Breaking up one comic over multiple series?

[kristintipping7]

I've noticed some creators on tapstic making each volume of their comic it's own series. This seems like a good way to keep a comic approachable as it grows in length since it breaks the story up into more manageable chunks. I'm considering doing this myself when I start the second arc of my comic. Starting a new series for the second volume would probably bring in some extra readers since tapastics algorithms seem to like new comics. Also, there will be a noticeable change in the art style between volumes, so it might be good to have clean break. At the same time I'm worried that I might loose readers who simply don't make the switch to the new series.

What do you guys think about this, both as creators and as readers? Have you done this with one of your own comics? Do you get intimidated when you start reading a comic and realize that there's hundreds of pages of back catalog to get through?

[PotooGryphon]

What do you guys think about this, both as creators and as readers?

I've been pondering this a bit. The down side as a creator is that new series will need to regain the readers that are following the past series.

It might be difficult to get already following readers to jump over to a new series and subscribe to that one as well.

As a reader though, I can image it's a lot more preferable. Large archives can be a big task to tackle and having the comic sectioned over many series might help keep it bite size and easy to consume. However, it may get annoying for readers as well to try and keep up if there's a new series that needs to be followed inorder to continue following the story.

I'm no sure exactly how this would play out but I'd be very interested in reading another creator's findings with this method.

Have you done this with one of your own comics?

Back when Tapastic was new and I just started posting on the site I did by accident do this. It was terrible back then and I had a hell of a time merging my series back to one series.

Several readers were confused and lost at why they're only getting part of the story, where can they find the rest of the story, why did I post so oddly. ugh...

I had sectioned issues 1 and 2 in one series and 3-present in a new series. Issues 3-present had the biggest following and issues 1-2 went largely unread. No one was getting the full story.

I ended up turning the series containing issues 1-2 into my page format series containing all issues, and the larger series containing 3-present into my mobile format series containing all issues as well.

The merge was made more difficult since i had to delete comments and episodes and reupload everything in the proper order since Tapastic doesn't allow rearranging episodes after posting them.

Do you get intimidated when you start reading a comic and realize that there's hundreds of pages of back catalog to get through?

Yes, and I find it difficult to find spare time to read through a full archive and keep up to date. It's a very slow process for me to finally make it up to current updates and it can be daunting.

[mariusthered]

as i am now on my 15 season I also have thought about this and having trouble on deciding. I have noticed that if you have a long form comic people are less inclined to read a hefty backlog, so I guess doing a series of stories in different comics as complete tales makes more sense.

[shazzbaa]

At the same time I'm worried that I might loose readers who simply don't make the switch to the new series.

This would be my biggest concern, too. I remember Cyndi talking about that nightmare before!

At the same time.... I'm suddenly wondering if that exact thing couldn't have a potential positive affect, too. Keii4ii has talked before about how much the Dead Subscribers Problem seems to be hurting HoK, and Michaelson has confirmed that if you have a bunch of people subscribed to your series that don't read it, it actually hurts your performance in Tapastic's algorithms -- but if people subscribe and stop reading... there's nothing you can do to fix that!

If it were possible to do this in such a way that all active subscribers got the memo and weren't confused, and newcomers to the new series understood that it was part 2 and they had to go back and read part 1 first, then clearing out all the people who are inactive, or dead accounts, and thus wouldn't know to move, might actually help the series a lot?

Do you guys think having an actual episode, as the final page of Volume One, saying "THE STORY CONTINUES IN THIS NEW SERIES! GO SUBSCRIBE TO VOLUME TWO" and having the first episode of Volume Two saying "NEW READER? THIS IS PART 2 OF THE SERIES -- CHECK OUT THE SERIES "VOLUME ONE" FOR THE BEGINNING OF THE ADVENTURE!" or whatever would be enough that most readers wouldn't be confused? Or would even making a blatant intro/outro post like that baffle the majority of subs?

However, it may get annoying for readers as well to try and keep up if there's a new series that needs to be followed inorder to continue following the story.

Yeah, hmm! I feel like, speaking for myself.... my comic's chapters are around 40-60 pages. That feels way too frequent to start a new series every chapter, and if I were a reader, I would get tired of moving over. But I also think of my story in three "volumes" of 5 chapters each, so basically every 200-300 pages is a new "volume," and that feels a lil more reasonable to me as a potential "new series" point.

I feel like if I were reading a series kind of... out of inertia? Like I was still checking it, but not really because I gotta know what happens next, but because I don't really have a good reason to unsub.... then at that point, I would probably not move over to a new series. It'd basically be a good excuse to essentially be automatically unsubbed from something I'm not really that interested in.

I also wonder if re-subbing would be ten times more inconvenient on mobile/the app. Links awkwardly remove you from the app and open on your browser (so it takes extra clicks to get back to the app to subscribe), you don't get notifications so you wouldn't see the "so-and-so has started a new series!" notification, and getting to the creator's page is ever so slightly less convenient. So the "continue the story at this new series" link would be a little more trouble for app folks, which might translate into slightly fewer people bothering.

I guess it's also worth considering.... would opening up a 20-episode comic that begins with "This is Volume Three! Go check out the beginning of the story in Volume One!!" really be less intimidating than a 600-episode archive?

I dunno, I'm also curious to hear from any creators who have intentionally set this up!! but it's actually an awfully tempting idea, and I'm kinda on-board if there's a good way to make it work. I wonder if the loss of less enthusiastic readers would be worth clearing out dead subscribers and getting a chance for exposure under a new series. It definitely seems worth pondering!!

[UzukiCheverie]

I don't think I'd be able to bring myself to doing this, just because Time Gate is long and making that many series for every volume would just get too hard for my readers. Time Gate is divided into books, which each have their own number of volumes - Time Gate: Reaper alone is estimated to be about 14-15 volumes, and it's not even the longest one in the series (Adult Chapters is, at 250-300 chapters, 20+ volumes).

Right now, as it stands, I plan on having one series per book - Reaper is its own series, then Child Chapters will be its own, then Adult Chapters, all the way up until book ten. If I divided all of them up into volumes (which would be the only way to do it - chapter divisions would be WAY TOO MUCH lol) you'd be looking at a shitload of series that would get confused easily (my readers would have a hard time differentiating between Reaper Volume 1 and Child Chapters Volume 1, etc.)

This is something that would definitely work more for people who have shorter series with an ending in mind. For example, something like Strays which had a definitive end after 3 volumes (or a smaller set that could be broken down without confusion among people).

[indagold]

For me I realized it was an extremely stupid idea. I made a comic series with the original and the sequel and people would either read one or the other but not read both despite me explicitly stating they were related. Then I would get different fans for both and it was a mess. I finally just uploaded the complete series as one comic to end the confusion on here unlike what I did on previous sites. A sequel and an original is kinda different but even then the confusion is still there which is irritating.

[dojo]

To be honest, I personally feel like no matter how you slice it, it might be too confusing for readers because of how Tapas is set up. Unless they suddenly allowed for sub series or something like that, I don't see this working without making a massive number of people confused on top of creating clutter particularly if you're running more than one series like I do, on top of having a bonus comics spot. It's one of those things where I feel like it sounds okay on paper, but in practice it would not work all that great.

Not to mention it's basically asking your readers to put in extra clicks in order to get the whole story, whereas another person's story won't ask them to do that. The more you ask new readers to do, the more I feel they're even more likely to be turned away than seeing a series that has hundreds of episodes. (This is something that is strongly discouraged in the web development world BECAUSE it turns viewers away because you're making them work more for something they shouldn't have to work for. This is part of why Tapas's infinite scrolling works so well for readers because they don't have to click anything. All they have to do is scroll or swipe, depending on where they're reading.)

Something I've seen a couple people do, though, is consolidating episodes into one. Sure you lose comments and likes doing that, but it would give your comic the appearance of having fewer episodes. Doesn't really solve the dead subscriber problem, but it might help with the "series looks too long and intimidating to read" problem.

[DMBrigman]

As a reader I haven't been turned off by a series having too many episodes. I do appreciate that the Tapastic site and app are really good at letting you pick up where you left off. I am currently making my way through a very long series and I enjoy having something to binge read when I feel up to it. If the series was broken up I might end up dropping it if it wasn't easy to find the next series to follow. I do hate that the app doesn't make it easy to follow links, and if I get distracted in the process of bookmarking then you have lost me.

[timinabox24]

I did the opposeite actually, I had 4volumes and planned to post them all in one series because I already had I think 3 or 4 other series and I just didn't want to hve too many different series when all of it actually goes into the same thing. I'm not posting anymore anyway so I never got to any intimidating number of pages tho
I just think in the end it's eaier if it's all in one piece, if you wanna read it all you have to read it all either way but at least you already have it all in one series
but what the hell do I know O_O