pronounce them. I sometimes flick through a few pages out of curiosity, sometimes I'll catch something that will make me want to buy the book.
So the real gist of it is that it's got to stand out from the rest if I'm going to even pick it up and read the plot summary. Imaginative plot and setting that grabs my attention will work in getting me to buy it.
Oh, and most of the books I read are fantasy and sci-fi. Variations on those settings like steam-punk and alternative worlds will also ply my attention.
I do have a question for folks that read fantasy books in general- what is it that draws you into high fantasy or science fiction? I notice that the vast majority of furry titles go to some lengths to ape existing sci-fi and fantasy universes and sense that there's a very strong appetite for it. Is it possibly escapism, or something deeper?
If you take a by-the-numbers murder mystery and made all the characters anthro animals, other than these characters, what difference is there to a murder mystery involving just humans? If I'm going to read about these anthro characters, I want to see them exploring new concepts of society, politics and morality in an universe that isn't a carbon copy of what's outside my doorstep. Give them an adventure into an unknown world, or have them show the reader how this world works.