Is anybody currently meeting the requirements for Patreon sponsorship on Line Webtoon?

[Zugaikotsu]

Yes, that is what I try to do. Keep doing my best, the happier I can, because well, many people seems happy with my stories. Maybe someday some senpai will notice me?

[Laht]

The only thing I'm sad for is the lost of potential great authors. I love hard working people, and I believe that even if something got popular suddenly but never do anything to maintain the popularity, the fans wouldn't stay.

When I see a nice fan base, I usually can see why they like a person's work so much. And I'm glad they make a nicer place, because I believe the world has enough of negativity.
Discover has a lot more variety now, a lot of different opinions. The majority of the readers now are kind, understanding, witty and funny. I've seen the wave of toxicity, it is now a much much nicer place.

It's nice of LW to give out concrete incentive, it gives traffic & attract talents. It's still their freedom to give out to those who they think benefit the majority. It doesn't benefit anyone if the place is associate with negative rumours. There are still issues to be solved, I like the platform over all and I hope it'll became nicer and nicer.

I like to encourage artist to create, even as pure hobby, if that makes them happy.
Without authors, there would be no stories to read.
It would be sad, a place with no stories.

[Cloverloy]

I originally intended to just observe how things go (either webtoon solves the issue on its own or something else happens).
But now I want to add something as well.

Like most of you I noticed two things:

First:
The change in Webtoons pledge policy.
It's now harder to get money from publishing your comic on webtoons,

And second:
Webtoon does promote some discover titles again and again for a longer period of time than others.

These are facts. Everything else is mostly assumption making on our part.
What in my opinion really matter is what me make out of this.

---

While I am indeed sad that I only get half of the money I used to, I see where webtoon's coming from. The 1 Million they got from Patreon is not that much money I you try to split it up for ca 300 creators for a whole year.
I think this is just the way it is, and we have to accept that.

Now what ties into this is that getting a higher pledge is made easier for the people who were promoted by webtoons.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the titles webtoon choose to promote. While I think most of the comics that were promoted over the last months were of the romance genre, it actually makes sense for webtoon to promote them because the genre is quite well-received by readers (not only on discover but also in th featured section) thus creating more traffic. They are a company after all,so I don't blame them for wanting to make more money.

The problem this brings is obviously that the sub gap between heavily promoted comics and the ones that gain subs on their own is increasing quite drastically. Those comics are pushed futher down in the ranking to the second, then to third page and on, which results in them getting fewer views thus getting a smaller pledge. With each update they go further down in the ranking.
While I myself am doing quite well despite never being promoted, I've seen other good comics going down because of this.
It's quite sad.

All this results in a bad atmosphere as displayed in this thread. I don't want people to be jealous of the success of others who were lucky to be promoted by webtoon.. And on the other hand I don't want people that were promoted to feel like they didn't deserve it. And I definitely do not want people to give up on their dream to create comics because the fell treated unfairly.

I would rather have a fun and fair competition between creator to see who's the very best like no- okay, I will stop.

But now the important part:
How do we solve this?

I think there a quite a lot of creators who noticed the things discussed in this thread so maybe, if enough people get together to write to the company, things could change
I heard that webtoon takes quite a while to respond to mails. If they even respond at all. So maybe it's better to write some kind of open letter and post/retweet it as much a possible.
Alternative to making it public eventually a mail could be sent to this person https://twitter.com/euniceyoonikim
If I remember correctly she is also involved in the discover recommendations, but I might be wrong.

Well, I know I probably sound naive wanting to solve the problem like that but I really want something to be done. I really like the discover page and I use it way more than the main page, so I don't want this situation to get any worse.
But these are just my thoughts on the topic.

[Zugaikotsu]

That's a good idea! As long is a polite, calm, well written and thought letter, maybe this can really work!

[Haku]

I think it's great to pose the "how do we solve this?" question. If we were to contact them, there are many angles we should consider:
As Readers: "How can we discover more comics without seeing the same thing weekly?"
As Creators: "How can I be sure my comic is being treated fairly with others?"
As Webtoon: "How can we still spotlight the comics that are generating lots of traffic for us?"
It's difficult to reach a middle ground between all three but I think if we look at it objectively, these are the issues based on the facts we have.

[Hodge]

Well I've just been lurking but would definitely be up for communicating our concerns to webtoon. The current set up in my opinion just isn't really efficient if the goal is to take creators seriously and help them create quality content for readers to enjoy. Though honestly all I would like is to just see more communication from them.

[AllisonGal]

it would be great if things was fair, but if it's not it'd ok too if webtoon was honest about it. the problem is webtoon keep lying that their new system is for all discover artists to get more exposure when it's not. I'll have no problem if they tell thing as it is instead of lying they're helping everyone when they're not.

I have nothing against any creators they favorited but let's be honest, they got to their high position with massive help from webtoon. I respect these authors but I'm not gonna lie and be in denial saying they got top because their comic was better or more popular than others. Also, chosen comic appearing non-stop 4-5-6 times, yes, it's favoritism plain and simple, how people do not see that is beyond me. Anyway, the crooked system of webtoon we r exposing is not based on just assumptions, we've seen it with our own eyes. It's not about disrespecting anyone or being unprofessional. Anyone not wishing to talk about this just don't. But others should be able to talk about it freely. No one on here has anything against any creators, just something against the hypocrisy of webtoon.

[AllisonGal]

As Webtoon: "How can we still spotlight the comics that are generating lots of traffic for us?"

I understand it being hard for readers and creators but for webtoon? Maybe the big comics should be promoted just once in a while and each one their turn and leave also space for less known authors. simply enough, they should change recommended more often (maybe leave it on for just 2 week instead of 2-3 months) and put more divers comics, also same for front page, try to get everyone to be seen, at least start with the 300 creators they are pledging, out of these 300, they favorite like 6-7 of them non stop appearing 1000 times, that's so easy to arrange. make others appear as well, they will gain view and traffic too. It's not hard, webtoon just don't wanna.

[Haku]

I only involved Webtoon's angle because it is their site and overall, they are the one making the calls. From a business standpoint, things has to benefit your own business as well. If they really don't want to, unfortunately that's their choice. No matter how hard we speculate, we 100% don't know the resources they have, the overall budget, the one who makes all the overall calls (if we assume there are staff that actually do want these changes we are proposing, but the higher ups don't want to). It's easy to say to change it when we're technically the ones not working with them.

[AllisonGal]

I agree they can do that it's their site, if they want to continue doing this is OK, but I'm just asking they be honest about this like tapas. Yes, honesty... is it too much to ask? They r leading creators on by saying stuff pointing out to high hope and then let them down an ugly fall. Webtoon should only say what they r truly doing in all honesty, it's easy to do. I don't see why they can't do that, even 5 years old kid can do.

[beta1042]

I feel like there are SOOO MANY things they could be doing. It's really not that difficult.

For one, they could create better searching system in discover. Like let us tag our comics for a search system. Then let people search under multiple tags(or even block certain tags). Like say for example you want a fantasy, but you don't want it to be romance. Then you could search with the tag fantasy selected and romance blocked and only find those comics that are romance free fantasy.

They could have a section on the front page of discover that shows "just updated" comics regardless of rank, stats, etc.

They could have a section on front page, or front page discover, or even a section under "genres" or something which is comics with fewer than 5 updates to help get new comics exposure.

They could have a recommendation section that is created by users. The way Etsy front page used to be years ago- people on etsy could make their own little collection of items from various artist, and then etsy would pick one they like and showcase it on the front page. Let people make their own recommendation lists and randomly select it and showcase it.

Actually change their recommendations weekly.

Promote a different genre every week.

These are just a few things that took me like 3 minutes to think up, imagine if you actually hired people where it's your job to think about these things, imagine how many more possible ideas and methods they could use.

Seriously they're just being lazy.

[Haku]

I think lots of these things are great points, thus sending in an email with some proposed solutions would get somewhere. If they choose to ignore us though, then yeah, it shows they may not really care what we think. We may just be proposing ideas into a void that never reaches their ears, but at least we tried. I'm trying to not sound unhopeful, but realistic. I've worked with companies before that really are too stubborn to change their ways. But there are some companies that really do care what people think, at least.

[Zugaikotsu]

unless we write an open letter and everybody start to put it in the end of their episodes. They might be lazy, but the readers sometimes might take a stand for the creators. I know most of us are small creatos, but maybe the word spreads

[Anotheryou]

But you know.. when we complain here, it more effective because the staff stalking this thread. It's more than twice they change recommended title/fresh pick after we complained here.

[69Michi]

I honestly think it might just be a coincident and doubt any of the Webtoon staffs even know of Tapas forum to check it out.

As for website changes, Webtoon operates through a lot of different language platform and I think unless said language has a special section going on (ie: indo Webtoon’s Rising Star) I honestly doubt they would make random change here and there like adding more “Fresh” section and the like on Discover. We have to remember Webtoon doesn’t just have 1 English site, they have several in different other languages too and each language follows the same similar system. I would think adding more section would need the higher up’s permission for pros and cons AND then send it out to whoever programs these website to go through each and everyone of them to change

[Zugaikotsu]

But we're not proposing them to include more sections, just change the titles on the ones already existing more often.

[69Michi]

I was referring to @beta1042 suggestions LMFAO but yeah I do wish they can switch up their promotions better. They were pretty prompt when they first started the trend of discover series banner on the front pages, changing pretty much every day. But now they just kinda laze bk and reuse the old one. I guess they run out of banners they do take time to make.

[AllisonGal]

I don't think they're lazy, they just don't wanna. don't tell me in a month they could only use the banner of the same series on front page continiously... These were already done. How much longer than a month and more do they need to make a few other banners to use? people like creators in discover have jobs and they can do a few eps a month but webtoon not being able to fabricate a few banners of an existing drawing? that's bullsh*t. Even i can do a lot in just a day.

[Zugaikotsu]

Oh! I see! It appeared as public, here! Gommen! (sorry!)

Yes! When I first came in 2016 the weekly round up was indeed, weekly, and the recommended a month, at most, even for their fave ones, at the time.

[beta1042]

I'm not sure why different language websites would really matter. Again, they're the one's saying they want to do more to get the word out, being lazy about it sure isn't helping. Like I said I thought those ideas up in 3 minutes, I'm sure if they actually cared they could think of something that would work too. But having written websites in the past, I really don't think most of my suggestions are that complicated to implement.