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Ulta
Nov '18

Hello folks of Tapas! It's time for another question that I've been toying with in my head for a while now. And that is...

If I want to do a rather large-ish change/update to an already existing (and slightly over a year old) series, which is better...
A. Repost the comic from the start as a new series(same posting schedule as current), but include the updated panels, pages, etc.
or
B. Do my best to edit the episodes of the current series until all the changes I wished to do are there.

I only have one series on Tapas/Webtoon, and it's my first ever shot at a serious comic series. It's now a year and some months old, and I think it's doing rather okay on Webtoon (and slowly picking up on Tapas?). However, now that I'm a year in and have been doing this for a while, I'm quickly seeing lots of mistakes. The series on BOTH sites have horrible beginnings, since the first few episodes were not the right format for mobile-viewing. To me it's super jarring to squint through a whole prologue, and then Chapter 1 suddenly shifts to the better mobile-view down scrolling style that I continue to do to this day. I also want to add or slightly change some scenes in the comic, which would require less or more panels depending.

Now, the easiest way to do all this is obvious. I 'restart' the comic as a new yet not new series. That way I not only reclaim a HUGE buffer for updates, but the series can be done right from the beginning, rather than reflecting my wake-up call halfway through. It's beginning would be better, and could possibly get even more readers since I did things RIGHT and you can actually read the episodes (the prologue is notorious for being illegible or difficult to read on mobile at present).

However, I hesitate to do that (especially on Webtoon), BECAUSE of the subs. Given the series is a year and some months old, it's got over 500 subs (and growing) on Webtoon, and it's weirdly picking up pace on Tapas now as well. I would be extremely lucky if all those subs migrated to the new series, and even if I got lucky and most or all of them resubbed, they'd be waiting on episodes they've already seen before for a good lot of it until we re-reach where I left off.

So...is just attempting to edit what I already have better?

I'm sure it would be a huge pain in the neck, since I'll run the risk of either having too many or not enough episodes to squeeze in the changes I wanna make. I'd basically have to do the changes extremely carefully...which will be a challenge for newbie me. BUT...if I can do it, I'll keep the subs, the comments, the likes...and my current readers will have a reason to re-read it and see new things.

So then...which do YOU think is better? A complete restart? Or editing what's already here?

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    Nov '18

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Rhonder
Nov '18

That's a tough call, and I guess depends on how much you want to change. imo if you're just wanting to change a little bit at the beginning (readability, some small details) I would probably lean towards stealth updating it personally. A year+ is a looooot of content and viewers to toss out for small scale stuff xD

On the other hand if you're wanting to make big changes (super different art, big plot changes, etc.) it might be worth rebooting.

Just be careful, like you said you'll probably lose quite a few subs in the transition. I've seen a few comics here on tapas in the last year or so that have either rebooted or moved accounts and lost quite a bit of subs in the transition (that said, many of the ones lost were probably dead subs who weren't reading anyways... maybe not a bad thing xD)

Regardless of the choice it would be good to let your audience know. Especially for the reboot path, but even for stealth edits people might want to go back and read the new prologue if they know it's there ^^

Ulta
Nov '18

Well the first change I need to do is update the formatting on ALL of the 40-page prologue, and a few pages from Chapter 1 so they can be read on mobile. Easy to edit at least.

But I also wanna add a short and better intro to the beginning. At present the comic is really chapter-focused, but since each chapter is rather huge with 40 pages worth of panels (many of which are like average 7 panels each page), trying to figure out how to put each one into an 'episode' format for Tapas/webtoon will be...interesting to say the least. Especially when I wanna try and pace it well.

As you put it, I basically have a lot of content on my hands, and figuring out how to arrange it is quite the task! But whether it's enough to warrant a complete reboot...it's still hard to say.

shazzbaa
Nov '18

Since you have a specific reason why this won't put you into a spiral of re-doing old pages (the old ones are in the wrong format, and once it gets to chapter 1 the format is correct), I would say, taking whatever time you can spare to slowly edit the beginning into the new format makes sense!! It's not gonna net you a bunch of new subs or anything, and some folks will re-read and some won't, but it'll make your work more cohesive to new readers. If you're able to do it, it seems like a good move!

If you're actually wanting to change a huge amount of the story and re-pace things..... I'm not sure what's the best way to go. If you do it edit-style, people aren't guaranteed to re-read, and even if they do it's a bit awkward to be reading a story and then have the storyteller say "wait, no, nevermind, THAT didn't happen, THIS happened instead!" in the middle of it.

Though I can say from experience that when I've been following a series for a while, and gotten really invested in it, and then the series suddenly restarts from the beginning to make it "better," that as a reader that sort of puts me off, and I've found I usually lose interest in comics when this happens. Like, I dunno, maybe it is better, but it's not the story I was invested in the first time around. I wouldn't do this unless you REALLY can't work with the story you had already.
At the same time, I've also been really into a comic and later discovered that there was an old version once, and the whole thing got reset at some point into the comic I now love -- I just never saw the old version since I found it after the reset and got attached to the shiny new version. So it can go both ways.

To some extent, a lot of this is gonna be a Follow Your Heart scenario. You alone know whether your early mistakes are hurting your passion for this story, or if going back and reworking things is realistically unfeasible for the amount of work you're able to do; whether rebooting the whole darn thing and not worrying about subs will be freeing, or if that would be giving into It Must Be Perfect anxiety.

Once you finish two years of doing your comic, you're going to look back and see new art mistakes, new storytelling mistakes, new plot things that you could've handled better, new pacing issues. After three years of doing your comic, you're going to look back at things that were new and good last year, and find all kinds of new mistakes again. This isn't something that's only happening because you're a new creator; it's never going to stop happening.

So make your decisions with that in mind!!
Personally, I think any time you can work with the decisions you've made already, and focus on moving forward, I consider that the best way to go. If there's a concept I didn't introduce well in the beginning of the story, and I'm on chapter 3, I'd rather look for a way to elaborate on that concept in chapter 3 than go back and retell the beginning. But my priority is telling this story in a way its audience can understand, rather than like, having a perfectly well-edited book when I'm done. Not everyone has the same priorities I do, and someone else might find a very different decision is best for them!

Rhonder
Nov '18

I agree with this a lot, tbh. It's like if you're a year into the story and then suddenly get ejected back to the beginning with mostly the same stuff going on, you have to wait another full year before current readers get new content which is... kind of a drag from the reader's P.O.V.

There's one comic on Tapas I like a lot that did this, and I've been following the new version because I like it so much but... I had read it for like 5 months prior and it's still several chapters behind so far xD Was really digging where the story was going and now it's going to take an age to get back to that point. The new, prettier visuals are nice, but the trade off as a reader was... blehh.

J.Z.Castillo
Nov '18

I am going through this problem right now. All my pages were formatted incorrectly and they are terrible resolution (I didn't know anything about digital illustration or digital anything when I started my comic). I started redoing my entire comic from scratch with correct format and honestly it looks so much better now!

It really doesn't take that long to come up with pages because... they are already made, you just have to trace over them pretty much, so time-wise, it hasn't taken me longer than when I was making my comic (I also stopped working on my comic because I was frustrated with my skill level, but that's another story).

I would say do what will work best for you but be weary of falling into the doing and re-doing loop, otherwise your comic will never advance.

amortelito
Nov '18
2
Ulta

This happened to me. Last week I "rebooted" my comic. I deleted the 130 comic pages and posted them separately as a prequel. I didn't updated the pages because that chapter is not really a good start of the series and the format is nothing like the new one. Then I made a more engaging beginning, new covers and I'm posting the newest chapters in the main comic. After such a dramatic change I am glad I didn't started over in a brand new comic because I would have lost my subs. I observed that just a very small percentage re-subscribed to the prequel because it is the comic they already knew. Makes sense, they have read it, only "hardcore fans" were motivated to read it again.

So I think it is very risky to republish it as a new comic, because readers already know the general story even when you make some changes and upgrade the art.
I would say that updating the pages seems better. You can fix the beginning which is what new readers will see and then slow down with the upgrade pages. If you can keep up with the newest chapters then that's better because that way you don't stop posting.
But if the changes are far too drastic then you can delete all the pages (like me XD) but you don't lose your subs.

(Sorry I hope this explanation is not confusing)

Ulta
Nov '18

Thank you all for the suggestions!

You make a rather good point, especially with that whole 'perfection loop' thing. I think the only reason I even considered to do a hard reset is because in the grand scheme of things, I only have like 50 subs on Tapas, and almost 600 on webtoon. 600 is a lot of people imo, but in the grand scheme of things, for Webtoon ,that's not a whole lot of people, and if I was to do a reset at all, NOW would be the time, while the series is still heavily under the radar.

Still, if I can hold on to those few precious readers I have (I love them all, seriously, 600 thought it was worth, whaaaaa), I'd like to keep them. I don't think I'll be doing THAT much scene-switching, but I suppose if I really do end up wanting to do a drastic change to the story pacing, I could just...make a new series and see how well the new one goes, maybe even discontinue the new one once the old one is up to par.

Thanks for the suggestions and perspectives everyone!