Is Tapas Premium worth it for your comic?

[kazukitakamura126]

I was wondering will Tapas's premium services help you comic reach a wider audience? The reason why I ask is because I have the first chapter of my latest comic done and I want to show it to readers who maybe interested. Comics I have posted on this site before have reached 30 to 40 subscribers at a maximum. So any advice will be appreciated.

[NanettesClouds]

I think you’ve maybe misunderstood what the premium comics are, so I’m gonna maybe try and clear that up/answer your question.

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Premium comics aren’t a service that creators can buy into or anything, its a bit of a misleading name for them, but they’re really just comics that Tapas “publishes” that users have to pay to read (that’s why they’re “premium”)

In order to make a premium comic you have to contact tapas and give them a pitch, I don’t really know what goes into a pitch tho because I haven’t done it.

Premium comics get a couple of benefits over us normies though, some are obvious (you get paid) and others are less-so. Some of those benefits include:
-you can tag your story with multiple genres.
-the popular/trending algorithm works different for premium series, Im Not entirely sure what the exact differences are, but the main result of this is that you don’t have to have updated recently in order to show up on popular/trending.
-Tapas does a lot of marketing for you because they get a cut of what people pay when reading your series (as publishers should)

[kazukitakamura126]

Thanks for letting me know what Tapas Premium comics are and how it works. I will definitely put together a pitch for my comic and send it to the Tapas staff.

[NanettesClouds]

Best of luck! Even if you don’t get accepted though there are still options for us normies to monetize/expose our comics.

• Ad revenue is available to all users over 18.
• The tipping program is available to anyone with 200+ subscribers, and tapas staff will enable tipping on people below that during special events.
  -the trending/popular tabs are not as difficult to get on as some people believe, and in fact it’s way easier for a new series to do so because of the algorithm.
  -there are lots of threads here on the forums for showcasing your comic & finding new readers
• the community in general is very friendly here, and so it’s easy to make friends with other people who make similar work, and it’s not hard to work together with your peers to give eachother small boosts of exposure/share your readerbases. Doing things like guest comics, creator recommendations, and maybe even collaborations can go a long way.

So yeah

[Rhombik]

I get the impression that by the time you make premium, you don't really need it.

Trending is super helpful. I find I often double up on subscribers when I trend.

[NanettesClouds]

You don't have to be at an particular "level" so to speak to make a premium comic hypothetically, it helps if you have a good track record of consistent updates though I assume. But theoretically ANYONE could get accepted for a premium comic if their pitch is solid.