I work full time, have kids, and when I have downtime I like to draw. I don't like trying to get more subscribers or promote. I think I have 13 likes. I would like more views, but what would that accomplish? Does anyone ever get an agent here? I've illustrated for newspapers, and honestly, it pays only $80 a cartoon.
Anyway, here are my two graphic novels. There! I've promoted something! Now back to drawing.
Aug '23
Aug '23
No. I don’t hate promoting. You just have to learn patience. I experienced this with my first comic for its first year. I think there’s a couple things you have to keep in mind. Let me offer you a perspective that pertains to growing an audience. If you don’t think this applies to you, then disregard.
First, a lot of people who seem to blow up quickly at their launch usually have a follower base on a different platform that they used to promote their comic. Or even have a first comic that they used to promote their second.
Second, you are extremely unlikely to grow just by posting on the app. You have to reach out on social media and engage with Webtoons socials and discord servers to increase chances of getting noticed by staff but even that is no guarantee.
Then third, getting a comic book agent isn’t impossible, but definitely tricky. Traditional comic book publishers, however, are a bit more difficult to pitch to as a solo writer (like in my case). Comic publishers like seeing concept art, preview pages, and other stuff that will help them visualize the final product. Not having someone attached can make it harder to sell a book to them. It’s not impossible, but they definitely prefer to have that stuff attached and lined up. If they really like a concept, it’s no problem to help put a team together, but art always helps sell a book.
Anyways, comics are a lot of work and building an audience is a lot of time and effort. It can takes years to grow and you’ll likely need really thick skin.
Thanks for the info!
Yes, I'm not good at promoting, and it's probably because I don't know where to begin. This is good advice.
I think a lot of it is having confidence with your work and how its presented. Its a lot harder when life and family are your priority, but art creation is putting part of yourself out to the world and that can be draining when it feels like no one is viewing or engaging. I have my webcomic on both Tapas and Webtoons, with twice as many subscribers on Webtoons than on here. The difference I’ve noticed is the level of engagement here on Tapas is exponentially better here with likes, comments and community feedback!
Social media is now a necessity for promotion but no single one is perfect, especially with the state Twitter is in right now. Forums are get for community engagement too! I know that it’s overwhelming with 50 different ‘Post your updated episode here!’ forum posts, but if you didn’t post it, I might have missed your comic!
I’m reading through both Fearfield and Real, and I’m really enjoying them so far!
There are also ‘Social Media Managers’ that are out there for hire that can take care of the internet presence side of promoting your work, if its an option for you.
I look forward to seeing more from you!
If I could hire a different guy to do the promoting for me, i would!~
I hate promoting... but I have to do it.
I've made the decision to make a comic I love making, but which would be a hard sell for a publisher. I've chosen to instead support myself with a part-time-job so I can make a comic I like that isn't purely optimised to sell, and isn't just drawing somebody else's IP (a thing I've done enough to be tired of it). This means I have to be my own publicist and my own agent.
It accomplishes plenty if you do it well, but you really do need to pay attention to what's hot to do it well. For example, Tiktok is where it's at right now. People are moving from Twitter to Blusky. Then you need to pay attention to things like your series' brand identity; what colours do you use? What's your tone of voice when talking about it? You have to try things and make mental notes of what worked. I never got an Agent for my Tapas comic (though I've never applied for one), but I did get a contract with Tapas on the Creator Bonus Program, I've had a bunch of features, and I was able to run a successful kickstarter raising over £1500 to print the first four chapters. I'm closing on 3000 subscribers. So, yeah... it's hard, but it does get you somewhere (also I never did sub for sub. I personally think it's useless.)
If you're making a comic that isn't the kind of thing that appeals to the "core Tapas audience" (women aged around 20), you'll need to work extra-hard at off-site promotion, unfortunately, because Tapas is less likely to give you a feature, and the audience who frequent the site might not be so interested. I'm somewhere in the middle where I appeal enough to that core demographic to get features, but not perfectly enough to really explode and get exponential subs like a Fantasy Romance story might.
I can understand why people are moving from Twitter. For me, the only social media I'm using is Facebook. I guess that's a bit outdated!
Yeah, my comics are not for Tapas. Fantasy romance seems to be the main genre here.
You might actually find people om Facebook would enjoy the more oldskool vibe of your comic. You could try making a website for it (there are webcomics templates for Wordpress for this) and then do most of your advertising on platforms with an older userbase, like Facebook, Twitter/Bluesky, Reddit etc. You don't have to take your comics down on Tapas, but just treat the Tapas version of your comic as a secondary mirror where people who want to read it on a mobile app can.
I probably like promoting a bit too much, to the point I keep thinking about and making plans to promote stuff I haven't even finished yet :'D What does it accomplish? Well, it gets you sweet, sweet audience engagement, of course 
(I'm not too sure what it'll accomplish on the professional side of things XD)
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