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So Ko-fi Did a Thing
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THE LEGEND OF JAMIE ROBERTS
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VANITA AND THE DEMON KING
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This email is late because I kept putting it off, thinking, "I'll get to it when I finally have something to say that's not a rehash of moving updates.'"
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And then Tuesday came - as did the update from Ko-fi that they marked my page as NSFW. With no lead-up or notice.
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To me, that decision is very dumb. The most recent updates on my Ko-fi page don't have sexual content, and the closest thing there is to nudity is shirtless buff dudes. I appealed the decision, but I don't know what the result will be.
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If push comes to shove, I'm not afraid to migrate away from Ko-fi and run my own membership page. I've been chatting with other members of Cartoonists United who have also been working with Wordpress (which is what my websites run on). And I think I have a good idea of how to run my own subscription service without Patreon, Ko-fi, or jerry-rigging something with Stripe.
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I would rather run the subscription service on my own because I want to cultivate my own digital spaces, and not rely on outside services that could lay down to censor hammer arbitrarily and with no notice.
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If a migration does need to happen, I will let you know ASAP. For now, payments should be processing as usual. The only thing that's changed is that Ko-fi decided my content is NSFW - for whatever reason.
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I've been thinking a lot about digital spaces anyway, because of a little essay someone wrote on their Substack. I'm glad to see that the idea of "oh, social media is only good for an increasingly limited number of things and it's better to make your own space" is getting mainstream traction. It's inspiring me to re-vamp my website, even before adding on any membership plugins.
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The other thing, too, is that while Ko-fi has been a way to maintain an online store, even THAT is changing.
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Over the last few months, I've been getting way more support, monetarily and signal boost-wise, with itch.io. The community over there has been great! And the bundles I've been a part of have really cool people as part of them. Ko-fi kind of has the average-digital-storefront problem of "you can build your shop with our templates, but you have to drive the traffic." But itch.io has a crowd already there. And they're way friendlier to the kinds of comics that I make! They certainly don't slap my stuff as NSFW with no warning, at least.
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Now, if I can manage my commissions outside of Ko-fi, then I can fully migrate away from Ko-fi as a whole. But we'll see what happens in the next few weeks.
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I should have the Digital Club Zine ready by next week! I'm in hardcore crunch mode this week to make sure comic pages are done for it. If the zine needs to be delayed by a day or two, don't be surprised. But you will get it!
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Also, I started working on the mini-print for June. I'm loving it so far - it's been an idea percolating in my brain for almost half a year now.
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With this, I also want to play around with digital overlays of different patterns and textures. There was a talk in a Cartoonists United video about colors and techniques in comics, and there was a part of the talk where the speaker said, "I want to see more artists use pattern overlays in their comics and illustrations." CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
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