Building readership with novels tends to be a bit harder with comics because Tapas has fewer novel readers than comic readers. On the upside though, there are a lot fewer novels overall and it's much easier to trend in the popular charts and have visibility because of it.
Here are my tips:
- Make sure the cover is really eye-catching even when displayed at a small size. Punchy light-dark contrast, one or more faces engaging the audience, a title that pops from the background and reads very clearly.
- Unlike comics, the blurb is displayed with the cover for novels, but only part of it. Make sure your blurb has a baller couple of opening sentences that really sell the premise.
- Participate in regular promotion on the Tapas forums and discord. Don't promo dump in every promo thread at once, just do one or two every few days or week. Focus on promo threads where you post excerpts, share the cover or discuss themes over ones where everyone dumps their link and runs.
- If you have money to spend, spend it on commissioning one or more illustrators. Good artwork is so helpful for promoting novels on a visual-leaning platform like Tapas and also helps with social media promo.
- Cross-post to other sites and apps. Even if they don't pick up a lot of readers, it raises the profile of your work.
