Changing Genres

[crufixisan88]

If your series didn't gain as much attraction and you changed your series' genre with improvements, will readers like your series?

[conventurecomics]

Sometimes it helps. Pick one or two genres that works. I think tapas allows up to three genres.

[Flios]

As a writer on the site, I can confirm that genre(s) do affect the amount of exposure your series' gets. For example, fantasy, action, and romance are particularly popular with readers on tapas. If you had a series in the non-fiction genre or the horror genre, it could be harder to gain attention.
However, changing your genre to a more popular one could still prove to be difficult, as more popular genres still have a lot of competition and contenders.
My belief at the end is still that good novels/comics will always collect attention at the end of the day, so the answer is still 50/50.

[rajillustration]

I change my genre every couple of months just for kicks. Most stories fit several and you can try em out. Was Comedy Romance the past two months and now I'm back to Fantasy Romance. Will probably go Drama soon when I hit a more dramatic arc. I was hoping when I went into less saturated genres I'd get higher up on the list, but I didn't really see any difference? But it's worth a shot. Some people see a lot of difference

[darthmongoose]

I switched from Action to LGBTQ+ due to the following things happening:

1. A lot of translated premium titles were added to the Action section that made it skew much more strongly into "heterosexual man with short, dark hair levels up in isekai world" and made my comic look really out of place there.
2. Due to new titles added and existing titles, it became clear that the LGBTQ+ section was the agreed upon place to find "brightly coloured comic with manga/indie hybrid art about LGBTQ+ people fighting monsters or doing big action sequences etc." even when not directly focused on being queer like Magical Boy, because there's Pandora's Devils, Hard Lacquer etc.

It was initially a little scary, because I think it takes a week or two after moving for the algorithm to work things out, so I had a period of lower performance... and then it got way better, so I don't regret it at all.

The best advice I can give for picking where you categorise yourself is try to find the category with the most popular works that feel closest to the look, feel and general vibe of your work. Thinking less in terms of "it's got people fighting big monsters, so it's action" and more like "It's got a similar vibe to Lumberjanes and should be grouped with other works like that" helped me find the place where people who are into my comic were much more likely to find it.

Try to ignore numbers when deciding. It's true that a genre with more works is harder to be at the top of, but it's also got more people reading, so works in a popular category will average more readers. Works in less busy or fill categories like Mystery are easier to find, but have fewer readers, but also tend to have better engagement because the readers are more passionate and excited when they find something good. Ultimately though, the numbers don't matter if you're in a place where the people aren't looking for something like you're making, even if there are more people.

[abigaillmartin]

I was thinking about changing my genre of Cracking Eggs the main one to be BL and crime/mystery instead of comedy and crime/mystery. I already have LGBTQ labeled for the third genre and it is a comedy but there are parts of it that are dark and serious it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Yeah I’m just kind of stumped but since Winston and Eric are the main characters (supposedly) I may change it to BL or LGBTQ but like they’re also CRIMINALS soooo it should also be crime/mystery too. do you see the problem here? Lol

[darthmongoose]

I think with BL, it's a genre it's best to choose if the main plot is a mlm Romance. Think of it like the "Romance" genre, but with a gay relationship. That's kind of why it was added to Tapas in the first place; the Romance section was dominated by BL stories and creators and readers of het felt drowned out, and BL creators felt the need to write "BL" on their thumbnails so people looking for it could find it... basically it was best for everyone to give it its own category. Being the main plot means that the core conflict the story revolves around is the relationship, whether it'll happen and whether it works, and there's generally a happy ending where the two end up together (because Romeo and Juliet is not a Romance story, it's a Tragedy).

LGBTQ+ is the category for stories where there are queer themes (like coming out, transitioning, gender fluidity, asexuals finding their place in a world built around the assumption of romantic and sexual pairings etc.) Or which feature one or more relationships that aren't cisgender and heterosexual in nature, but it's not necessarily the focus of the story. The main plot it all revolves around might be more action, comedy or drama, or perhaps the story has a bittersweet or tragic ending.
Some people also describe it as "the tag to put on your comic to scare off people who won't like it if your action/fantasy/drama story suddenly gets really gay or a character is revealed to have been trans the whole time."
To me, since your story's main plot is about egg smuggling, it seems more like it'd be LGBTQ+ than BL, but it's your judgement to make.

Then the comedy vs crime thing... I'd say that dark comedy is still comedy. The premise of your story, about smuggling eggs, is inherently ridiculous and comedic, so even if it involves criminality and touches on dark themes, I don't see a reason to remove the comedy tag from it. The art style and absurd story concept will probably attract more people in comedy than in a category like mystery or crime, I think.

[abigaillmartin]

Comedy and BL it is then? There’s nothing explicitly stated that Eric and Winston are gay they love each other but Eric came out when he was a teenager but he doesn’t explicitly state it. Winston however kept it to himself not even telling his brother or his parents who are dead in the story. (Not his brother lol he’s alive and well!) It’s just they fall in love organically and really to me it doesn’t feel artificial or cookie cutter but that’s for you as a reader to decide. And yes I would consider it to be a dark comedy because it’s taking something like a stupid law I learned and putting into context that would usually be serious or dark themes. I do be serious when I have to be serious.

This helped a bunch! Thank you!

[Calculus_Homework]

That makes a lot of sense!
I think that 3 genres is enough to describe a story's main themes/ideas. It's a matter of picking the ones that fit best in description. And the descriptions stand universally, as in Tapas does not give its own definitions to genres. So think of it like going to the bookstore and trying to find your comic on a shelf somewhere! xD

Today I literally JUST changed 2 of my genres, because I had a realization that they didn't fit what the comic was at all (I didn't really know what a slice-of-life was until my partner pointed it out lol).

I went from:
horror, slice-of-life, mystery ---> sci-fi, drama, mystery
(we'll see how that goes; i think it will improve the exposure now that it makes more sense... smh)

I think once you figure out your main themes and how the story is being told, it's easier to identify the genres that it will do well in. I'm not too keen on the algorithm here, but I think if you are honest about your story it'll gather the audience for you. :}

[HGohwell]

Just sorta echoing the overall advice: a change of genre can help by setting the right expectations and helping the right readers find you. But it's not a magic bullet. Changing genre won't automatically boost your numbers, and sometimes changing genre can have a negative impact, so make sure you're not just assuming if your work isn't performing as well as you think it should that it's just because it's in the wrong genre. And try to avoid thought like "this genre is more popular so if I use it more people will read" or "this genre has less comics so less competition for the top" and think more about what suits your comic's main plot best.

[system]

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