Does My Novel Fit Tapas's Readerbase

[Yorth]

Hey guys, fantasy author here. I just learned about Tapas a few days ago and I'm here. I love the editor, I love the looks and feel of the site, and I especially adore the fact that you can add your own BGM to your chapters. However, there are a couple things that I'm not sure about. From looking at the home page and the top fictions, it seems that Romance novels do the best on this site. As a Litrpg fantasy author, it leaves me a little stumped as I'm not sure if I will find any readerbase on here, which would be a real shame as the site looks GORGEOUS.

I'll drop a link here for the story so that you can check it and judge it yourself.

Ashes of Gods | Tapas

[Crusoe]

Don't worry! You will find some readership, but novels do less well on tapas than comics anyway so it'll be a while. If you already have a readership/social media to promote your story that'll help a bit. Being active in the forum's here will also help to start you out.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Tapas readers are mostly gravitate towards romance-BL-fantasy. The current trend of Tapas is romance with isekai/reincarnation/transportation element from what they shilled in the front page. I think if your series is LitRPG, if it has isekai/reincarnation/transportation elements, it can gain plenty of readership too The top fantasy novels series here have reincarnation element. If you don't have said elements, that is fine. Fantasy is the top Tapas genres.

In my opinion, do not think too much about it and just try it first. You can gain readership by interacting and promoting in the forum, you can also ask for opinion and see how your series is received. If you feel nothing is working or find a better alternative, you can just pack your belongings and host your series in places which you think are more fitting for your series.

While genre and tropes selection matters in a series' popularity (no matter what people say), there is always a readership of anything — even something shitty and/or degenerate. I meant some people read my series.

[Yorth]

Oh, thanks. I'll definitely make sure to promote myself as much as possible. Writing the story is only half the battle after all!

[Crusoe]

For sure! Pick your battles wisely tho, some techniques work better than others.

[amberberry]

I'm sure you'll find out own audience.
If you don't know about the site already, I'd recommend checking out RoyalRoad. Fantasy and LitRPG are pretty popular in there (litrpg is even its own tag) so you could get some readership from there as well. I have used the site a bit and it is also pretty nice.

[Yorth]

Yeah, you're absolutely right. As far as I could see, there isn't any "latest update" section in Tapas. As such, I don't see much of a need to hold on to chapters and slowly trickle them in. Once I finish posting the full book (around 60 to 70 chapters), I'll start asking for reviews/feedback here on the forums to not only gain more potential readers but also to learn and improve my craft.

For the genres, it's VRMMORPG, with lots of Gon/Killua type friendships, and tons of action. I hope people will like it!

[Yorth]

Yeah, I have been a reader and a writer of Royalroad for like 6 years now and I absolutely adore the site. It's just that I've been trying to spread my wings and discover other websites where I can reach new audiences. Hope Tapas will be big on that list!

[thedude3445]

If your story is good and you give it a lot of patience, you will get some stuff.

Note to remember that nobody tells you:

1) Never post more than one chapter per 24 hours. Your chapters should be 24 or more hours apart at minimum, and unless you have a big mega archive you probably should only come 3-4 times a week.

[Yorth]

Is there a specific logic behind this advice? Normally there is a "latest update" section and you want to game that to gather as many views as possible, but that doesn't seem to be the case here in Tapas. Is it maybe how the recommendation algorithm works that prefers certain release rates more than others? Honestly I'm pretty stumped when it comes to posting strategies as there doesn't seem to be one that is intuitively clear.

[Yorth]

I do have an archive of around 70 chapters as of now. If you could please tell me what would be the best way to spread my release, I would appreciate it a lot. Thank you very much.

[Freemints30]

The fresh section is where recetly updated novels and comic are. However you will only appear once every 24 hours. So even if you posted 6 times you will only show up once the first time before being buried by other titles. So it would be a waste of an update to update twice or more within a 24 hour time span.

Genreally 2 a week would be a good scedual. But you can do more like an update every monday, wednsday and friday.

[rajillustration]

Fantasy is honestly a really huge genre on Tapas right now. Just because it's not the top genre, doesn't mean it won't get views (that and I feel novel readership is a little more diverse than comic readership, just from my limited experience, so you can take more risks, especially since it's like...what is there to lose?) I do a fantasy novel and I've been happy with that experience considering I didn't do too much promotion and I haven't posted online writing before without it being like...a comic so I was starting from a really small fanbase.

[thedude3445]

Freemints30's post says it all.

For me, I posted my first story daily for 90ish days straight, which helped it gain popularity but I think a lot of readers weren't able to keep up with it and had to catch up to the story after it finished. So for my newest one, even though it has a 100+ chapter backlog, I am only doing 3-4 updates per week.

Tapas is about the long game, which means it will take a whole lot longer on this site to do well than on Royal Road. Fantasy is a big genre, but Tapas's novel readership is just a lot smaller than Royal Road's, so it takes a long time to get a similar number of subscribers and reads, Getting into the Fresh and Trending sections is great, but posting 2 chapters in one day doesn't help those algorithms; it's just a waste of a chapter due to the 24 hour timespan thing.

[Yorth]

Oh okay, it makes sense to me now. I will make sure to keep that in mind going forward. Sucks that I already wasted some chapters, but we live and we learn. Thanks a lot!