This seems to imply that the person in question is revealing all their eggs. There's a huge difference for me between tantalizing teasers and "this is what I am doing and here is all the information already". If the people are doing the former while keeping a certain level of discretion, absolutely 100% this is better for me than "100% flawless out of nowhere." In fact, I tend to completely ignore things that come out of nowhere and fly up at me. When movies come out and I haven't seen a single trailer/ad, I'm not going to bother. Sure, if I had some spare time and money and felt like throwing it at whatever, I might see it, but chances are best I'm going to spend that money for a slowly and well released product that I decided 5 months before it came out that I HAD to have due to the teasers.Wintermoon wrote: Art is about producing a finished product, even in the case of performing arts (where the product is the performance). You want the final product to have the maximum impact, so you hide all the preparations leading up to it. Which is more impressive: a flawless performance out of nowhere or a long series of practice sessions showing incremental improvements? (And if you make your practice sessions public, will any of your audience even stick around for the actual performance?)
From experience in j-fandoms, this is a rare thing. People will spend more money and spend it more easily on what they already know/had a chance to decide they like. Sure, it's not like no one buys things right off the bat, but if you look at the history of sales for pretty much anything; why do sequels to movies often make more than the originals? Sequels to video games? Why do major companies get away with occasionally putting out crap (that still sold a TON)? Why do people rush out to buy the newest iPhone despite having the prior model in perfect working condition and, if they waited, could have the new model for cheaper? Why do popular actors get more, bigger, and better work than new actors? People want familiarity, and they will pay for familiarity. There's a reason that novelists and manga writers and most anyone in showbiz of any kind never makes hardly crap on their first release. It's actually given as advice to novelists to plan their books in a minimum of a trilogy if they actually want to make any money; you get money after the familiarity is established, people will hand over stupid large buckets of money once they know you can provide, and the same goes for sales that come later on.Speaking only for myself, my level of interest drops very rapidly when I learn about a new project that hasn't been released yet.
When you're new, especially if you have the TIME to do your research, and look around, and build a fanbase, it can really be an invaluable tool as far as sales as long as you make sure to update fairly regularly (internet interest is short, but easily regained, and one decent update a week can mean a LOT) with pieces that matter.