Looking for solutions, not rant. How to fix the overcrowded Tapas?

[rajillustration]

@skicoak As interesting as it would be to see a juried competition of like 10,000+ original comics and novels, I cannot fathom how tapas would do that.

I feel like they'd have to instead rely on a community judging system...

...AKA the ranking system that Webtoons already does and is hated by basically everyone because it gets abused so much.

[Rhonder]

Big agree with the picture painted by both your and @torncloak 's post, it's pretty accurate! This ties back to my original reply way back at the top of the thread- Tapas is already providing us a free service by providing free webhosting. In return, like your reply goes over, we bring traffic to the site. Same goes for Webtoons and other similar platforms.

Beyond that, though, it's really on the creator to think and act outside the box and figure out how to get eyes on their stuff~ These bit in particular resonate with me:

If you want to be heard, you can't always just speak louder - sometimes you have to speak in the right place, at the right time.

If your webcomic is underperforming, spread out onto other platforms and try social media sites. You might need to diversify your output if you discover that you actually cannot make a meaningful living or garner a significant audience from your work, because even if it's good, it might not be SEEN as good at the TIME when it's viewed.

My initial thoughts and plans on the matter I already wrote at length up in reply number, uh... 16 to this thread so I won't regurgitate it here, but basically yeah~ The silent agreement with the platform is already being fulfilled by our existing here. Moving beyond that both requires making excellent content and going above and beyond the average effort to get eyes on it.

[ble]

Please keep it positive.

Do you want my true opinion, what i think after 5 years of feeling like a failure at making comics, or "to be positive"? Can't do both. I promise I will be civil, at least.

I'm not part of this community, I'm an outsider, I'm even thinking about dropping making comics altogether (again), so take what I will say with a grain of salt.

I can't give you a solution, because I don't think there's one.

Tapas will keep being overcrowded because their main competition, webtoons, is even more overcrowded. I read a post in this thread comparing tapas or webtoons, to something like Youtube, and I agree with that. It's exactly the same.

Just like youtube, or webtoons, tapas will reward the big creators that bring the big views. If you don't bring views, you won't be a partner or get ad revenue or a contract or anything.

In my own experience tapas or webtoons never looked like a publisher to me, because...a publisher pays you, right? like Shounen Jump, DC or Marvel, they cancel series with poor performance, because they print and have to pay the creators. But sites like Youtube, Tapas or Webtoon, don't cancel series or channels with only 5 subscribers, because they don't pay you, they don't waste money on printing your stuff or anything like that.

At least a publisher will reject your work at the beginning. Tapas, Webtoon, or Youtube won't. They will keep posting your stuff with the promise of "well, keep trying, son, one day maybe you will get views and make money, you just have to believe really hard".

Believe it or not, that's me being positive. Bellow is my really negative response.

I recommend skipping it, it's full of despair.

Summary

If I was tapas, I won't change anything, because it's the model of what works on the internet. This model works for Youtube, Instagram, DeviantArt, Webtoons, Tapas, and many more.

These sites let people post their content for free, if they have big views, the big companies will gain ad revenue. If you don't bring big views, they don't lose anything. You're not even their employee, (because again, they don't pay us, the small creators). If you post something they may see problematic, they may delete it or set it as mature which will reduce your lower views, even more.

The only solution for my series would be to time travel to a time before Webtoons or Tapas, when small comics were easier to find, or have their own communities, those people are the ones that make it big today. Without having to rely on the exploitive way of webtoons, that you are an employee to them, but have to make +50 panels per week.

Every day i see the future of small creators of webcomics, even more grim. That's why in my mind, I already left that path.

You have good intentions, but, at the end of the day, people posting suggestions on a forum won't change anything. Say you all arrive at the best solution here. Then ....what? That doesn't change the platform at all. Anyone who has the power to change the platform only will listen to shareholders or their parent company or whatever.

The only way they will listen is if a bunch of strangers on the internet decide to form a union and stop posting until the company listens to their demands. Then again, that will be a bunch of people not working for tapas, because the big creators won't care for this movement, so tapas, webtoons, etc, they won't lose anything. The house always wins. You don't get rich by being a client in a casino, you get rich by owning the casino.

So if you want any power, you all will have to create your own hosting/publisher. But then you will realize you don't get any money, so you will have to adopt the same tactics, then you make money, and someday in the future, someone will complain about your hosting site doing the same things people complain about tapas or webtoons. Rinse and repeat till the end of days.

I say is a genius model. In a traditional company, the workers can unite and stop working. That works sometimes. In a platform with only a few employees (the big creators that are originals and editors or programers), while there's a bunch of people that the platform gives them a room and let them work for free...with the promise they may get paid someday if they are noticed by someone. They don't pay you, so...if you stop working they don't lose anything, as they still have "their real employees".

[skyfarron]

Pretty much. Saw it with Geocities, Youtube, DrunkDuck, Tumblr, and more. Every platform came from someone deciding to split off from another one to form a "revolution" that inevitably becomes the institution, if you're LUCKY and WORK REALLY HARD.

[ameliori]

The platform might not be inclined to change things. As mentioned above, Youtube, Webtoons, Deviantart all follow the same format.

One way I can see this improving is to encourage a small chunk of the community be commentators/reviewers. That is, their content is focused on reviewing new comics. Not just in the forum, but in other platforms as well. That's what makes the indie game community a little bit better than comics. There are a lot of youtubers/columnists/bloggers willing to give indie games a try because it provides content. In this way, indie gamedevs can pitch games to these creators so they will promote them to an audience hungry for content

Maybe I'm wrong, but it's rare for me to see a content creator actively seek out indie comics to talk about them. If there are people out there doing this, they must be nurtured and encouraged. (Link people you know pls) They should also be featured heavily in the community. I am thinking of doing this, blogging/vlogging about indie comics that contain the genre I like, and recommending them every week or so. P.S. (edit) For this to work, I'd suggest that it is separate from cross promoting your comics with another. So not "I'll review your comic if you review mine" deal, but more of "I review comics because it's what I do, and people follow my content to discover new comics"

As for Tapas side, a relatively "easy" solution would be to promote community recommendations, collections, curations like Steam and Itch.io. That way, people will follow somebody who mostly reviews and recommends "Dark Fantasy" comics, for example. Readers stop being beholden to Tapas's impersonal recommendations and start following people who have the same taste as them.

[rajillustration]

Maybe I'm wrong, but it's rare for me to see a content creator actively seek out indie comics to talk about them. If there are people out there doing this, they must be nurtured and encouraged. (Link people you know pls)

It used to be so much more of a thing back when blogging was a thing! I used to follow people who would read indie books and they had great recommendations (like the book community is superb at working with the reader space and sharing the love). Kind of a shame we lost blogs!

I know there are people on youtube and podcasts who do this, but I don't know how much viewership they get from readers, but I managed to get my comic to one blog (which I don't think exists anymore) and they gave a lovely review and it x10'd my readership overnight. So I would LOVE to see these reviewer blogs come back.

Lately I've noticed that there's a bunch of comic discords where people share what they're reading--which isn't the same, but that can help. Problem with discord is that it's a lot of invite-only in order to be a part of the reading groups and the review groups...and sometimes they review literally everything positively and so you'll be stuck with comics that are...truly terrible. But, at least it's something.

There are some Webcomic "libraries" still around, as well, kind of like a masterlist of webcomics--I think the one on tumblr is still active. I've used it before two years ago and it also helped my numbers a bit.

https://webcomiclibrary.tumblr.com/

[IndigoShirtProd]

Here's a comic creator and indie comic reviewer that makes pretty good videos. They're a part pf this forum and have a topic where they ask for comics to review.

MaddMoniArt

[jensrichard77]

Now we are getting into solutions that we can use, now.

Thank you @IndigoShirtProd and @rajillustration for sharing

[jensrichard77]

Here is the link to the promotion thingy:

Yes, Hello everyone! My name is Imani aka MaddMoniArt and the title says it all. I want to read and promote you and your comics! If you want to promote your COMIC SHOP go here What I’ll do is read through your comics and let everyone know what I like about it! I’m only looking for positive things to say. Then I’ll write a review on my blog, ‘MaddIndies’, and showcase it on my youtube channel, ‘MaddMoniArt’. If you want me to give out constructive feedback on your series let me know and I…

Also: @maddmoniart if you have a banner and link, I will promote you on my series instead of my own Twitter for the next 3 month to boost your channel. We need people to see your reviews, othervice it would not help.
(Imagen if all 61000 creator did that?)

[jensrichard77]

Okay this is amazing!
I could look for a Comic from Tapas with a female main character in a LGB action fantasystory with aliens.

This is a great tool. And we all should be there. This is the tag search that tapas do not have.

Webcomic Library's Tapas! - LGB+ Main - Fantasy - Action/Adventure - Aliens...

[Utamee]

Hmm.. How about we make another thread who have youtube/blog or whatever, who willing to trade promote? Maybe there is more kind people like @maddmoniart who want to review comic on their youtube channel too.
I'm newbie, only around for a month now, so does my blog. My first month only have 600-ish views in the blog, but I interested for trade promote. I'm sure this will help growing our other platform.

[darthmongoose]

I feel like this thread has naturally divided into two kinds of users here, which is interesting.

Users like me, who want Tapas to primarily act like a platform and to just allow content that performs well to be seen organically through algorithms.

Then another set of users who want Tapas to act like a publisher and to directly intervene and to either tell them straight up: "we don't think you're a good fit, you're wasting your time on this platform, go to Webtoons or whatever" or to say "We think your work deserves boosting and we're going to directly intervene to make it more visible."

Let me explain why I don't like the idea of Tapas deciding what people should read instead of letting high-performing content rise to visibility naturally:

Here's what the top row of Free to Read Action comics looks like this morning:

Oh hey, it's me!
My comic is punching above its weight. It has pretty damn good engagement for its number of bookmarks . So for me, the ideal system is one where that natural performance is rewarded. "People who like action comics are reading this and it's generating buzz, you might like it too."

Wheras, if the publisher decides what Action comics people should see.... well, did you see Errant, which looking at the stats is one of the most popular Action comics with a Fantasy setting, featured for Action Fantasy month? (It wasn't. I'm still salty. I am so salty if you threw a live salmon at me it'd instantly turn into gravadlax ). And if you open the Action page on the default "All" rather than deliberately tabbing over to "Free to Read", I'm several rows down, mostly buried under newly licensed series that were bought in and heavily promoted on the front page. So even though I'm performing well, my growth is poorer than it was this time last year when I had what like 20% of the subs I have now, even though I've upped my marketing game, improved my rate of output and really should be performing better. I am now reliant on Tapas directly featuring me for visibility because it's the only way to compete in a system where by far the greatest visibility goes to whatever the platform has chosen to feature.

So you can hopefully already see the obvious downside here. If the publisher chooses what should be popular rather than the algorithms boosting whatever is trending and generating buzz, yes, sure maybe there are some comics which are actually very good but for whatever reason, users just aren't finding it (usually because the user doesn't market much or doesn't have an effective cover or blurb in most cases), but if they have the power to do that, they also have the power to look at a comic that's getting readers and to go "Ohhhh no, no no, the readers are wrong to be reading this, we don't want them to be interested in this. This is getting hidden away in the 'Baby comics not very good' rank so it doesn't outperform the things we want them to read." Which unless the work is like... I dunno, racist or something, is a terrible state of affairs. Yes, it can feel bad when somebody makes something really trashy and it does well, and there's an instinct to be like "UGH! Stop reading that rubbish! Read this good thing instead!" but... there's a limit to how much power a platform should have over what people choose to read, and stepping in to prescribe the content to ensure people read the "right" thing has a knock-on effect that often harms actually good works by maginalised independent creators.

Earlier, Skicoak used my comic, Errant, as an example of a comic that could hypothetically be boosted if Tapas deliberately hand-ranked every comic on the site... but this misses the potential reverse scenario: What if Tapas decided that they don't like Errant and decided that in spite of its very active userbase and growing readership, they were going to put it into a low category to deliberately stop it from succeeding? Because that is also a thing that could happen in a system where visibility is based on what the publisher wants people to read, not on what people pick to read. What if there was backlash from homophobic investors who didn't like how the content that gets popular organically tends to skew queer and the platform decided to put all the LGBTQ+ content into a lower rank while boosting heterosexual works to combat this? Or what if the staff decided they don't like me criticising the platform on the forums and blacklist me from getting featured? You'd end up with a scenario where succeeding on the platform would depend on your ability to make something that appealed to the taste of whoever chooses what to boost, or the company's mandate, and then never giving any kind of negative feedback for fear of them stripping away your livelihood. It would be awful!
I'd much prefer a system where if my work is performing, it maybe gets a little boost, or an offer to be made premium, but largely the performance is in my hands. If I'm not catching reader attention with a webcomic, it ought to be my own fault for not doing effective research, not presenting or marketing well etc.

For boosting those creators whose works are good, but are struggling to get visibility because... say their concept isn't the sort of "high concept explained in the first episode" that catches attention on Tapas, or their cover is a bit subdued or it's a bit niche, but it's genuinely high quality, curated lists made by creators and users are my preference. It would reward community engagement without being a burden on the staff as well as the risks of visibility being impacted by one or two people's preference, and allow creators to recommend works that'd appeal to their readers or to people who like certain themes.

[jensrichard77]

Tapas is a publisher, but it's also a platform. It's tricky to do both, a bit like being Netflix and Youtube at the same time, and I think that's the heart of the issue here.

I think THIS is what makes us all confused and I think that you said it all right here?

And this is maybe why people are dividing.
Question is: What is Tapas?

I feel like this thread has naturally divided into two kinds of users here, which is interesting.

Hmm.. How about we make another thread who have youtube/blog or whatever, who willing to trade promote?

Sound like a good idea? Wanna be the one to start?

[darthmongoose]

Question is: What is Tapas?

Well I joined the site believing it was a platform. They've even described their goal as becoming like "the youtube of comics/novels". But if the site is going to start behaving like a publisher instead, I may as well go to a publisher where I know exactly what their mandate is, can make something suitable for that mandate and have my agent approach them with my full pitch and know within a month and with a synopsis and some sample pages if that project is going ahead or not.

My needs from a webcomic host and a publisher are different. I loved what Tapas was when I came to the platform about a year and a half ago. A platform where diverse creators could thrive by making good content. That's what I want.

[irresponsiblepics]

But if you just want a good time and have some people look at your stuff, we need to work together.

I have a stick figure comic. That's all I can do. But someone can do funny characters and another is great at laying colors and another can do background. Together we can make a comic that feels like a success and we are not fighting each other over a spit on the front page but we are all helping to promote the same product.

Maybe we just need to lay down the self pride and start to just enjoy creating in teams.

That what I really want to do and what I believe in.

Just need to find the right members and avoid internally drama.

Sounds like you want/need to do is form a studio to achieve this.
That's the only way that will be achieved.

Tapas is a platform (I call it Comic Facebook personally) and much like all other platform its full of all kinds of views.
Its also a vacuum.

[jensrichard77]

Sounds like you want need to do is form a studio to achieve this.

Watch me!
Join me?
Remember me!

[Utamee]

Uh.. I thought with promo our comic in blog/YouTube will inderectly promo tapas itself?
Umm, I'm thinking, for example, make a new tab in my blog for "what I read today" section. There, where I told visitor what I read and where(in Tapas). I'll give nice comment. That's it. It promo, not insisting, like a reading blog some sort.
@jensrichard77 you want me start new thread for the idea? If what you mean to start trade, I can start next April. This 2 month I will be so busy, that I barely have time read things. My online time/life is not so much too. I don't want to read things from fellow creators that I need to comment in my blog with half hearted, unfocus & tired mindset.

[domisotto]

I think I share your views, only for novels. Obviously, I want to do well, but I like the idea of it happening organically, as in I finally manage The Book and it just explodes out of the gates. I dunno if I want it any other way at the moment, tbh. I know that I can write diligently, I know that I can write well, but I haven't yet seen myself write popularily.

[thedude3445]

Each creator has very little use, but the whole community has. Otherwise we would not be welcome anymore. We are free filling. We promote. Each a very little bit, but again it has to add up to something, otherwise we would not be able to be here.

Ya know, I think we're being a little bit down on community stories here in this thread. Yeah, internet ad revenue is way down from where it was ten years ago, but it's still real money; I'm sure Tapas generate a large percent of its revenue from ads on community work, even if premium series are the much larger generator. I'm not that interested in the debate about Tapas as a platform or publisher and what it "should" be (I'm mostly interested in practical changes that would improve the site for readers and creators alike), but I will certainly say that Tapas is very glad to have community work and I very much agree that they aren't "doing us a favor" by providing hosting; it's almost the opposite.

[surenlicious]

I'm probably alone in this, but I sure would love a Recommended For You section where the algorithm might help my arse find the novels and comics that suit me. For example, I LOATHE Romance stories. I'm not into that, but the moment I want to dive into the sea of Horror stuff I just...gosh. So much to choose from you know?

Perhaps if the algorithm could nudge me a little by checking the tags of the stories I do read and find me something similar I sure could navigate a bit better. Or maybe there is a section like that, but I'm trying to pull a Youtube here as YT's algorithm is actually doing a fairly ok job at helping me find similar stuff.

Now I'm not saying to push the entire site into the algorithms or anything, just the Recommended For You section, so every creator can have a proper chance at being seen.