Series with manga-style page formats?

[WWHTeam]

Hi guys, new creator here! Just wanted to ask some advice from anyone with similar experiences.

My friends and I just started our own series a couple of months ago here:

World Without Horizons | Tapas

But we've unfortunately not been able to get the kind of reader response we were hoping for. We think it might have something to do with the format we're using? I noticed some other works also have a similar manga-esque page format but I wasn't sure if it was harder to draw a crowd with this style or if we were just doing something wrong.

We have views (less than 100) for the first episode but the count goes down for episodes we've uploaded after that so I'm not sure if it's a lack of interest or maybe our series is harder to read than the standard Webtoon format? Do you guys think switching to webtoon page layout would be better?

Sorry if I'm asking so many questions. We're very new to this and I'm afraid we might have been making some major rookie mistakes we didn't know about.

[naoro_san]

I don't think the format is a problem, I don't know if I can generalize it but I have seen more people complaining about webtoon format than manga format.

I saw you publish several pages with every update, rather than that you could publish page per page, distributing them along the week, in order to get more visibility.

[WWHTeam]

Thanks for replying! We've actually had a talk about how to portion our episodes for our manga pages but we were worried we might drown out people with too many episodes in one week? Spreading it out and posting more often in a week for the increased visibility does makes a lot of sense though.

I'll pass the idea on to the team to see what they think. Thanks so much for the advice. ^^

[silverraven0]

Take note that this is just my personal opinion.

I don't know about the others, but I don't particularly like reading page per page manga when they're updated in the way you're doing (several pages in one part). It sure might be bothersome when you need to slide and slide and slide (in mobile) to read the pages, but the point of the pages swiping will give me the higher impact of the story (if you know about how the mangaka in general arrange the panels size).

Also, why do you have a chapter with three different title? I didn't read it and just skimming through it, so I'm just curious.

[sarrowsmith10]

Having decreasing page views for newer pages is perfectly normal no matter what popularity your comic is. Secondly, Tapas is a huge place, so if you want to get noticed you need to do alot of self promotion. Lots of posting on the forums, posting to social media, etc. That goes for all comics not just the good ones. Although you should note that most of the stats tapas gives are fairly bogus and not very accurate, so don't worry too much about them anyways. (For example, I had a page that had comments and likes, but no page views... so obviously something was glitchy!)

The benefit of your comic is that the art is really fabulous and I'd say above the average comic here on tapas. Color comics tend to get more attention, but you have some colored pages to introduce each section so I think that is pretty good and helps a lot. The format is very easy to read. I appreciated that each episode had 2-3 pages, it seemed perfect for the pacing of your story. I wouldn't worry about that.

The only turn off for a standard tapas reader is going to be all the credits you've inserted on every episode. I know this is the typical way of doing things on webtoons, but it looks and feels off on tapas. Tapas gives you a comment section for creators to write all that stuff. It's fine to have a credits page at the beginning as it's own episode, but every episode is kind of a turn off. It's super distracting to the flow of your story!

Anyways, I subbed, and hope to see more.

[SteamTK]

I don't see a problem with manga-style formats. I have several series, and my most popular one is in manga format. I say just draw it how you want, and people will come around.

[hjfsdh2222]

Bruh I took one look at your comic and instantly subbed.

Now here's your problem: YOU NEED TO FUCKING ADVERTISE! Most people(even people with some of the best comics I have ever read only get 1 sub for every 100 views). You are doing fantastic at your rate!

There are a thousands articles on this stuff so ill just let you do your own research. My favorite place to advertise is Twitter. Don't be afraid to do follow for follow its the only way anyone gets their way around Twitter. Your comic is pretty enough that you can probably get a decent response on Instagram too.
Hit me up when you get there! I'll be happy to be your first follower:)

https://twitter.com/JakiraJurosawa

Artist/Webcomicist (@jakirajurosawa) • Instagram photos and videos

and since im already advertising

Crime & Cars | Tapas

Reddit is also pretty good. But not for everyone. Its best for comedies.

[Draconic]

Your publish schedule right now is perfect, don't change that.
Your plot is fine, the story pace is fine, the art quality is good enough, don't worry.
You just have to wait for about 3-12 months to be noticed by Tapas staffs and they will push it to the front page if it's good enough.

If all of you are serious with your manga and get into the industry, here are some advices:

• Your manga is needed to have more quality than that.
• You have 4 members, but your manga quality feels like a solo project, that's something you need to reevaluate.
• The success of your manga series will be determined within 180 pages, or about 10 chapters.
• After 10 chapter / 1 year / ~150 pages , you should start a new project if your views and subscribers count isn't good enough.
• Advertisement, no one will know that your manga exists if you're just sitting there and wait for them automaticaly read yours.
• Find a professional/experienced editor if you can to get some advices with your story script.

Here's mine and it got no better than yours
So right now, you guys just keep doing what you do and see what happened later.

DarkBleeder | Tapas

[ihaveatoaster]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[WWHTeam]

Thanks so much for the sub! We really appreciate it ;w;

Great insight and encouraging words too. We actually are planning to switch to the webtoon format (in color~) soon to see if it'd improve our reception but it's definitely gonna be a strain on our sole illustrator (and me, the assistant) ^^;

Fingers crossed it works.

[WWHTeam]

Pretty solid advice and we appreciate the help! ^^;

We are actually regularly trying to self promote on our social media and other platforms but as we're new to the game we're not sure if we're getting noticed. Feels like shouting into the giant void of the internet sometimes lol

We actually recently decided to try promoting on insta too! Thing is, I'm kind of lost on how comics do that? You can't put links in the post comments on insta if I remember correct.

World Without Horizons (@worldwithouthorizons) • Instagram photos and videos

Another thing: we already had an existing FB page and Insta account before starting the webcomic/manga. So I'm not sure if the brand switch (we used to be an anime news site) affects our promotion.

[WWHTeam]

Thanks for the advice! Ah, I might have forgot to mention that we have only one dedicated illustrator artist and I'm just more of the assistant? So yeah, not all 4 of us are working on the art. It's more of a collab on the story. ^^;

The tips on the marketing and the benchmarks are very much appreciated though!

[WWHTeam]

Yeah, we were planning to try using the vertical webtoon format for the next few chapters actually. Going to see if it makes a difference in our reception. Character relationships are also planned in the future but the focus right now is the adventure but we do notice which characters tend to get more ahem love from our audience too. ^^;

Thanks for the help!

[ReroOnyx]

I'm going to tell you that your problem is not your series. This isn't to say improvements can't be made but your problem really comes down to Tapas. For some reason non-premium/non-popular/non-spotlighted traffic to fresh sections is absurdly hard to come by. It's an enigma of this site and what can fix it, while I can give suggestions, I wouldn't know for certain.

Regardless of quality, there is no reason you shouldn't have 1-3K views, maybe even 5K views. Instead you've barely surpassed 400+ views as of right now. These are numbers that are quite honestly, atrocious for a site that has such a large traffic influx. 2 million the last time I checked. Anyone on here will tell you that unless you're spotlighted in some way, getting attention on Tapas by yourself is borderline impossible.

People say to advertise and unfortunately, you kind of have to. Your problem really has nothing to do with the way your series is, at least not right now. The problem you have is the exact same problem hundreds of non-spotlighted series have. An inability of traffic to find or search for your series. You can fix up and improve your work as much as you want, but if people are not actively clicking on your series, that improvement does not mean anything.

If you are certain in using Tapas, you'll have to get your readership beyond the "Fresh" section. Advertising on other places, advertising on the forum, you may even find better interaction on LINE Webtoons. I really can't tell you what to do but I can almost say that unless you get a boost from somewhere, you will find yourself struggling with this issue just as many others have.

[WWHTeam]

I totes agree! We actually also have our series out on Webtoon too and you're right!

World Without Horizons

Reception there was much better and I could monitor the PV count for every update we had each month. Each update gave us a fair jump in viewers which means we got some fair time on the front page at some point or another on Webtoon. I'm not really sure how the discovery system works here for new series tbh

Still, we wanted to try our luck on the popular platforms to see which one stuck and while we're very thankful for the attention on Webtoon, covering other bases wouldn't hurt. Thanks for the advice! ^^

[hjfsdh2222]

You have enough followers that you can just direct them to the link in your bio^^

Also make sure to get Twitter!!! I get a lot more response from Twitter actually