How do you choose your unique comic's genre?

salomongomez 2017-05-05 20:01:08 UTC #1

Hi there, we'd like your input!

What's your opinion on the effect a category or genre can have on early comics when they're trying to maximize discoverability and stay true to their content?

We're the creators of RACIANTAU, which you can check out on Tapastic and on our site.

When promoting our work at any webcomic listing sites or publishing platforms like Tapastic, we run into the question of picking a single genre to categorize our comic.

You might have ran into the issue before if:

1.Your story doesn't fit any of the genres in Tapastic's list, or
2. Your story blends multiple genres (eg. fantasy / slice of life OR sci-fi / romance OR comedy / sci-fi / horror, etc.)

The question becomes:

How do you pick between them to promote your comic? Do you find it affects discoverability?

RACIANTAU is an anthology of short stories that tackle philosophical questions. Part of the nature of the anthology's structure is to make each new entry different. Our focus when writing was never to think of our work as being part of any single genre, but instead focus on philosophical matters we find interesting and hard, so we can place our cute characters in difficult-to-navigate situations and see how they grow. Different genres help with that goal, but we're not writing multiple series; all stories are set in a single fantasy meta-verse.

For example:

MARS FREEDOM COLONY, our latest, is pretty much just sci-fi
COLLISION 2016 is a political humor comic strip
BATTLEMON might be considered gaming, but that's a stretch
and the rest of our stories somewhat defy the normal genre categories....

RACIANTAU is looking for an audience that cares to discuss the topics our characters struggle with. As we work to grow our readership, it's important for us that those interested in the type of comics we create can find our work.

keii4ii 2017-05-05 20:34:11 UTC #2

It's less about describing your comic and more about figuring out "this comic appeals most to fans of X genre." There is subtle but significant difference between the two approaches.

My comic, for instance, is very obviously fantasy, but it actually seems to disappoint fantasy fans because they tend to come for the adventure? There's not much of that in my comic. So I changed the genre label to drama, which is the real meat of the story.

UncleVlad 2017-05-06 15:29:29 UTC #3

This has me thinking that i may have put my comic in the wrong category....

trinkettrancemusic 2017-05-06 17:06:22 UTC #4

Yeah, this has been a concern for me as well with The Beard. I have it under sci-fi, because technically, that's what it is - it takes place in an alternate future. But I find that most sci-fi on here tends towards space opera and action-heavy stories, whereas my comic uses the science fiction as a satirical backdrop for surreal, occasionally philosophical body horror disguised by banter-heavy humour inspired by the likes of Whedon, Kevin Smith and Warren Ellis. So, I've been considering trying it in comedy, as that's one of its main appeals and purposes, but my impression of webcomic comedy is not that of long form storytelling. I wish we could have primary and secondary genre tags but I don't know how convoluted that would make the system.

Is there any downside to genre hopping to test the waters?

salomongomez 2017-05-06 19:01:01 UTC #5

Hey UncleVlad, we did a quick search and didn't find your comic. Where can we check your work out?

salomongomez 2017-05-06 19:29:41 UTC #6

Trinket Trance,

We think you might be on to something. We took a look over at The Beard (have to say: awesome stuff, looking forward to where you go with it) and I think Comedy might be a better descriptor at least up to the latest. However, you do mention that long-form isn't as common under that genre.... And keii4ii appears to believe fan expectations are the most important consideration.

We might be in a similar boat, what we like most about your work is the philosophical commentary and absurdism you're bringing to light resonates with the perspective we'd like to show through RACIANTAU (even if both comics present it wildly different).

That said, I think maybe you should give Comedy a try and see how it affects views on update days? I think that's my plan, anyway.

thelastapprentice4 2017-05-06 20:24:41 UTC #7

it is pretty hard to choose which category to put a comic in since it sometimes feel like it should be a different genre, i guess its good to go into depth to what the plot of the story is and future content that the comic will provide.

UncleVlad 2017-05-06 23:02:18 UTC #8

https://m.tapas.io/series/This-May-Be-The-Year

I think this is a good topic to discuss. We all might be missing out on readership b/c our comic doesn't fit in the category we've placed it.

I've got mine in fantasy, but it probably belongs in the comedy section.