About 99% authors, yes. Most write, not read. Gotta take it for what it is :\
I try to read as much as I can, too, but everyone knows how hard it is to make time for it
Yes.
And this forum draws very few types of people. Like-minded people.
The only true benefit is that you have a bunch of publishing tools already available instead of building them yourself for your site. It makes episodic things easier to read, compared to instagram or twitter.
Forget sub numbers. really! Views are the only somewhat valid metric.
But even then I had messages from readers saying they read through 3d party apps and their view might not even be counted.
Well the forum is definitely 99% creators, there is zero reason for readers to be here unless they have some technical problems and they can't find the "contact support" button or something. So of course, the forum is a very limited pool of readers. Tapas doesn't encourage sub4sub, it's only that newbies on the forum don't know how to gain audience.
I do understand why it feels like there's barely any audience out there, but some comics here are even more successful than on WT (rarely though, because WT just has 10 times more audience overall, you can compare numbers by googling). Also Tapas has a very limited front page for advertising other comics, soooo yeah.
Tapas certainly has a very very small audience compared to Webtoon. This problem is even bigger for novels, since Tapas mainly sells itself as a comic site. But that doesn’t mean Tapas only has creators as its audience. It is just super difficult to get noticed by the real audience if you are not premium. And even a bunch amongst those premium novels only have a subscriber count of a couple thousand. (That's quite a number, but not as big enough.)
The front page features and getting in the popular tabs are the only methods I know of that can get you a boost in real readers, and these features will come with consistency and quality. A novel will take a long time to grow on Tapas, and even then, it only grows so much.
Don’t mean to discourage you though, there are certainly a lot of opportunities for novels on Tapas as well. Just look at tbate for example, that stuff is BIG amongst the webnovel/webcomic community. Tapas is growing as a site and its audience will eventually grow too!
No, not negative in the slightest
I'll say this, non tapas originals, feature works and etc that aren't displayed in the front page are less likely to get that solely reader audience. With Webtoon however this potential of gaining that audience is far greater due to the amount of people who use webtoon over tapas who happen to just be readers.
I'd say while posting your work on the forums is good if you want to reach that demographic of your potential audience who are solely readers, you won't find them on these forums. That would have to be done promoting on another platform (Instagram, Twitter, etc).
If that revelation is kind of a downer I would recommend to just continue your posting on webtoon if you find more success on it and you feel your real audience is there, Which I can understand because usually the people who subscribe to your work on Webtoon are usually really into it because the app caps each user a max of 100 titles to be subbed to at one time. So being picky is a real thing.
However there are creators here who are actually fans of other creators work and don't do it as some sort of "sub 4 sub" kind of deal. So I also wouldn't be to quick to nudge off the forum and tapas as a lost cause. It's never a bad thing to have your work posted on multiple platforms either
I don't know the actual number, but webtoons is a much larger audience than tapas in general (they are a bigger company that's been around longer). So doing something like 4x better on webtoons would actually be really normal. It's not tapas under performing, it's just proportional. That said, certain kinds of series will do better on one site or the other- I totally do better on Tapas than on webtoon.
By the site or by a user? I've just never seen that on the main site before. But yeah, posting on the forums early on is a good idea to get a little starter boost. Mostly I don't bother with promotion threads, I prefer when someone post a request where they specify they're looking for X and you happen to fit X. Otherwise I think the best forum promotion is passive, where you just participate in conversation and share your comic if and when relevant- bonus, put it in your profile (which I see you have) and people might check it out on their own.
NOT AT ALL. The forum is a small fraction of mostly creators from the site. The site is a way bigger, with many more creators and users. There's I don't know how many thousands of people using tapas specifically as readers. The majority of people using the service are not creators.
If you talk to people outside of those threads, most of us think they're a bad idea. Like, if you can find a small fellow creator and actually commit to reading and supporting each others work, thats fine, but the more sub for sub you do, the more you just aquire dead weight that actually hurts your development.
There is a very real audience, but it is hard to reach them. The "fresh" section is the best way to do that, which means being strategic about posting updates, among other things. You are well served by making an effort to promote outside of tapas to bring users in specifically for you, though. Tapas doesn't do much to direct the existing audience to new creators- and to be fair, even if they made that a priority, its a challenging thing to do, because there's such a flood of content. You have to do your best to rise to the top of that flood.
To be clear, with minimal promotion (but a genre that is on trend), my comic is at 5K subscribers with 6 years of posting (including a one year hiatus). Most of that is just fresh section, and enough interaction to pop me into trending occasionally.
To be clear this is specific to the forum. There's a huge audience of readers on the website. Though it's much more substantial for comics than novels.
I write and do read... that's time consuming but I like reading... so... when people update weekly it's easier for me to keep up the rhythm but when people update 3 or 4 times aweek, or even daily, it's harder to get to those because I start from the oldest updates.
Yep, it's true. On Tapas you will mostly (if not only) find authors (of course I'm talking about my own experience, so I might be wrong). I can't really talk about my webtoon experience, since I don't have much of a following there, but I can safely say most of them are readers and some of them are creators (on Webtoon).
With that said though, I'm not disappointed at all with my Tapas audience. It's true that most of them are authors just like me, but that's a good thing, because I can get suggestions and feedback from other creators who are more experienced than I am!
XD It is sad how many people think tapas is mostly authors? That's only the forum. If all you do is promote on the forum, all you get is creator followers.
Right, I got that it was a topic on the forum members. And it only makes sense as I'm not sure any readers would want to join normally
Tapas Forums = authors
Tapas = readers
So here's the thing about the audience, the ones that sub quickly and leave are authors. They're they ones who do things like sub 4 sub and think that nearly 100 subs in a week is bad and they spam the forums with threads wanting more reads and more dead subs because by the time that week and 100 subs are sub they've already sub 4 subbed with everyone who'll do it and haven't got any real traction because they're mostly dead subs just wanting another sub of their own, but they'll rarely interact because you're just another stepping stone to them.
However, the audience you want are mostly readers. And lets be clear, the majority of Tapas are readers. Thousands of them. And they're the ones that stay, because they're not bummed out their comic isn't doing great, they're not expecting anything in return. They're the ones who interact and get you up the charts and they're the ones who spend money.
It's better to take it slower and get the right audience than waste your time getting other creators to empty sub you just for some arbitrary number. Most people on sub 4 sub threads are relatively new. You will rarely see longer term members on them.
Also, you've been around less than 10days and have posted 21 episodes. Firstly 1 week is nothing on Tapas. You might as well have just been born. Second, slow down. Really. You only hit the Fresh section once a day. That is the max you should update really. Most people opt for once or twice a week as optimum.
Right, I'm the same way. And for me, unlike webtoons, I can only read about 2 novels simultaneously and have to catch up to the latest chapter for those before moving on to others.
In addition to what others are saying (you can be a writer and a reader and whatnot), I think where the forums really help out is that they when you get engagement from other writers it gives you the boost to be noticed by non-writing readers. I find this works on several writing sites I've been on--most of which I've left for other reasons. Very anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt.
For example, as a reader I might see some stories have 0 to 20 views, and maybe 1 comment. If that's the average for most of the stories, then anything with, say, 100 views and 10 comments is likely pretty good. There's something about it that is compelling people to engage.
Most of these views and comments might be from fellow writers who are paying it forward, or fulfilling their part of some reading swap, but I'm not necessarily thinking about that as a reader. I just see engagement, and a higher view count than normal, so I start reading it, too.
Now that the view count and engagement is higher, the algorithm sees that this story is doing well, and brings it into more notable categories like What's Hot or Trending, or whatever [insert any site] calls it. This is where non-writing readers end up finding it because, hey, it must be good to make it there.
That's not to say that's exactly how the algorithm works. Writing sites generally don't release how their algorithm works, for fear of others playing the system, but that's often how they seem to work (even non-writing sites), and fellow writers helping each other get out of the beginning pit of "the algorithm doesn't even know I exist" can give that boost needed to be recognized by other readers.
Readers will also lurk forums and other writing chat areas, the same way readers will lurk stories but never comment even if they are actually reading it thoroughly as any other commenter or reviewer. 
I also think the audience for Tapas novels is, in general, mostly writers. Tapas novels are still relatively new, and a lot of readers flock to more well-known reading sites, like Wattpad (even then, it can be just as hard to get anywhere on Wattpad, and those that have a view count in the thousands have often been on there a very long time. Wattpad has carefully designed their site to make it look like each story gets way more reads than they actually do). Maybe one day that will change, who knows. I like the Tapas community enough I want to stick around and watch it grow. ^^
While the forum is mostly made of creators, a lot of those creators do like to read other comics or to be part of a community for mutual support with people who make the same sort of content, especially in related genres.
It's true that creators make up probably less than 5% of total Tapas users, but still, getting some readers off the forum (and I mean actual readers who give your updates likes and comments, not empty subs who literally just increased your sub count by one in return for the same) by sharing your work around and being a constructive member of the community can really help you out early on. It only takes about 30 likes to get a decent way up the "popular" rankings of a lot of genres, so a handful of dedicated readers who like new updates, or somebody discovering your comic that has around 30 pages and going through liking them all in a short space of time to potentially get you seen by non-creator readers and picking up subscribers.
Posting on the forums can also sometimes help you catch the eye of the staff to get a feature 
First thank you for all of the responses! You all have made some really good points, I never meant to say writer couldn't be readers but that audiences seeking entertainment would have more time for the content than us who spend a Lot of our time making our works. Also I posted a screen shot of the Share to forums for subs thing It really rubbed me the wrong way I guess, it just seemed like a Ponzi scheme with the whole hay put all your content here bring all your social media following to our site but we aren't going to do anything to get you views other then the forum of other people that want subs just as bad as you.... It just comes off kinda bad like... hmm have you ever seen Tapas advertise people to read their non premium artists? or is having all of us not premium just a really good way to use us to drive people to their site.... hmmm I suppose anything that is free you pay for one way or another... no hate just looking at the system 
In the past yes. Very much mostly non-premium with the premium stuff being from actual creators here who I congratulate them every time. The one that are still on going from 2018-2017 are amazing and I reccommend them (there's a few that got premium this year that are also creator made.. but they are usually free mostly wait-to be free system). Now most of the new premium stuff here is mostly made by companies over seas.
Really its kinda sad. Sadly.. Ive talked to people who use tapas to just read comics.
They are all surprise there are comics here that are free and not premium.
I don't really pay attention to Tapas on social media because most company socials are all the same drivel. But, Tapas does give some attention to free to read on the front page. It's not as obvious as they stuff their paying for (because they're a company, that would be dumb) but we are there in things like staff picks, popular (which I actually like that they separate free and premium charts, stops us getting lost) and community picks way down. And there are actually plenty of reader who don't want to read premium comics, they'd rather read indie stuff because it's different (there is a running theme since I first joined Tapas that their premium/original stuff is considered samey, whether true or not it's the perception that's always been there) and they'd rather support smaller and different creators from the community.
It rubs a lot of people the wrong way. There have been discussions over it and how it can actively hurt your standings via the algorithm, several times, but that doesn't change the minds of people who think it works and it doesn't change the mind of newcomers who see it as a quick and easy way to get numbers. Most longer term residents of the forum just ignore them, they've seen that many of them. There's a general sub and let sub attitude these days, since it's easier than the discussions. And, in my experience, the majority (not all, but the majority, in my experience, just wanna restate that bit) of people who partake in sub 4 sub aren't here for the long haul and vanish pretty quickly, never to return.
Thank you! I didn't know that was there. And I guess to be fair, it's pretty easy to miss the forum even existing when you're first using the site. Support from fellow creators is a really useful way to get started- one reason visability has gotten more difficult these days is that, with the growth of the site, there's a lot more spam accounts/fake series being made, and the site needs to catch them before they flood the "fresh" section where new updates appear. So if you get a few subs and views from the forum early on, it helps validate you're real and gets your comic out there faster. ((I don't know the specifics of how this works, but I remember it being discussed on the forums in the past with a newbie who was concerned their comic wasn't showing up? Sorry I only remember the general gist of it, though 
))
Oh, yeah! They don't do it nearly enough, but there are absolutely regular times in which non-premium work is featured! There's often themed categories which feature collections of stories. The rate at which these appear and how much it is non-premium is unknown to me, though, because I mostly can't be arsed with the front page. XD
They've also been actively increasing the support to popular non-premium series, which I think is note worthy, even if it doesn't help those of us still small and struggling.
I make a little money off the ad rev (pennies) and actual dollars off of ink, an ink events run by tapas. They absolutely get something out of hosting our free content, including a pool of people to turn into premium series that make them more money, but I specifically choose to host with tapas because I liked that they share the pie, even a little. =)
That said! It's super good to question things and look at the system! You should continue to do that.
To be honest, it does seem to be that way. XD It could be that the readers on this site are just reallllly quiet and they don't bother to like or comment, but the ratio between people who sub and people who like leads me to believe that this isn't the case. To give a comparison, I started posting one of my stories on RoyalRoad and it has a pretty good number of followers considering I just started posting, and it seems to be getting a lot more comments and interactions and readers who are actually... readers. I do think the genre on this site plays a BIG role into whether you can get readers and not just readers/writers.Tapas kind of self-perpetuates the cycle of like, only romance stuff getting views, so that's probably your best bet if you want consistent readers on this site. I swear, I rarely see stuff that isn't romance get on the front page. LOL.
