It’s a magical hobby

Something a little different this week, to celebrate the fact that we have been making the webcomic for one year now. 52 comics, and I’m very proud to say all have been posted on time. It is of course just our first year, but so far so good.

One year is quite young for a webcomic, and we are still very much finding our feet, even now. Both myself and Aileen dabble in small-press publishing, but Tiny Wooden Pieces is by far the biggest and longest-running project we have been involved in. Putting a comic on the internet as opposed to in print is a hugely different venture, and although Tiny Wooden Pieces has more of an audience than any printed work we have done, it’s more abstracted. If you sell 100 comics at a convention you get to see, talk to, shake hands with or high five every person who buys the book. But you can reach 10 times that many people every week online and never see or know a single person who reads the comic. Google Analytics can tell us where they come from, what time of day they log on, and how long they stay, but these are facts, not feedback.

But over the course of the year, we are slowly beginning to see comments become a regular feature, and Facebook and Twitter allows us some feedback and contact with readers. Knowing people are enjoying the comic, seeing it shared, liked, tweeted and commented on is what allows us to connect to everyone who reads it. And that’s what makes it worthwhile. As anyone who has read more than a handful of these posts will surely know, board games are, first and foremost, a social activity for myself and Aileen. It’s the interaction with friends and other players, the joy of playing with others that brings us back to the table, and so it is hearing from readers, getting to talk to them here, and on social media, that literally keeps bringing us back to the drawing board every week. So whether or not you’ve ever left a comment, tweeted, liked, shared, upvoted or whatever-else it is the kids do these days: thank you. Thank you so much. This isn’t a job for us, and even if we were paid for it, I don’t think it would even be work.

And if you want to help us celebrate, then share the comic with someone you think will like it. And as ever, say hello below in the comments. We would honestly love to hear from you.

Regular comics will resume next week, and later this year we are hoping to make some improvements to the website, and further down the line, we even hope to add some more content. As long as people keep reading, we will try and keep improving the site.

On a final, and entirely coincidental note, I think this also makes a nice comic to mark International Tabletop Day (April 11th) as well. I am working (day job) and Aileen will be busy colouring some pages for a different project, but in the evening we will get to do some gaming. I think we might play Tokaido.