If you publish on Tapas, does that mean you can't publish your series physically?

[pearsonified]

I am open to creating a webcomic on Tapas, but at the same time I would also like to sell physical copies of my future comics eventually after some formatting. I would like to make sure I retain as much ownership of my IP as possible before finalizing my decisions. Does anyone have any stories of creators selling physical copies of their work under third party publishers, or does posting your webcomic on Tapas mean that your art is exclusively web-only? Sorry if it's a dumb question, but I'm new and was hoping I could find some answers.

[Kelheor]

No, unless you have an exclusive contract with Tapas, you own them nothing and free to do anything with your creative work.

[ninjashira]

Unless or until your comic becomes Premium and you sign an exclusivity contract with Tapas, you retain all rights to your creation and can do whatever you want with it. You can post a comic to Tapas and Webtoons, and still retain every single right to your piece to make merchandise, sell books, make a TV show, whatever!

If your comic becomes a Tapas Premium or a Webtoons Original, and you sign a contract with them as publishers, those terms may change. But until that happens, your art is 100000% your art and you can do whatever you want with it.

[Caro]

World’s fastest thread replies omg y’all.

But yeah what they said. Go wild if you aren’t under a contract.

[pearsonified]

Woah this was unbelievable quick. I'm already liking it here, Thanks guys! I don't plan on going premium, so the idea of completely owning my IP sounds like a childhood dream. I can't wait to get started once I find the time.

[Caro]

I don’t know if its true for Tapas but for the Webtoon contract there was a period of time after your series ends that you can go ahead and publish and I’ve seen that stipulation in other webcomics/general internet based comics gig contracts before. I don’t know if that’s true for Tapas but it seems likely because they don’t seem entirely interested in print as well?

I might be wrong though! I’ve heard some shady things about their contracts before and I’m not up to date.

[crowstories]

Sounds like you've got your answer in terms of IP, but it's also worth considering that a lot of publishers do not want to publish work which is already available for free online (at least I know this is the case for novels, not sure about comics). There are some exceptions, for instance if your series gets a good following online, this can tell a publisher that it could be profitable, though you'll likely need to take the online version down before publishing.

With that said, when it comes to comics, I think a lot of people publish independently using crowd funding, so in that case you're not beholden to a publisher, and will likely make most of your sales from people who have already read your work online.