[Mercurius]

Originally Posted by ShrinkingOne

Fully agree on the former, it's like the only marketing strategy Mercomix uses are ones handed down from mainstream large-scale crowd-funding and video games that do this to bypass traditional financing barriers or build hype. These and other tactics from Mercomix are totally mismatched to the audience.

You have to have a brand people trust too. Mercomix has a lack of self-awareness about how much trust was lost and how their brand has been poisoned from the Sailor Moon series of comics; the creator made core elements out of their personal, hyper-niche kinks (diapers, scat) and exacting fantasy of shrinking characters from a notable 1980s manga/anime property and babying these characters rather than sticking to size differences and the interesting dynamics that can play out there when you aren't preoccupied with infantilizing. Something very rigid about their obsession. To their credit, at least Mercomix is not obsessed with something like Ranma.

Need to push back a little on the latter. Fair use allows the sale of those images.

And, I'm getting those kinks out of the way, so later issues will be more serious and story driven. Or, just remove those hyper-niche kinks for the early issues in a redo (with the artist who did issue 6), up to issue 6, then maybe it'll have a different outcome and sales. But, the former gives some people that you don't want it to be boring, so you need to have a fine line between ones that don't want the sexual content and the ones that do. And that's difficult, these days.

Originally Posted by ShrinkingOne

What pornographers don't do is slap a label on their product implying it is a branded product endorsed by the property owners, which Mercomix initially did.

There's stuff I still need to learn, and slap branding products is one of them. You make a good point on that, and I should remove any instance of such before release. I did say that I'm trying to remove the instance of such in my DA post. So...yeah.

Originally Posted by ShrinkingOne

Also, most people have moved on to more contemporary properties and characters like Overwatch or other video games for Western audiences and more recent anime characters (stopped paying attention years ago to what the zeitgeist is) or generic anime girls in Asian garb rendered in an Eastern art style for the rest. They stay on top of what's new. Sailor Moon has been dead near-on a decade.

There's still a Sailor Moon fanbase today. They didn't "die" at any point, just like other anime. I'm one of those die-hard fans, who knows the characters and stories. I wrote over 30 issues of this (true story), while editing some later on, before the artist goes and makes it. There's much more story to it that you want to explore as many possibilities as you can with it. That's why I'm taking advantage of the many possibilities with my adult comic series.

Originally Posted by ShrinkingOne

I plan to buy the first comic based on the shrinking process alone; any excitement I might have is purely benefit of the doubt, but there is an element that is thankful that it isn't Yet Another Sailor Moon Comic (#YASMC). The recent preview showing hints of the shrinking cemented that decision, though I won't preorder. I will absolutely not get Chapter II or any subsequent chapter, but I could see myself commissioning the artist.

Appreciate your input and interest.

Originally Posted by ShrinkingOne

So, here's some constructive criticism, because I know Mercomix isn't going to stop: I would drop the preorder gimmicks and just release the damn comic when its done. If you release quality products, people will buy it and you don't have to work so hard to convince us with the money that what you have to offer is worth what you're charging. If you want to let people know ahead of time, fine, but months in advance isn't the way to go. A week tops. You aren't a pay site who has to cultivate a sense of the subscription website as a going concern and worry about subscriber retention.

Focus on the fundamentals and leave the advanced tactics to the experts who are trying to capture sales from demographics on gigantic marketing platforms that have more than a couple hundred people in it.

I'm glad someone gave some advice that I've wanted to hear. After hearing about that, you're right. I tried the "pre-order" idea, and a handful came forward to put their money down on it. So, going forward after this release...I'll alter the pre-order idea toward your suggestion of a week before it's out.

Someone told me to bring the pre-order idea back, after I stopped doing that before. I did take that advice for months, before I posted this product here, with the slow-shrinking part that you guys wanted. I never thought it would get much criticism about it, much more about my works. But, after what you said today, it makes much more sense than I imagined. Other fetish comic places never did pre-orders of their comics. So, maybe it's for the best to alter it to see if that works better for many.

Thank you, ShrinkingOne.