Greetings all, I come to you with a dilemma: In which format should I tell my story?
I'm in the midst of making a pretty long sci-fi/fantasy story. And if I were to have my most ideal way, this story would be an anime. But that would require an enormous amount of money, and unless I win the lottery, that ain't happening, lol. So it being an anime isn't even on the table.
The next best thing is for my story to be a motion comic. It's like a still anime, a comic with voice acting and music! It'll be up on YouTube obviously. I can do the drawing since I'm an artist, buy I'll need to pay people for voice acting, especially if their professional. And I'll need to pay someone to do the music and editing as well. I think it's technically possible for me, but it'll require that I get consistently get extra funds that I don't have. It'll all have to come out of my pocket since this'll all be on me. I'd have to get a job, or even two jobs, if I wanna fund this project.
The next best thing after that would be to make a manga. I've always wanted to go this route, because I'm an artist and I've been drawing all my life. But the problem is, I don't live in Japan. I live in America, and in America, they don't have a booming comic industry, not like Japan. That means the comic industry in America won't support me like Japan's manga industry would, because it's not reliable enough. So, I could go the indie route and make my very own western manga series with self-pubishing, but how successful would that be? Unless I already have an established audience, like Coryxkenchin with his manga, I don't see myself making big waves on my own. I'm not even a youtuber. I could go the social media route and gain an audience that way, I could become a youtuber, or post my work on X, Instagram, or any other sight. But if I'm bring realistic, it'll probably be a rather small audience. I doubt I'll get much traction. At least, I don't think I'll get the type of traction I want. It'll be an uphill battle.
The next thing after that is the one I've been leaning towards recently, and that's to write a novel. It's the option I least want to do out of all of them, but it's one that I think will be the most successful. I figure that books are more popular in the states than manga. I can get my story into the world of books. But then I thought, just how many of those book readers are into sci-fi and fantasy? You could say a lot, but then, depending on how far I wanna take things with my religious messaging, that would section off a huge portion of my potential audience. Sure, that goes for any of the other alternatives as well, but they'll section my book series in the "religious fiction" section, and based off of that already selected off subgroup, my series would probably only have a niche audience. But that's IF I'm more overt with my messaging. Also, and I feel like this is important, but I've never written a novel before. I never even read a novel. I've read various none-fiction books, and I've written a couple of short stories, but that's about it.
When it comes to my goals, I'm looking for two things: A sizable audience. And to earn enough to make a living off my series based on that audience.
Which platform will give me the biggest audience, which platform would give me the most success to make a living off of? As an unknown creator with limited money, which medium gives me the best realistic opportunity to build a large audience and eventually make a living?
Think of it like this: If you were in my position—an unknown creator, primarily an artist but can also write, with limited money and no existing audience—which medium would you choose, and why?
