What is it about Monday, Wednesday and Friday that make them the seemingly optimum publishing dates for webcomics?
When it comes to reading webcomics, I'm slightly more obsessive than many. I have my comics neatly arranged inside two bookmarked folders on my Firefox Toolbar – one for daily comics, and one for everyone else. The "everyone else" category subdivides into folders for each day (with comics that update on more than one day duplicated on each day), with a catch-all "Irregular updates" folder for ones that repeatedly fail to meet their official schedule or have no schedule.
Organized like this, it's easy to observe how many fewer webcomics choose to publish on the "off" days. My reading list on Tuesday and Thursday is half the size of the other weekdays. My Saturday and Sunday links are almost nonexistent in comparison.
My question is: why those days?
My default assumption is that those days (M-W-F) garner the biggest readership. Is it because most folks are at work or school and looking for a diversion more on those days than on Tuesday or Thursday? Is it easier for the creators to get them out on those days? Or is it just so common now that it's become the default schedule?
Webcomic creators, what's your experience? Webcomic readers, what's your rationale?
Please, tell me! I'm most curious.
Honestly, I think it's a matter of tradition and inertia by now – there are enough other comics that update MWF. People who read your strip probably read other MWF comics and are conditioned to expect new comics those days.
Before I made the switch to Piperka, if a comic updated Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, I didn't have a bookmark folder for it. I couldn't categorize it easily and would probably end up missing updates. So I think it's just a matter of inertia and reader expectations.
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Terrence Marks
Spare Parts
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