I'm not sure any industry really cares about searching and digging out the most skilled creators if there's already popular ones they can snatch up.
You know what I think is strange? The most popular book on this website is heavily criticized for poor writing and translation and in my opinion reads like a whining teenager.
But what do I know. I'm just an independent pleb.
I think popularity does have something to do with it, but not because the staff thinks not popular = not good. They want creators whose work would be a good fit for their existing, paying userbase. They're like a pie bakery. They want good pies more than they want GREAT beef steaks.
i think if the tapas incubator program was based largely on current popularity, it would be more or less null... tapas already starts up premium deals w its popular creators anyway.
but potential popularity being a major influence? sure. that might exclude comics that are extremely skilled and well thought out, it may include some mediocre material on the basis of being whats popular (jus saying, i havent been paying any attention to the incubator program but doubt any of them are mediocre, dont sue me). tapas knows its demographic, and its always been the way that particularly niche stuff has had to carve its own way to a larger degree, so dont sweat about it.
youre not going to be penalised for anything, but if you pitch your IP to tapas and they do not consider it economically viable, then thats that. you can keep pitching elsewhere, pitch tapas new ideas as you develop as an artist... the door is never closed for good (unless idk you cuss out their mums or smth. dont cuss out the tapas staffs mums) and the merit in your work will be recognised if you put in the work to make it shine and make it known. comics is 50% actually making comics and 50% business skillz
Huh... Well that kind of sucks, but it's understandable. Both of my comic pitches are very action oriented rather than romance oriented (Which Tapas seems very keen on), so I guess I'll just have to work on making my pitches look aesthetically beautiful, action packed, and emotionally scarring 
As for making my comic more popular to be well known, that's just gonna be a trial of waiting, hoping, and doing the best I can 
I was a fan fiction of twilight that the author wanted to published so she just changed the names and presto
After, a One Direction fanfiction on Wattpad, got published and the writer did the same thing. She just changed the names of the band members to something else. They say After is like the New Adult version of 50 shades, which is pretty much true...
I don't even know what to think anymore about the book industry.
Edit: Like fanfictions shouldn't be published in the first place. Now i'm kind of worried about going the traditional route.
Hmm, I wouldn't let the fact that fanfiction is getting published stop you from your goals.
Like someone else mentioned, these so-called writing websites don't care about quality writing, they care about what's popular. If it makes you feel better, I decided to explore a website called "Radish." Radish is another story sharing website where writers online can make money. To post there, you need to be invited. The "invited" stories are like Tapas's premium content. You pay for chapters using "coins." Well, I saw one story that was very popular in romance. And well, needless to say, after reading it I wanted to run for the hills and wash out my eyes.
In the end, if poorly written stories get popular, then you can't control what the masses what. Just keep writing your stories and pursuing your own goals.
Also, keep in mind these fanfictions only got popular because they used someone else's fanbase. When I was writing Levi x Reader fanfiction (yep, no shame), I got like 3K followers on Wattpad. However, they weren't there for my stories, just Levi who already had an established fanbase.
Are you going for paper or online? I think i'm going to try to go online, I see plenty of potential compared to paper these days.
Popularity plays a role but I certainly don't think it's as big of a factor as people think. Tapas has a huge platform filled with creators. The amount of comics uploaded are huge and there's times where I'm like, "How did I not see this comic before? How did I not read this story?" There's just a lot so you are essentially (if I may steal from Criminal Minds) a needle in a pile of needles. The only way you'll stand out is if you take the chance to throw yourself out there and really go for it. It's hard and you never know what will grab people's attention but the "popular" comics weren't always popular either y'know. People started at the bottom, got to the top and once you get there you have a base that keeps you pretty sturdy. It's definitely easier to get noticed once you've reached "popular" status but I don't think Tapas would judge you too much based on your subscribers especially with comics. That's just my opinion though so...yeaaaaah~
I'm not popular either, but I do understand that they're going to keep that very important factor into account.
Is like the manga industry. If doesn't matter the technique. The most successful stories in terms of popularity are the ones that draw readers into the magazine. So that's why those stories are a priority, even more than maybe a story in which the art is "better" and maybe a more complex story.... But the readers choose.
It's the same reason series and TV shows get cancelled. They need enough people watching, even If they're good (some of them are so good)
Popularity is such an important factor, specially If there's money involved.
So what I'm trying to achieve and I recommed you the same, is not make my story cheesy or easy, but becoming so good nobody can ignore you. That tactic does take a lot of time of course
Good luck in your comic!!
From what I've been able to tell, a large factor is how consumable a story is. Stories like 50 shades or other objectively "bad" writing will still become popular because of how easily digestible it is. A lot of premium or popular content you see on the site is like that, too: the plot is easily summed up in a sentence or two, things progress quickly and the writing is clear. There's a "low bar for entry", if that makes sense, and it's accessible by a wide audience. (Just to clarify, I don't mean that consumable = bad!! Often times the most well written stories have these traits too)
The more complex and nuanced your story is, the less fit it is for general appeal. Even masterpieces in writing and art may fail to become broadly popular for this reason. They also don't seem to like epic stories that will take years and years to create because those are inherently riskier. Tapas specifically also prefers full color and the mobile layout instead of traditional "comic pages".
My art is professional grade and I always get people surprised that my comic isn't more popular, but a lot of that reason comes from what I listed above. It's B&W, traditional page setup, epic-level long form, niche genre, slower production rate, packed with nuance, and frankly, written to be a graphic novel--not a webcomic. So if you can apply a lot of those same qualifiers to your comic or writing style, it's just not optimized for Tapas to make money. That doesn't make it bad by any stretch, but you'll just be struggling more unfortunately.
You know, after I actually looked at all the people who got into the 1st program. I'm a bit discouraged from entering the next Incubator Program... All of them had at least 1k subs (Some had WAAAY more), except for the two that didn't even have a Tapas account before entering...
I'll probably still enter because I've put a lot of work into my pitch already, but I'm not going to put my hopes up in the air to have them dashed worse then they were last time.
It may hurt to know/hear, but this is common practice in any creative business. The reason it looks like that is that the people who have 1k+ subs are usually also people who have worked long and/or hard with their art in a space where they can be noticed. For some of them, this was finally their day. For others, it may be their second, third, fourth, what the hell ever-th time that they get noticed and offered an agreement. Regardless, they worked hard to get where they are, just like you do.
You want to be where they are, right? And when you are there you wouldn't want people to look at you and feel angry or discouraged.
Rejection is part of getting where we want. I have been rejected by many publishing companies. Most professional creators have.
But if you don't risk having to face rejection, you also lose out on the chance to get a "yes".
So I would advise you to give the program a shot next year too. The worst you can get is a no. That is all. Very little to lose 
Precise and well-said sentiment. As with all career endeavours, this is a crucial bit of advice that only gets half its message passed around a lot. Popularity (ie, success) is awarded-based on one easily placed merit, like lots of subscriptions, yet delineated by a variety of abstract factors.
In the same vein, corp will invest safely with a terrific multitude of strings to best ensure benefits. There are sacrifices (ie, conditions) for the experience of the Incubator programme in ways working independently would never need leveraged. Weigh the all things equally and try not to focus exclusively on one discouraging element.
