Bittersweet Candy Bowl

Our survey covered 1420 people and collected all sorts of fascinating information. Thank you so much for submitting to it! Some of the comments were wonderful and nice. I've personally read the responses in their entirety. Veronica has read about half, but I'll get her to go through it later.

For your efforts, here's my best representation of the survey's findings:

DEMOGRAPHIC


Obviously, a bit of a sausagefest. I am guessing the late teenage male demographic is slanting this, though, as for our younger (13 and under) readers, it's 53% female.

It seems that 62% of our fanbase are at least a little furry, which is maybe something to overcome? BCB isn't positioned as a furry comic, and it seems to belittle the strengths of the comic for it to be read simply because it is furry. It wasn't surprising to see that a large proportion of people fit into the "maybe" furry category rather than True Believers, though, as the comic really isn't "furry" in the way most other comics are, in art style and story focus. We're on the edge of that definition, so we gather the uncertain furries. How interesting.

Quite impressively, 85% of our readership doesn't post comments or "barely" posts. This is born out by our readership numbers on stats sites. Plus, you forumergoers are less than half of the frequent commenters. Obsessive weirdos.

I'm not sure what the last pie chart means. It's sweet that 5% of you read BCB only. It's weird that 20% of you read over 20 webcomics! Are there that many worth reading on the internet?

Age
Average age is 18.3 years old. Our youngest reader is 10, oldest 48! But that person is unusually old, because 98% of our readers are 28 and younger. Girls tend to be a year and a half younger than boys.

LOLI\SHOTAWATCH: Only 1.5% of readers are 10–12 years old. Only 13 and up has decent numbers. One 11 year old left a great, well-reasoned comment!

KOMIC KWESTIONS


The first pie chart corresponds to the reason you are drawn to individual webcomics, generally. I'm surprised the furry slice is so small! Luckily, most of you like drama, which is the intended focus. As for those who were not willing to pigeonhole their tastes to one thing or another, that's fine. It was kind of a silly question.

The BCB porn question was posed to gauge just how alienating it is that some people draw it. We find it amusing, but we're aware some think it's bothersome for various reasons. Luckily that group of people is fairly small. Young people, girls, and people who thought prices were expensive were a bit more likely to pick the "Yuck, that kinda bothers me" response, but otherwise responses were mostly uniform. Going forward, we will still keep porn very much in the fan realm, but we're not going to ban it from the forum or anything. While it's hard to empathise with the viewpoint that BCB porn is intrinsically immoral, we do empathise with the thought that it detracts from the story and your ability to relate to the characters, and so it'll remain somewhat isolated, except on April Fools' Day.

The third chart relates to a question about how a reader would encourage the story to change. 85% of people said that Veronica should do as she likes, which is pretty good I guess! Shows that most are satisfied with the way things are going. The people who want it to be funnier are fairly marginal (so sorry, humour levels will stay kind of as it is now) and I am not really sure what I meant when I asked whether it should be more dynamic. I guess that was a way of gauging whether people had some other vague reason to be dissatisfied, but again, it seems marginal, so..

The fourth chart is unsurprising. Don't you guys know about RSS? Oh well, all the more ad views! (Tracking means people who follow via sites like Belfry or Piperka, btw.)

Banner ad
Average opinion about the banner's intrusion on the site was 7, where 10 means "don't care" and 1 means "quite annoyed". Ad haters were more likely to think the merchandise prices were expensive, but were less likely to claim "no money" as a reason not to buy anything. I feel bad for those of you who voted 4 or below, but I've tried to make up for it by testing for certain Firefox extensions and content-blocking stylesheets. If you don't like ads, it isn't too hard to erase them from your web browsing life over here.

Rating


Not really sure what to draw from this one.

Team ___
65% Lucy, 15% Sandy. The rest were just silly!

Infrequent Hot Topic shoppers, the Team question referred to a phenomenon associated with the Twilight books, where the main character Bella had to choose between two guys, Edward and Jacob. So if you liked Edward and Bella as a couple, you were “Team Edward”. In this example, we replaced Bella with Michael, so you had to pick who would go with him. So for those of you who assumed it was “favourite character” and typed Michael, UGH WE ARE SO MAD AT YOU.

For those of you who wrote disparaging things about Stephenie Meyer, please refrain from criticising the finest novelist of the new millennium in future surveys. We love Twilight and will use the volume of responses to this question to justify a gradual transition to a vampire-based story arc that will round out the last two years of the BCB plotline.

READER OPINIONS ABOUT MERCHANDISE


Hey, I’m glad you liked the prices! We are mindful of those who thought things were expensive, though, and will try to bring down prices where possible. In particular, the mug got some complaints for $14, so we will sell it at $13. Unfortunately, the cheapest print-on-demand price I can find for these is about $10, so unless we sell it at cost, it’s basically a freebie you could order yourself. I hope $13 is tolerable, and if not, wait for the day we can order batches of things and get lower prices.

Another pricing comment we got was that the book was expensive unless it was going to be unusually big—which it is. Information will be forthcoming, but it’s going to cover the first 47 chapters and will come to 450 pages or so. I think the $25 price is well accepted otherwise, so hopefully that will win you over.

There were a lot of complaints about pricing a poster at $15, which is somewhat problematic as there’s no real way to make that cheaper while still making a reasonable profit. Posters cost a lot to print, and the poster we were suggesting there is not even super large! So we may hold off on posters for the time being, especially due to the effort going into making a detailed picture suitable for one.

Moving on, the second pie chart.. it’s nice that so many of you are willing to buy merchandise (the question asked “if you liked what was on offer”. We’re working hard to make a store filled of unusually good things.

The final pie chart reduces our market to 41% of readers, which is still kind of nice. To those of you with parents that don’t like you buying stuff online, that’s fine. To those of you where money is tight, that’s a very reasonable excuse. For method, though, I don’t know if people picked it as a generic reason, but whatever forthcoming store we have isn’t going to be Paypal only! Cash in the mail will be fine, even. I’m familiar with that experience (I used to buy a ton of crap with US dollars concealed in envelopes and various money orders when I was younger) so don’t think a credit card precludes you from getting these things. If you want them.

Our merchandise interest levels varied. These charts speak for themselves, and will be super useful. Thanks.


MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS
Furries were much more likely to be male, and more likely to buy merchandise. They were also more likely to be porn-friendly, but not as much as you’d think.

84% of those who comment semi-frequently are male, compared to 69% of the silent ones. Silent people are less likely to want merchandise because they don’t have money to spare. Oddly, silent readers are more likely to be interested in drama comics generally, and were less likely to say they like comics with no particular genre. Forumgoers are more accepting of porn, oddly enough.

People who are willing to buy merchandise and were interested in what’s on offer aren’t particularly interesting—no notable traits! Same goes for the “hard core” of regular, 2 week old or older readers, they differ little from those irregular visitors passing through.

... And that’s it! Hope you enjoyed the breakdown. We might do this again when our fanbase grows substantially.

Jacob, the wording says “would you almost certainly buy” these things. It was meant to differentiate a vague expression of interest from a declaration that you’re pretty sure you’ll buy it when it becomes available.

Somedude, sure. People can post porn here as long as it’s in a thread with the NSFW icon. We’re grown ups.. well, about half of us.

I don’t a furry