Something has been bugging me about Tapas for awhile, and it is something that's come up quite often in forum posts over the course of the several months I've been here and that's: why can't we reorder our episodes?
The thing about this question that bothers me most is it has been posed numerous times in numerous ways, and I've yet to see a response from an actual staff member that offers a logical explanation for why this isn't an option, or why it doesn't even seem like a priority when there's announcements regarding new features being worked on. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen it listed as a feature that is being worked on. And I guess I want to know why.
Really, this is quite a common feature on most other platforms. So much so, that its honestly a bit shocking to realize that it isn't offered on Tapas. While I understand that Tapas is new to Novels, the feature is something that Comic artists can use and have asked about before, as well.
I see people rolling their eyes. Why is this a big deal, Lina?
Not being able to re-order the episodes of a serialized work limits the creator's control over their narrative. This means I am not able to have very simple control over the presentation of my content.
Currently, the only options for rearranging episodes are to either:
a) delete everything up to where you want to insert a new episode and have to repost all of it or
b) copy/paste every episode/chapter that you have up and move it to the next one.
Obviously, there are problems with both of those options. With A, you lose all the likes/comments you have managed to get. With B, those likes/comments won't be reflective of the new content which is confusing, at best, and off-putting for new readers, at worse.
"It's a free site, just be happy they are providing a service."
Sure, it is a free site for me to use. However, at the same time, I would think that the site should care about the quality and presentation of the work on that site. If the site doesn't, then why should the artists?
Tapas already allows for the integration of music via soundcloud, and the community has found ways to hack the system and allow for the insertion of images (though limits on those images reduce the quality, but it is something that I, personally, can work with). Additionally, an extension was created to allow for authors to copy/paste their novels into Tapas without losing their formatting (I'll link to this at the bottom in case anyone missed it).
The community is stepping up to fix some of the things that limit (specifically novel) creators, but making it so that we can rearrange the orders of our episodes is not something we can do.
The absolute sheer beauty of working on a serial lies in the fact that a serial narrative is ever evolving. Choosing an open, digital platform means that writers have the ability to do far more than they would if they were to attempt a traditional publishing route. Authors can create side stories, character analyses, and appendices for their work. Artists have the freedom to go nuts with their stories and share their love of it with the world--BUT
For some, it takes time to get everything that you want to integrate into your story together. While things like illustrations can be inserted into existing episodes (if you do the Firefox hack), the limit on this doesn't really allow for, say, if I were to try and insert the images I want at the beginning of my novel at the top of my already published episode. (I've tried. It doesn't work. And it looks awful in the preview anyway.)
If, since we often start posting with nothing more than a story and a dream, we get things later like character art, maps for fantasy worlds, cover art, etc. that might need their own episodes, we've got no way of getting that were we want it. Our one option? shove it in wherever you are and hope for the best. I recently received a map for my story, and it is episode 52. Would be nice if I can move that to the front of my novel, but I can't. So there it sits, in the middle of the story, just hanging out.
Or maybe you were just new and didn't realize that Tapas prefers shorter shorter episodes of things, and your first ten chapters are 3-4k and posted. An author has no option to fix this mistake other than deleting and starting over (losing any ground they made) or manually shifting massive amounts of text (confusing their comments/statistics).
On the internet, we get one chance to make an impression, and on Tapas, that means we have the first few episodes to give readers a sense of what to expect if they want to read our stories. Not being able to control what is presented in those first few episodes hurts not only creators, but readers of the site who may not stick around for the goods that the story may deliver.
Perhaps there isn't anyone beating down the doors of Tapas HQ screaming about getting this feature, and that's why this pretty obvious oversight has been missed so far. I'd like to think that is the reason. And if so, consider this me knocking.
anyway, tldr: Tapas should really look into prioritizing giving creators the ability to rearrange the order of posted content / episodes. It's a pretty small ask, really. And if it isn't, I'd like to know why.
** If you're looking for the extension to preserve italic/bold formatting, its on the forum post here: https://forums.tapas.io/t/chrome-extension-to-paste-into-tapas-while-preserving-italics-bold/468581
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Sep '20last reply
Sep '20- 7
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