Book Cover Requirement

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Has anyone else been blocked from uploading a new series because a book cover was required? Tapas sent out notices saying it wasn't going to be required until some time late July.

[nostalgicroxas]

I thought the idea was it's not going to be required until July, and then your story will stop appearing in the Fresh and ect sections- essentially making it invisible on the site without the new cover.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

They did say that it wasn't requirement! This is from the notice:
"Book Covers will become a Requirement for your series on July 31st, 2020."

That's more that three months away. What are they doing?

I'm also having a fit trying to upload a new episode. The old way was to paste the text in but I don't see that now. It looks like it wants a file upload instead but it rejected my Word file. I may not be here much longer at this rate.

[joannekwan]

Make sure you didn't create a comic series on accident.
Novels are still uploaded by inputting text in a box.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Thank you. That would make sense, but I may have boo-booed the last time I tried to create the new series. I've started it three times so far, trying to get past the Book Cover requirement, that shouldn't be a requirement yet.

[joannekwan]

I've lost the original e-mail notification but it might have stated that book covers would be a requirement for all new series created beginning of April (when the covers went live), and the July deadline was for pre-existing series to convert.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I still have the emails & this is what the 1st one said:

The new book cover display will start to go into effect sometime in mid-March.

You can upload your book cover at any time and it will not be a mandatory change until 7/31/2020. We encourage you to create a Book Cover and have it ready for the switch!

After 7/31/2020, Book Covers will be required in order to use Tapas similar to thumbnails. <

That sounds to me like it was available & optional in March & not mandatory until the end of April.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

AND.... You were right. I had accidentally selected the Comic format instead of the Novel.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

If I might... You seem to know your way around better than I so... How should I post a one-episode story so that it won't say Episode 1? Or does that change when I mark the series as Done? Thank you!!

[joannekwan]

Ah, if you mean this? That's embedded and there's no way of removing it. I believe it's for the benefit of readers to keep track if the author doesn't title their episode in some sequential fashion.

[Maps]

I wanna cry. I suppose I’ll draw a new cover.
Or has anyone just adjusted the dimensions of their current covers to work?

[joannekwan]

There are suggestions in this thread on how to adjust image files you already have to the new dimensions

@Kaylim I don't know if this is helpful, but I also have a few covers I'd commissioned with Tapas's square format in mind; this is how I turned one of them into a rectangular cover (not sure if this is final yet, might still play around with it since I feel like the text isn't visible enough): [image] [image] If this can't work with yours though (certain illustrations don't make much sense anymore once cropped), I agree w…

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Yes, that was what I was thinking of. I can live with that. I had thought that it was something I'd overlooked doing. Thank you!

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I did this sad looking thing today just to satisfy the requirement. I have no talents in drawing & the people who might do one for me are kinda busy now. It's sad and demented but it gets past the checkbox.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I'd asked the Tapas Team about the requirement being implemented too soon. The reply said:
"...sorry to hear you're experiencing this issue! In this case, you can just use a blank image that is exactly 960px by 1440px to bypass the "Bookcover is required" notification. Hope this helps!"

Kinda wish I'd thought of doing that, myself.