Publishing experience on Tapas - Discussion

karolinacko 2025-03-21 10:58:15 UTC #1

Hello everyone, I'm Kaya and I'm new here.
I discovered this forum and plan to publish a webtoon early this summer.

I just wanted to ask for any kind of your experience when it comes to posting/publishing, gaining subscribers, or what kind of promo you are doing on other social media (or here).

Any advice would be highly appreciated! I'm kind of lost since I never came across this platform, but so far it looks lovely here.
Even if it means sharing your journey, it would mean a lot to me! Thank you very much beforehand! ╰(✿´⌣`✿)╯

I did not want to mark this as promo yet as this series is not gonna be out for the next 3 months, but I'll also include some pictures since any advice would help me a lot

Also here are some panels from my first episode just to explain what I'm working on

Rob012 2025-03-21 12:08:22 UTC #2

From my experience, spamming your stuff here is the best way to gain subscribers, at least at the beginning. That said, many of the subs you'll get here are people expecting a subxsub, witch means they'll only follow you expecting for you to follow them back. At the end, and considering that these people follow maybe a hundred or more of comics/novels, is very unlikely that this subs translates into a constant source of views. But hey, Tapas seems to care a lot about your sub number, so bigger the number, more near to the first page of search results, and that is important.

Other than that, many people seems to post at least part of their comics in subreddits like r/webtoons or r/webcomics. They say that is the best way to go, but on my own experience I didn't get much from there, maybe my format don't work on reddit. Obviously, twitter or bluesky are good choices too if you move some numbers in your account.

Lastly, always put the link of your comic in all your post about it, don't make the people go search it because they WONT find it even if they bother to search.

And each time you post something in this forum, consider slipping the link. Lame, but you get some views here and there (I'm gonna do it here hahaha).

jwabeasley 2025-03-22 01:20:11 UTC #3

It'll probably be slow going at first, make sure you're prepared for the long haul.

Make sure you have different thumbnails for each chapter, because having them all be the same makes it look like a webnovel.

It helps to make some short, meme-able content in addition to the longform stuff. 1-8 panel comics perform far better on non-webcomic focused sites.

Sub4sub is great for a one-time boost, as long as you don't spam it.

When you do start posting, find a couple of 'peer' comics to follow that both started around the same time as you, ideally in the same genre. Pick one that you think is better than yours, and one that you think is worse. Pay attention to what they do and copy what works in their marketing strategy if you can. It'll help keep your expectations grounded and give you a standard to work against.

wolflu66 2025-03-22 02:09:40 UTC #4

@jwabeasley
Besides the main storyline of the comic itself, I also have many character designs, sketches, and creative concepts I want to share. I'm concerned about affecting the reading continuity, so I started another series to put this content.

Do you think it's better to put the comic and these miscellaneous images in the same series or separate them?

wolflu66 2025-03-22 02:21:13 UTC #5

@karolinacko
Although I applied for a Tapas account a few years ago, I didn't publish any work on it until the end of last year.

For the vast majority of people who publish work, if there is no promotion, it is very very very very difficult to get your work seen. At the beginning, hardly anyone subscribed to me except for my friends.

I gathered my courage to promote on Tapas forums, and fortunately, there are many friendly users there, allowing me to accumulate subscribers. I'm also glad that many of them like my style.

Undeniably, it was really difficult at the beginning. Even after putting in a lot of effort, I still only have three hundred plus subscribers, and I don't know how things will go in the future.

In fact, the vast majority of people's works will never become famous throughout their lifetime (of course, many people don't draw for the sake of fame), and I believe I'm one of them XD, but I can only persist. Do my best and leave the rest to fate.

jwabeasley 2025-03-22 02:51:23 UTC #6

@wolflu66 You can see what I did with my "Etherwood Extras" and "Veronica's Journal" pages. Worldbuilding notes and sketches could make a good post on r/worldbuilding! That's what I do, anyway. Etherwood Extras have a lot more potential on sites like Reddit since they can be enjoyed by themselves, if not as well.

I've been experimenting with a more extended Etherwood Extra-type content - 4 panel humor comics requiring very little background knowledge and not dealing with the plot, made in a less polished style in my sketchbook whenever I have free time away from home. Hopefully those perform well once they hit public release at the end of Chapter 5. We'll see!

Other stuff, like character concepts and preproduction work are probably better saved to be Patreon-exclusive content once your comic is big, or else reserved to fill extra pages in a print version. At least, that's what I see other successful authors doing. I'm hardly an expert. I do appreciate the opportunity to subscribe to you twice.

jwabeasley 2025-03-22 03:43:45 UTC #7

@wolflu66 Some personalized advice for you specifically is just to make more chapters! Get 10 updates under your belt before even thinking about subscriber numbers. Roars and Whispers has performed extremely well for a comic with 5 chapters.

kyupol 2025-03-22 22:49:53 UTC #8

Views and subs come and go. Sub4sub works and spikes your subscribers and gets your comic out there. Sure there's "dead subs" but from experience, around 30% of my subscribers are regular readers who like and/or comment on my pages.

Other places? I have youtube, Instagram, and bitchute where I upload comic dubs.

https://www.instagram.com/kyupol2023/

I also go on discord servers. From experience, discord servers that have less than 50 members tend to engage your stuff more. But downside to those servers is they're too niche.

You're gonna run into one predominant political, religious, or social view in those servers and it can be a double edged sword. If they mostly agree with your own views, great. If not, leave on your own or you'd eventually get banned if you "slip up". Religious and political extremists are paranoid and get tripped up by certain key words or phrases they associate with "the enemy" regardless of your intentions. Even if youre completely ignorant. And if you trigger them, you get banned without warning.

Reddit just gets my stuff buried so I rarely post there. So is deviantart.

Red_Dog 2025-03-23 00:03:43 UTC #9

This has been some helpful advice as someone who has a very new webcomic.

Speaking of which if yall don't mind...