Thrillbent launched yesterday at noon EST, and it was a crazy exciting day for the entire team. Ann Hess, in particular–who’s been doing all the heavy lifting on the website build, design, and maintenance–deserves a huge round of applause, as does our own Lori Matsumoto. Not bad for a launch, not bad at ALL.
Under the ever-present heading of “Transparency,” here’s my takeaway from the first-day experience:
1) In retrospect, we needed navigation instructions, since added by Lori. This is on me, not on anyone els
e. Here I am, working overtime to make sure that the content itself is perfectly new-reader-friendly and not too inside-baseball…and instead I took for granted that most users would know to click on the semitransparent navigation arrows. (Also, I took for granted that the arrows were as obvious to everyone as they were to me.) So noted. Fixed.
2) There is no such thing as too much proofreading. Fifty sets of eyes, at least, have reviewed that first chapter of INSUFFERABLE, and I’ve been staring at it for MONTHS…and we all still missed the “that/than” typo near the end (also in the process of being fixed as soon as Lori can upload the update). I also missed another blatant typo that no one’s yet commented on, but hopefully by the time you read this, it’ll be fixed, as well, so don’t bother hunting. I know none of this is a big deal to most of you, but as a lifelong stickler for spelling, grammar, and punctuation, it kills me. BUT…
3) “Done” doesn’t mean “done.” That I can correct this stuff relatively immediately is a great, unique-to-digital feeling.
4) I spent too much time worrying that there weren’t enough bells and whistles. Pete and I completed the first few installments of INSUFFERABLE long before my work on the Marvel Infinite Digital Comic and as we approached our launch date, I started to sweat that we should be doing more of those nifty effects we did in the Infinite book. Based on the feedback, very few people minded that INSUFFERABLE wasn’t chock-full of effects. That said, we’ve come up with some neat ones in upcoming weeks that I don’t think anyone’s yet done.
5) Google Analytics is a rabbit hole that I could stare at for hours.
More soon. And thanks to all of you for helping us launch better and stronger than we’d ever dreamed!
