Featured, Notable, etc

[NDmangaka]

How do they decide which novels/comics/manga are featured or are notable or whatever because some of them have like no views and others literally just started posting like yesterday and are already notable so I'm just wondering how that works.

[Ringarune]

For staff picks at least, i think most of the choices are newer published comics, I think I've only seen an older comic on staff picks once, so that might explain the lower views on them. To my knowledge the choices are hand picked by staff. As for daily snack picks, there seems to be quite a mix of newer and older comics on there.

[NanettesClouds]

All of the curated sections (Spotlight, New & Noteworthy, Staff pick, & Daily Snack) are hand picked by staff and sourced from the trending tab (from what I understand.) it’s not necessarily about the comic having a lot of views or subscribers, it’s about it being something that the staff is interested in showcasing, which tends to mean

-High quality art
-Good Writing (or at least an interesting premise or characters)
-Consistent updates

For daily snack they also tend to favor comics in the vertical-scroll format, & episodes that are reasonably self-contained.

Also new series from already established creators tend to also get showcased by staff.

[lil-sea-salt]

new series from already established creators tend to also get showcased by staff.

it's not necessarily 'already established' its more so creators that are small who have a lot of work on tapas, post consistently that they want to help grow the audience of. 'already established' is the premium creators or spotlight.

[heterodont]

What helps a lot to get picked for staff pick/daily snack is if the first episode contains a good intro to the story itself - so something that catches the readers interest akin to the first paragraph of a novel. That means 5~ pages if you make pages in the traditional comic book styling vs vertical scroll.

Also if your intro has some sort of theme-age to it, that can help it get picked for daily snack as well. I missed the daily snack for the first time one of my comics was chosen for it, but the second time it was featured for the 'rainy weather'(?) daily snack because my comic opens up on the main characters in a storm.

[NanettesClouds]

Ahh yes, that's along the lines of what I meant but I can see how the word choice wasn't super accurate, thanks for clarifying this for me.

[ChristodeBoyet]

An extra question for this thread. When do they do the new & noteworthy? Is it a monthly thing?

[Agent1Alaska]

I thought it was weekly, but it didn't change at the start of this week (probably because of Christmas though).

[ChristodeBoyet]

That's nice to know. Thank you!

[VibrantFox]

When do they do the new & noteworthy?

I had to double check but it usually is weekly and I've noticed a new habit (maybe new maybe not) that they have on their twitter feed that shows off each batch of new&noteworthy/staff picks comics & novels for that week for example:

Tapas (tapas_app)

but it's probably like Agent1Alaska said that it hasn't changed because of holidays (I guess??)

[Jabbage]

I've ended up in the old staff picks section and more recently in new and noteworthy, but I still don't know what the magic formula is!

I try to have an attractive icon, make sure that the first few episodes of my comcs have a lot of juicy content and are as good as I can make them. It's possible that the fact I have a few completed series on Tapas helped (a track record?), and it's possible that it helped that both comics were slightly unusual genres that might not have been competing with as many other new comics for the spotlight (I'm guessing there are lots of new romance comics around, and not so many sci-fi).

I would note that getting featured is lovely, but I wonder sometimes if the effects are a little bit superficial, particularly if (like me!) your comics are a little bit niche. I had lots of new subs, lots of unsubs a few weeks later, and not massive longterm increase in views. The best outcome for me was that it opened some doors when people with interesting projects outside of Tapas saw my artwork and were interested in me as a creator.

[Testaccount]

I would note that getting featured is lovely, but I wonder sometimes if the effects are a little bit superficial, particularly if (like me!) your comics are a little bit niche. I had lots of new subs, lots of unsubs a few weeks later, and not massive longterm increase in views.

I've been featured in the New & Noteworthy for novels before, and what the above comment said I feel is true. While it's always nice to see our work getting attention, I feel being featured is a bit superficial. You'll get a good number of subs, sure, but most of those subs won't ever read the story. The most loyal readers I have on Tapas found me or followed me from another website.

However, I cannot speak for comics, which I've noticed gets more engagement from their subs after getting featured, unlike novels. Hopefully, as readers here get used to the novel section, the engagement after being featured will go up.