How are novels working out for everyone?

[NanettesClouds]

If I had to guess is because the Novels on tapastic are still relatively new, and tapastic is better known for comics. I haven't payed much attention to the whole dealio tho so I'm not sure.

[ISNEKO]

Hard to say really. With the system being so new in regards to the independent authors, what is good? Even the ones that are connected to famous comic creators have relatively low subs. The only books with high numbers are the ones that get featured or put in the snack.

But hey, at least more people seem to read them here than on Wattpad.

[GoldenPlume]

Not much reader interest.

There seems to be several factors in play. The first is that Tapastic (the desktop site) and Tapas (the mobile app) are known for two different things and are set up quite differently, neither of which lend much help to non-premium novelists.

On the Tapas side, non-premium novels are close to impossible to find. If you go to the "Books" section, that loads the "Featured" tab and everything there is key based. So you have to go to "Categories". Now on the "Comics" side "Categories" has both a "Trending" and a "Fresh" tab. Meanwhile "Books" has neither. So no matter how often you update your novel, or if it starts to trend, readers on Tapas will never see it because neither category exists on the app. Instead, for a potential reader to find your novel, they have to go into your novel's genre (you get to only pick one genre where premium get multiples) and scroll all the way to the bottom.

Seriously, how many readers are going to do that?

It's the equivalent of being on the 5th page of search results for Google. Who gets to the 5th page?

Also now is probably a good time to point out, why are premium novels listed in so many categories? For example, Cinderella Boy is 2nd in Comedy, 2nd in Drama, 2nd in Romance, and 1st in Slice of Life. It seems fairly common practice to have premium novels occupy 3 or 4 different genres which only pushes non-premium authors even further down what becomes an otherwise repetitive list to readers.

For example, if you visited Barnes and Noble and went into Comedy and found the same books there as in Drama, Romance, and Slice of Life . . . one might wonder if there's just nothing else to read.

However since non-premium novels don't generate any revenue for Tapas, its doubtful that their predicament will change.

On the Tapastic side of things, it's a little bit better, but not much. Non-premium authors have no front page visibility. Currently "Trending" is only for comics. "Brand New Book Releases" is only for premium novels. The only way to see a non-premium novel is by clicking on novels and then clicking on "Fresh", "Trending", or "Staff Pick" (which surprisingly is all free novels). However since Tapastic is known for comics and not novels, its doubtful how many desktop users click thru to novels. To illustrate our point we've been the #1 staff pick in novels for a week now and we've gotten maybe 10 to 20? subs from that. In comparison a "New and Noteworthy" comic on the Tapastic home page will get 100s to 1000s of subs.

Or maybe our novel is really that awful.

Regardless, either way you look at it, whether on Tapas or Tapastic, non-premium novels are currently buried.

And considering how much outrage would be generated if the Tapastic homepage gave attention to non-premium novels at the cost of comic creators, this is unlikely to change. Given how everyone seems to be on edge after the TOS issue, the last thing we recommend or personally want to see is any changes to the homepage.

Another issue in play is that comic readers aren't novel readers.

Even though we have over 2k subs on Tapastic that translates to very little interest for our novel. Of our 2,255 subs, only 20 to 30 decided to subscribe. Couple that with the 10 to 20 subs we've maybe gotten from our Staff Pick and you reach the 40 subs we currently have, which works out to about 2 subs per update. At 400 words per update, we will need to write 1,260,000 words (5,040 250-word pages) in order to make it into the Top 10 in the Drama category.

5,040 pages is the equivalent of writing The Bible (3098 pages), The Lord of the Rings (1178 pages), and 60% of War and Peace (1,225 pages) combined.

Yeah. That's not happening.

Considering the amount of time it takes to write and edit a novel, to get 1 or 2 subs per update is quite discouraging. Maybe interest in non-premium novels will pick up at some point but with the current build of Tapas, there's not much for non-premium novelists to get excited about.

[Devika]

Even though we have over 2k subs on Tapastic that translates to very little interest for our novel.

Honestly I didn't even know you had released a novel and I'm subbed to you x'D (Crowned)

If I hadn't been on the forums, the "opening" of novels to the general public would have passed me by entirely unnoticed. As Golden Plume said, free novels are very much not visible, at least in the sense that you probably wouldn't find one unless you 1. knew of their existence and 2. went out to look for them. Which essentially translates to invisible to the general public by marketing law.

[Rueleer]

It's a bit sad to hear that novels are being received poorly, especially because a close friend of mine is plans to get onto the platform. qwqq

That said, I feel like Tapas as not marketed the Novel section of it well, if what its done so far is even really marketing. :"DD But, since I have no idea what kind of stuff is going on backstage, I'll hope for the best. My friend needs some time to work anyway. \D

[daniolivers]

This is wonderfully put, thank you. I agree that it's very much like a 'fifth page of Google' situation - I've brought most of my readers with me from another site, and although I've hit the Staff Picks, and my novel is the highest-ranked non-premium novel in 'Romance', no one new is going to find it unless they sit refreshing the 'Fresh' page on their mobile endlessly. I think if novels were included in the Snack, this would help a lot, or else putting the Staff Picks section on the app, for mobile readers to use.

[GoldenPlume]

Honestly I didn't even know you had released a novel and I'm subbed to you

We did a wall/profile post about launching the serialized novel but we really don't know how effective wall posts are. Since there are few, if any, replies to our wall posts either our subscriber base is dead or they're not seeing the notifications. But the core issue we think is that few of our subs are even interested in novels to begin with.

Tapas probably opened up novels expecting authors to bring readers with them like @daniolivers did. However if you have no existing readership it will be pretty hard to be found. Unfortunately there's no answer that we can think of to rectifying this because everything done for non-premium authors comes at the expense of premium series. Staff isn't going to trade away income for non-income. For example, if the daily snack remains at 5 per day, staff has to either drop a comic or a premium book to make room for a non-premium book, that frankly, probably will get very little interest. We seriously doubt that will happen. Tapas will lose income and some comic creators will rage about how they are getting short changed by novels.

Improvements to the books side will probably happen for the app like the addition of "Trending" and "Fresh". It's just going to take a while because due to having a small team it takes a while to get things coded in.

[daniolivers]

It would be really nice to see the Staff Picks, and / or Trending novels on the app. I'm a reader as well as a creator, and I do think there are a lot of lovely novels on the platform that deserve more attention than they're getting. I tweet about them when I can, and rec to Tumblr, but there does need to be visibility on the app.

[Devika]

We did a wall/profile post about launching the serialized novel but we really don't know how effective wall posts are.

Wall posts don't show up on the app at all, so that's probably why I (and perhaps others) missed it, as I mostly read on my tablet. It's a desktop only feature, just like reply notifications.

Unfortunately a lot of creators don't seem to know this, which also became apparent after the ToS debacle when a bunch of creators made wall posts about deleting their comic - that most readers simply didn't see and they consequently got very upset when the comics disappeared "without notice". It's too bad, because creators do need a way to communicate with their readers without having to make an episode for announcements.

[jordanthelass]

It's hard to say at this point because the novel section is still new to Tapas. I'm pretty sure the majority of people on the site/mobile apps want to read comics. But since the format of submitting chapters is relatively short, I can see potential in it.

For me, though, I'm just happy to be able to share my work without being toppled over by fan fiction.

[Rai]

There needs to be better organization in the novels, imo. I've dug through a good number and there are so many mediocre paid ones it's just turned me off to the category in general. I'm basically better off going to ao3 because I ain't paying for some low key kpop fan fiction.

That said, I hope it can improve in the coming months.

[daniolivers]

There's now a 'New and Noteworthy' section on the app for books, all of which are non-premium novels, which is nice - interestingly, they're not the same books as in the Staff Picks on the desktop site. I also noticed a non-premium book in the Daily Snack, yesterday, so it looks like things are moving along!

[GoldenPlume]

Today they picked The Boy Princess for the daily snack which is also a non-premium novel. And there hasn't been major outcry on the forums from comic creators. So it looks like non-premium authors are starting to get some love.

[AdrenalineShots]

That's great news congrats!

[T.S.Thorn]

H:3llo, I'm Ghost. Nice to meet you. I enjoy writing but I'm also trying to improve my art, so yea its going pretty well. There are so many great novels to read, so I'm never bored.

[Aura-Redwood]

I've been positing my writing here and even if there's not many views the community is so nice here. My likes per views are very much evidence of that

[daniolivers]

Yes, my novel The Boy Princess was picked for the Snack, and honestly I was overwhelmed by the love and the response - I checked my notifications and nearly fell over. But yes, it seems like the playing field is levelling out nicely, and it's going to be so much easier to find new authors and stories to read!

[lunaartemisasama]

Well considering that my novel is in Spanish and I don't have an audience at all...quite well. At least I got more than 10 views lol.

I am considering uploading it in Wattpad if I finish the first chapter.

[69Michi]

Well, considering that manga readers are usually not into novel (I know plenty of people just don't have the attention pan for it) I'm not surprised novels aren't doing as great as people expected it to be on Tapas. (Plus, I think Tapas readers in general are used to short updates of comic that manages to grab their attention for a short time. I even once was encouraged to not make long length update. I don't think short attention span like that would translate to reading novel chapter really well.)

But that is just my theory ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[GoldenPlume]

You're right. Tapas promotes a lot of gag-a-days which only take about 10 seconds to read and chuckle. Now readers are being asked to spend 2-3 minutes or even more reading text. Text is a horse and buggy compared to the Formula 1 race car that is graphics. Graphics are eye catching and sexy. Text is not. Which is why we actually abandoned all our novel projects and went into illustrated works (light novels and manga).

It appears that staff has decided they're "maxing out" in the webcomics industry so they've set their sights on getting a piece of the Wattpad pie which is massive. A lot of people don't read comic books but text only. Tapas wants to bring in that readership with hopes that they can convert some of those readers into premium/key comic consumers.

Everyone here wins the more readership Tapas brings to the table.