Today marks the first anniversary of Experiments in Manga! It’s a little hard for me to believe that it’s already been a year since I started this blog. But at the same time, I know that I’ve put a lot of work into it. There have been some bumps along the way, and the site is far from perfect, but I’m pretty happy with how far I’ve come since beginning Experiments in Manga. So, please indulge me while I reflect a bit upon the past year.
I’ve settled into a pretty consistent schedule here at Experiments in Manga, managing to post at least three times a week and occasionally more. Mondays feature My Week in Manga and the other two posts during the week (normally seen on Wednesdays and Fridays) feature a variety of other things. Mostly reviews, giveaways, and other randomness. At one point, I felt a little guilty about the number of in-depth reviews that I post for non-manga material, but I recently stopped to think about this again. Back in November 2010, I set a goal for myself to review at least two manga a month. I have successfully met this goal ever since, which means that roughly a third of my reviews have been for manga. I’ve decided to count this as a win since I find reviewing manga even more difficult than reviewing non-manga.
Some of my most successful posts actually aren’t my reviews. The first post that seemed to really hit it big was Random Musings: Gay for You? Yaoi and Yuri Manga for GBLTQ Readers. I was rather nervous about writing the post, but there was a great response to it and ultimately I was very proud of myself. Another post that ended up being rather popular was Finding Manga: Borders. Unfortunately, seeing as Borders is currently undergoing liquidation, the post won’t be useful for much longer. Although not as wildly successful, my post Random Musings: Mahjong, Kubota, and Wild Adapter was well-received, too. That made me very happy since I happen to be particularly fond of that post (it gave me an excuse to write about mahjong, for one).
The Wild Adapter piece was written as part of the Manga Moveable Feast. I’ve been participating the Feast since December and have only missed one month so far. (I even volunteered to host for January 2012’s Feast.) I’m pretty pleased with myself since one of the reasons I started Experiments in Manga was to participate more fully in the online manga community. To that extent, I also established a more-or-less monthly giveaway. Usually, the giveaway begins on the last Wednesday of the month and the winner is announced the following Wednesday. I’ve had fun with those.
I seem to have managed to establish a small but consistent readership for Experiments in Manga. I am absolutely thrilled by this. (A huge thanks to MangaBlog for including me in link roundups.) I write the content for Experiments in Manga completely in my spare time, which I don’t have much of. Features come and go, some posts are of better quality than others (some really aren’t that good at all), and I’m definitely still learning. But overall, I am fairly satisfied with what I have accomplished so far and have enjoyed myself. I hope to continue to improve and that Experiments in Manga will only get better from here. Enough of my ramblings for now. Thank you all for your reading and encouragement!
I love your blog! Given this post’s topic, I thought I should finally share that with you, as someone who hadn’t previously commented. I love the manga reviews, (you’re my favorite source for introductions to new awesome manga), but I also appreciate the wider range of writing. For instance, I just borrowed a copy of Mishima’s Sword from my library and though I’m just a few chapters in, I’m loving it. I also read and loved both Kotaro Isaka’s Remote Control and Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X – two books I learned about through your posts – and then bought them for my sister to share the love. Please keep up the great posts! They bring me such joy and new fun!
Congrats! Just lasting a year is a very good accomplishment. But of course, you have to last some more years as I will be keeping track of your posts!
Congratualations on making a year!! Hopefully I will be able to keep reading your posts this year, I just really started reading beginning of this year, but I will make sure to keep this in my favorites bar, to keep an eye on it xD
~dont know if it posted >.<
Thank you all so much for the kind comments! I really appreciate that you took a moment to say something (and I understand—I’m more of a lurker, too). It makes me incredibly happy to know that others are reading and enjoying Experiments in Manga. And I’m particularly glad to hear that you don’t mind my non-manga content. ^_^ Thank you again; I will continue to do my best!