Hey everyone, 

Surprise! New Feature(s) Added! 

I wasn't intending to even add writers, artists or cover artists information until some deeper internal systems were built, but I wound up in work limbo and fuck it mode engaged. 

Creator Filtering is Now Available!

When you go to the FOC page you'll now see three new filters have been added, allowing you to filter by Writers, Artists and Cover Artists. Pick the people you like most and only products with said people listed as the respective role will appear. 

However, there does seem to be some potential wonkiness on Shopify's end. If you don't see your favorite creator, that doesn't necessarily mean their work isn't on FOC. For now you should still double-check just-in-case. 

I'll be taking a closer look at the wonkiness and trying to work it out as we move forward. 

Creator Subscriptions

If you go to a product's page you'll now see the writers, artists and cover artists for the book listed under the title. You'll also notice something that may look a little familiar...

Those sub buttons work the exact same way as the larger series sub button below them. Click the button and you'll be subbed to that creator. It's that simple. 

Creator subs are a separate list from your series subs and can be managed from the same place as your series sub, aka in your account settings here:

How Do Creator Subs Work Exactly?

When you sub to a creator, everything from said creator will be pulled.

In the case of writers and artists, if you say you don't want variants then only cover As will be pulled of the series they are associated with. 

Cover artists work differently though. If the creator is listed as a cover artist, the book will be pulled no matter what. 

For example, let's say Peach has done a cover C variant of a book series I'm subbed to. If I have "No Variants" checked when I grab my subs, I will get the cover A and the cover C of that series - because I'm subbed to the series and I'm subbed to Peach as a creator and she did a variant cover. If I wasn't subbed to the series, I'd only get the cover C, because I'm subbed to Peach as a creator and not to any of the writers, artists or the series in general. 

The Cover Artist Setting

So if you're subbed to a writer and/or artist then you're going to set the series they're attached to. However, I understand they other way a lot of people might want to use creator subs is to get covers from their favorite artists and may not want all of the internal work that same artist does. 

That's what this Cover Artists Only setting is for. Tick it and you'll only get covers done by the creators you're subbed to. 

You can find the default setting for this in your account settings just like with the "No Variants" settings. 

CREATOR SUBS ARE NOT FOOL PROOF!

I'm (Locke) not the only fool involved either!

We get all of our information directly from distributors now, but that doesn't mean they're perfect at curating their information - and we aren't always going to be able to catch their mistakes or idiosyncrasies. 

Hell, even publishers can't agree on naming conventions like cover A, B, C, etc. 

Accounting for any and all edge cases and issues is going to be pretty much a lifelong battle. We're going to do the best we can to make the system as foolproof and robust as possible, but 100% reliability is frankly a pipe dream. Double checking will always serve you well. 

ALSO FEEDBACK IS SUPER IMPORTANT ON THIS FEATURE! I mean, it's always really important, but for stuff like this it's even more extra important. 

"Why Did You (Locke) Do This?"

Fun fact: I didn't even tell Ben I was doing this beforehand. XD (He did of course review and approve before it went live.) 

This is one of those "I don't understand why no one does this" things I've been talking about. In the short time I've been involved in the comics business, I've noticed things are very creator-centric. People follow certain writers and artists, often collecting any and everything their favorite creators do.

So why limit subscriptions to just series?! It actually doesn't make sense if you think about it. You have to know about said series to sub to it, making it really easy for people to miss out on new stuff by their favorite creators. Not everyone has the time or ability to keep up or be in-the-know.

Instead, if you were to sub to creators, then you'd pull everything from said creator and maybe even happily find out about a new series or guest spot they did that you didn't even know was happening. 

I get why comic shops can't do something like this in person because then you're ordering books people still might not buy. But with a pay-ahead service like ours, it seems like a no-brainer to me. 

But maybe you'll all try to use it, hate it, and we'll learn first-hand why other services like ours don't ever offer it. Even if that's the outcome, I'll be happy we at least gave it a try. 

Hopefully though, this system will help some people catch products they otherwise would've potentially missed out on. 

Until next time o/,

- Locke (and of course the rest of the ECGCE team, but I wrote so much in first person that I figured I'd sign it personally)