Jan 2023
42 / 42
Feb 2023
Feb 2023
KennethLopezJr921
Jan '23

I'll admit that I only use the forums for promoting myself and talking with other creators. Its not like I dont want to read other people's work. Its just that Im so busy with my own webcomic that reading other's is hard. That and I haven't gotten used to reading webcomics in general. I use the forums and the tapas discord, and I've noticed that there are a lot more creators here than there are readers. Which is probably why promotion threads arent super effective for me, now that I think about it. I think the reason I do it at this point is just out of habit :sweat_01:

ccmatta
Jan '23

which subreddits do you recomend? I used to promote on subs about BL stuff (cuz my comic is BL obviously) but idk

bulgariansumoRegular
Jan '23

I don't. @KennethLopezJr921 pretty much covered how I feel. Most forums on websites like this tend to skew more toward creators than readers.

One thing I noticed about Tapas's in particular is that there's no dedicated recommendation section. I don't remember if those ever worked out for me on Wattpad's old forum or on Royal Road, but posts in those threads are/were usually made by people who wanted to read. So at least we knew readers were there.

As futile as promoting here can be, I get more clicks when I do it. Do they often translate into likes, comments, or subscriptions? No. But the fact that people click at all when I post to "Drop your newest episode" threads is baffling to me. I don't think I've ever clicked on a series in one of those threads. I can only think of one where I wanted to.

Not gonna lie, a lot of the advice I see in regards to promotion is hard for me to wrap my head around. Promote aggressively, but if you promote too much, people will get annoyed and not want to read. Talk often about your project, but don't give too much away. (Do I just talk about the first few chapters? Or is it more of a broad strokes thing?) Promote on social media! (With what following?) Find your audience! (How...?) Do all of this and still have time to post new updates!

I'm sure these things aren't as impossible to do as I'm making them out to seem, but it's a balancing act that I don't quite have down yet. As for now, the Tapas forums (and others like it) feel easy enough to promote on, even if the returns are slim.

HGohwell
Jan '23

So like, just to cover a few of these, use your real life as a measure. Imagine if you had a friend, or even just vaguely knew someone, and every word out of their mouth was "hey read my series" and nothing else, imagine how quickly that would become annoying. Especially when these people rarely actually even tell you anything about their story, or in a quick, easy to understand way. The internet is the same. When people say promote aggressively but not too much, that's what they mean. You're an author, not a bot, be human don't just spam your link and the same paragraph description of your story. When they say talk about your project but don't give stuff away, they mean get involved in discussions about things like world building or characters using your examples (lots of people find stories they're interested in here because someone mentioned something interesting about their world/character in a discussion not in a promotion) but don't give away your massive plot twist, for example. Social media is social media, I can't help there. But creators I follow, I like to see things like character designs in progress or little extra illustrations, character sheets, and never underestimate promoting other people's work because they often have connections. While sub-4-sub is an awful plan, read and comment other people's work and a lot of smaller creators will then have a look at yours (I found lots of my reads because someone commented on my work and I went to investigate them since we clearly have at least some similar tastes).

Terrible Writing Advice has probably the best advice I've seen on promoting but even then it's half luck and half mind numbing constant slog.

MARKETING AND PROMOTION - Terrible Writing Advice
UrMom
Jan '23

Yeeeeah, I'm a bit picky since I already read a lot of comics on top of my rl stuff, so I don't normally check out promos. Once upon a time I promoted a bit myself, but most of the people on here are regulars, if they weren't interested in your work the first few times they won't be after 50 more promos. Every blue moon I'll drop a link for the newbies, although that's rare anymore since I'm lazy, and my comic is on hiatus.

As many people have said, and as I've stated in other threads, this forum is more creator drive. Most of use are working on our own projects, lacking time to read other's, so the forum is best for discussion than advertising. You'll have to use social media, reviewers, interviews and Discord if you want to get eyes on your work. I'd probably block 'Promotions' altogether if it didn't occasionally have interesting discussion threads posted under it, since yeah, it gets pretty tiring to see. Similar obnoxious vibes are promo/discussion threads with interesting topics that encourage discussion, but the OP never converses to anyone so it just turns into another generic promo thread, and dies.

bulgariansumoRegular
Jan '23
1

When you put it like that, it makes a lot more sense. I think I've been doing most of these, making sure to post a picture + an interesting snippet of text on Tapas promotion threads, talking broadly about the chapter content when I market on other sites (plus, again, pictures), participating in discussion forum threads when relevant. I could stand to read more of other people's stuff, though.

Also ransom. Ransom's probably effective.

TheLemmaLlama
Jan '23
UrMom

Guilty as charged! Though I'll continue making them, since I do get a kick out of reading about other people's take on Topic I'm Interested In even if I don't reply or have anything to say about them :stuck_out_tongue:

...

... what O_O

UrMom
Jan '23

Pff unless they're threads I haven't been interested in, I've seen you engage. I'm more talking about people who make discussion threads, sharing their perspective in the OP. People try to engage with them, but the OP ghosts right after making the thread so all talk fizzles out into short promo responses instead. I get it when the OP doesn't have anything to say to stuff, I'm not super talky myself, but it is a bit rude when someone clearly tries to open a conversation only for it to fall on deaf ears.

I admit to being a bit salty since I've had that happen a few times in the past where I wanted to talk to the OP by asking questions and such, only for them to quietly like the comment, then tap out. Sure, the rest of the community can keep the discussion open, but eh... maybe creators just suck at that sort of thing. Lol

bulgariansumoRegular
Jan '23
TheLemmaLlama

Oh, sorry. I probably should've specified that was a reference to the video @HGohwell posted. I have no means or desire to hold anyone ransom. :sweat_smile:

Ordinaryaverageguy
Jan '23
darthmongoose

Also one of the hardest lessons that life will hand us.

abigaillmartin
Jan '23
Archetype_Moon

Amen to that! I am also guilty and sick of putting my works on there. It really doesn’t work. I may have a solution that could work but I’m not sure. Maybe just maybe start a new thread with creators reaching out to five non creators like friends or friends online and recommending the works outside of Tapas. By way of Discord, social media, maybe even in IRL.

That would be a nice challenge. Recommend at least two or as much as you want by those means and recommend five comics/novels.

I don’t know if it would work like that but it’s worth a shot I guess.

I need help with improving on this idea.

TheLemmaLlama
Jan '23
UrMom

Ahh ye if someone clearly tries to open a conversation/engage me/ask questions, I'd respond because that's something obvious to talk about - and yeah, it annoys me as well :sweat_02:

I guess I was thinking of the times where my thread becomes what's effectively a promo thread where we all just say stuff about our own work and leave without interacting like this one2 :stuck_out_tongue: But yeah, I had fun reading the responses anyway :smiley:

Oh yeah, sounds like a TWA video :stuck_out_tongue: I'm 99% sure I've watched all the 5-year-old TWA videos but don't remember anything about a ransom, so I'm tempted to give it another watch (I'm sure it'll come back to me when I see it XD)

KelheorRegular
Jan '23
1
abigaillmartin

You will be surprised how few people actually read comics... And I don't mean to say this to discourage anyone. But the thing is, when you are getting used to be someone and being in the community (in this case, of comic creators and readers), it may seem like everyone around is into comics this or that way.

TheSingularitySeed
Jan '23

Tbh I'm not sure how readers would find this forum. I know it's on the homepage, but it's at the bot

I found this forum because it kept coming up on searches for how to make webcomics.

There aren't even discussion threads for popular comics. Sometimes I am on the reader side of things, but I head to social media for that.

I check the promos sometimes for fun threads but most of it is not even sorted, as you said.

HGohwell
Jan '23

Yeah, any readers who are here tend to have found it waaaay back when the forum was actually advertised on the site roughly where they now advertise discord. And there did used to be threads on popular genres and popular works and a few more popular and premium creators. Problem was even when started with good intentions, these discussions often veered off pretty quickly into "this work is a soulless cash grab" or "it's only popular because it's BL" (very common back in the old days) or "why are all the popular works just trope cliche copies of each other with ugly samey art?!?!?!" (idk maybe because that's what's popular?) so even when we did discuss it there was such a negativity to that I doubt readers would want to stay anyway. It wasn't a great look for the creators either.

darthmongoose
Jan '23

Yeah, the same stuff @HGohwell just mentioned is pretty much why you don't tend to see creators with a large following on the forums as well, which just compounds the issue. Readers might be interested in seeing what somebody like Alice Osman has to say about the process of making works they like, like Heartstopper, but without that, there's nothing to tempt them here.

The forums have a tendency to be unwelcoming towards people with a large following, and people who are into reading works with a large following. There's this really silly and unprofessional mindset like "I make no effort to make my work welcoming to readers, easy to read or relevant to the interests of the mostly young women who read on Tapas, but I'm going to blame this on young women being shallow fools who can't appreciate my genius, and Tapas having an agenda and take absolutely no responsibility myself or make any effort, I'm just going to be angry at people who do!" It's just....uuuugh... This is why we can't have nice things. :sweat_01: I don't think people realise that if the popular creators were here, readers might actually come here, and then there's a chance they'd see these more unusual works, or posts by less well-known creators, or there'd be a chance to get advice from creators who have managed to build a big following, or for them to spot a diamond in the rough and give it a signal boost.

UrMom
Jan '23
1
TheLemmaLlama

@TheLemmaLlama Oh nah, I meant more threads that are basically promos, but seem more focused on discussion than posting and running.

Yeah, like, on the "outside" comics are considered the ugly stepchildren of art and literature. You'll get more people who immediately lose interest upon hearing the word 'comic' than be willing to read or engage, if a person does like comics 99% of the time it's cape comics since those are so well known. It's sucks, but that's how things roll right now. If you want to advertise to the Average Joe it's best to gauge if they like comics first, or if they're open to giving them a try, see what they like, then give it a try. Oddly enough I've gotten more geriatric women interested in reading my comic than anyone else.

Man, I would love for there to be more popular creators here sharing their experiences, the hostility towards success is baffling! Reminds me of that promo thread someone made ages ago that was for creators with over 1k subs or something like that, people got so pissy despite it being a single thread of it's kind in a sea of promos for lesser known creators. I think one or two of the bigger creators dropped out after that. I get there being a bitterness to not having the ideal outcome for your hard work, but the lack of success isn't those people's fault. They just flourished in their niche, and good on them for doing so.

sushy00
Jan '23

I like using the forums for all kinds of discussions. Seems like most topics on the forums are promotion threads now.

1 month later

closed Feb 20, '23

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.