After promoting and being on this platform for a while I realized mostly for me and maybe others that most of the readers you will acquire on tapas are other authors, who by the way have to focus on promoting their series as well

[KeinanX]

How exactly do you gain more readers randomly if the only people you can rely on to subscribe and check out your works are other writers, who are doing the same thing, if you ask me the only way to truly get around is to befriend all the writers on this platform, which on the surface sounds like a very sociable thing to do that could get you friends, but by the end of the day if you're not getting bigger attraction, and there aren't as many writers as they are readers. Compared to webtoons I think it's easier to get a larger audience there, but doesn't mean I'll just switch. Point is, promoting on discord and forums just doesn't seem to get the attraction as one might assume most of the time.

[Kelheor]

I don't really get why people are always talking about switching to Tapas/Webtoons. You can publish on both. It's not an "either or" question
In the end you should just continue publishing and becoming better at what you do. Try to promote on Reddit, Instagram and other social media too, both platforms are doing a lot of events on their social media now.

[MalonTheArtist]

I agree with everything you just said and I must say I am stumped by the whole thing and have been for a while. Still looking for a solution to no avail, but it looks like the real attention comes in when you get featured so I've heard. This is happening to artists and writers alike! But like everybody says it's best to post on both sites (it increases viewership) I hope this helped any at all or brought or just a little bit of clarity!

[redfish]

I think it's why I don't see a lot of merit in the sub4sub types, as you are subbing just to inflate numbers and not because they are genuine fans and want to interact with your work.

I think people underestimate that most of the time, it can take years to build any kind of fanbase.

I've heard that apparently tiktok is a great way to gain numbers but I'm not built for that haha

[KUUPID]

Honestly, this is somewhat true for me. I was very fortunate enough to be featured a few times which was how I gained a pretty good/ loyal following.

I know some writers (not sure about artists) promote their works via tik tok or insta or even twitter. Some, are also on amazon... Other than that, I'm not sure where else to promote. My best advice is to just continue what you're doing! Tapas has a pretty active/ supportive community compared to other platforms i've been on for writers.

[KeinanX]

The point is when you see series like The beginning after the end (which mind is great from what I heard and plan to read more) I just try to wonder how come other authors on this platform can't get close to the amount of success as Turtlme has gotten, he's an incredible writer but it just seems like the guy is in a completely different League of viewership compared to every comic and novel on this platform, it just makes you wonder how exactly did he do it? And is it possible for many others to end up the same way, that is if you promote and have an interesting cover and story as well. The guy is practically a legend.

[faisalhussein394]

I agree, I guess this has something to with popularity, if you don't have many likes, subscribers, and views, you won't be on the list of the front page for new viewers to read and subscribe. It's almost as if we are being blocked by so many potential readers.

What's worse is that Tapas focus too much on romance, drama, and a slice of life. If your genre doesn't have any of those, it will be a gamble or very difficult to get your comic popular.

Also, the majority of the popular comic art styles are so anime, so I guess they will add in comics with anime art style even if it lacks the popular genre.

I suppose our road to making our comics popular is to use other comic websites, and social media.

[KeinanX]

Exactly! If you notice scrolling through tapas main home list of series that are doing very well, they all have the same pretty, fancy, art style covers of either a romance series or some sort of Isekai fantasy series made by people who I believe are associated with companies that work with tapas, if you look at the series synopsis/details, these series are always trending, mostly because I think their writer and artist are in south korea. To top that off if you look at their staff picks 99% of the time the staff picks are all comics instead of novels that have that fancy art style that you see on the main home page of Tapas, if you ask me this might be a bloody Monopoly. Point is us creators aren't getting the same type of Attraction as those authors.

[redfish]

the issue is the way tapas advertises on the front page, you get no option to filter the comic genres you don't want, heck I sometimes get direct notification on a new romance comic

I truly wish tapas and webtoon had better search filters, and the ability for readers to tag work under 'reading' and 'to-read'

[Zhengo]

I think that's mostly just because the population on the forums are mostly creators looking to promote. So promoting here will mostly net subscribers that are other creators. Readers most likely will just look at what's featured to pick up what to read instead of looking through the forums.

And honestly? If I were purely a reader, I would probably not look at the forums as a main source of finding series to read unless if I were deliberately looking for obscure comics that may have potential, because for the most part it's people trying to self promote rather than recommending series they enjoy. Saying as someone who self promotes on here as well

[redfish]

I think because of this, you occasionally get disgruntled people on webtoons subreddit who are annoyed at when people promote their own work (you're allowed to on the weekends) when I guess they just wanna talk about the webtoons they're interested in (I think?)

[Fedriz_Marini]

I've once heard that if you promote your webcomic on their subreddit, they would do anything to spam bad scores to it until they pummel it to dust... so, promotion on the subreddit is out of questions.

[redfish]

so far I haven't heard anything too bad for the authors promoting there. I did promote a couple of times and gained some readers and no one review bombed me (yet)

[UrMom]

Point is, promoting on discord and forums just doesn't seem to get the attraction as one might assume most of the time.

Not meaning to be rude but duh, to get readers you have to expand your horizon to social media, ad space, stuff like that. The forum is more for discussion, and the only people who are really interested in that are creators/writers since they have similar goals, experience, passions, etc. It's only natural it isn't a good place to promote since creators are too busy making their own work to read other people's. (Unless it fits their preferences, but even then it's up in the air.) The Discord server is basically the same, but more people desperately trying to promote over eachother every second due to how the app works, so no one really gets seen unless you're already mega popular or really active.

The platform as a whole doesn't have anything to do with your readership problem, it doesn't matter where you post if you're not branching out with your advertising it won't get that many eyes on it. Sure, Webtoons caaan get you more subs, but it depends on your comic. There are many comics on there with less than 1k subs that just don't fit the demographic's preference. That being said, as Kelheor stated, why not post on both? Aside from my stand-alone site I post my comic on 5 other platforms (Tapas, Webtoons, Comicfury, The Duck Webcomics and FlowFo.) weekly/semi-weekly, and post in chapters/bulks on 2. (Dillyhub and Global Comix.) It doesn't take more than a few minutes to update them all. Just use both, it won't hurt anything.

[KeinanX]

At this point, I'll have to take in that advice, though I'm kind of new to the whole promoting on social media like Twitter and Reddit, don't want to just post a comment about my story on a random thread or anything, I also posted on Royal road but I do that weekly, the same for web novel, but besides that point, yeah I'm going to have to promote more to outside sources if I want my story to get more exposure, thanks for pointing that out.

[giseigocrafts]

I definitely get what you mean >.<; All the advice is go to places and promote, but that is what every other author is doing, so it's just full of authors.

I haven't been on the Tapas forums for too long, but I haven't really created a promotion post because I noticed that people were getting next to no likes on their posts in the promotion threads compared to a general post about anything. So it felt like everyone was just promoting rather then reading. At the end of the day, it's like looking for a webtoon to read, but you don't choose the genre or anything, so it's basically luck if you find something you'd want to read. So instead of promoting, I'm here to just to talk with other creators and learn tips.

Building up a follower base on social media can help alot I think. I mainly post my art on Twitter where I kinda have a small following. When a new chapter on my webtoon comes out, I post it a link to it and the views tend to jump up a good 20 or 30. I also have another webtoon which I don't promote on Twitter (on purpose, I'm experimenting!) and that isnt over 100 views after 7 weeks.

Even on Twitter, there's things called 'Art Shares' where you share your art with other artists. While it does help to get followers, I've kinda stopped doing them for the same reason why I'm not really doing promotion posts here. Instead, I'm trying to be more casual/natural, just replying to others and slowly building things up. I mean, after doing those 'Art Share' posts on Twitter for a year, I sent art of an apple I made to a popular post and doubled my followers overnight and I was like "Eh?". The followers I gained from that do interact with my work as well, and hopefully, see my webtoon!

This ended up being a bit longer then I thought it would be, hopefully it makes sense!

[UrMom]

No problem, thanks for not being upset, I wasn't sure how rude my response sounded. If it helps there are a few places you can advertise or get better feedback, and events you can do if you have the spare time. If you have some extra cash I've heard ComicAd Network is pretty good. There's also Webcomic Chat and Comic Artists Unite, which are weekly Q&A's related to you and your comic that can give you some advertisement. There's The Webcomic Library which is a webcomic archive (The link to fill out a form for your comic is in the pinned tweet.) that also has a Discord server has Q&A events and weekly stream hang-out. You can advertise here, and more people would be open to check out your comic, but most of them are also creators. The server is more ideal for talking comics, getting advice and all that jazz.

Similar to The Webcomic Library, there is also the Webcomics Garden, another place that holds Q&A's, and is a good place to talk comics. They also have a Week-long comic feature for members who are active enough to get to a certain level, where everyone in the server talks about your comic for a week. For more professional stuff there's the Association of Comic Creators a server dedicated to discussion the more serious comic stuff, and a really good resource to have if you want to really start getting into the industry. The server has publishers, shop owners and all kinds of folks talking comics, and they're all very nice helpful people.

Lastly if you just want to learn more about comic, or hear about other people's perspectives and experiences there is Screen Tones, a webcomic podcast hosted by enthusiastic creators who just want to scream about webcomics.

There's a lot more stuff out there, just keep your eyes peeled and keep up with webcomic community because you never know when someone will bring up useful advertising/comic related info. Good luck with getting your work out there!

[KeinanX]

Thanks a bunch, this is some really good information, but my question is do they also have anything for novel writers as well? Similar to the sites you just mentioned?

[RedLenai]

To gain more readers there are different things

Mirror your content, post your series in many sites/apps as possible, check out where you can post your webcomics or novels. If you can translate it to other languages, Webtoon and Tapas aren't the only platforms out there.

Promoting on several platforms such as Discord Servers, Facebook groups, SubReddits, Twitter, Instagram, Forums, etc.

Something I see is that (Especially writers) authors, instead of building a proper posting schedule to allow new readers to adapt to the content, to make the algorithm have a steady flow; they just dump their entire series expecting people will get interested like that, when the reality is no. Another thing that annoys readers or even other creators who are subscribed to other's stories and especially on Tapas is notifications of authors constantly editing the chapters several times and well, not knowing when exactly does an author updates.

Fanbases aren't build in thin air just because you've been posting your series for a few months, no, it takes years even more than 1 or 2, and several authors originally start with less popular, even shorter, series, some even change accounts so much that followers cannot keep track of then, as well, the most important thing is to make things accesible for readers, you're asking way too much even if you believe it's not, most of people only care about scrolling and see the next post of the content they see, so you either have to make extremely catchy stuff so they click the link to your series or chapter or be more creative with promo art, chapter previews and such.

Sadly, for most of authors that are not popular, what I've seen that boost their flow is for them to become content creators, not just mere writers or artists. Basically overwork yourself with challenges, art studies, tutorials, art classes, fanarts, tips, vlogs, streaming, speedpaintings, original art, fancomics, NSFW, memes, animations, promotional art, reading sessions (Of other people's content), constant engagement with other people be it fellow creators, those who aspire to be creators or just readers. And all of the above on different formats for several platforms, be it TikTok, Youtube, Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

if the only people you can rely on to subscribe and check out your works are other writers, who are doing the same thing

Nice to see that someone else has thought this. I've wondered if Tapas isn't really a home for writers instead of a mecca for readers, so that there are far more writers on Tapas than there are readers.