Should I re-upload my comic into smaller chunks?

[shiftingverses]

Hey everyone.

I'm the writer and artist of a long form comic called The Templars of the Shifting Verse. As I wrote it with the intention of it being a bit of a ponderous read I decided to wait until each chapter was fully completed before putting it online - I thought it would be better to do a big meal once every so often rather than drip feeding a single page every week or so. It's also because I would often revise dialogue and such at the very end - looking at the thing as a whole and fine-tuning it before making it available.

As a result I have a 60 page comic that sits currently on 2 and a bit episodes and only 30 or so subs. I'm told the comic is pretty good by most people who read it (my mum included), but I realise that - on here and on webstoons - no-one uploads their comic in such a way. Looking at how sites like Tapastic and Webtoons work I can see why. The recently updated/discover tabs are a great way to get people to read your work, and it stands to reason that the more often a comic is updated the more it appears. So a comic like mine which updates very rarely (but meaningfully I'd like to think) doesn't really stand a chance to organically grow views.

I've also noticed that a loooong episode is much harder to read on a mobile device.

Which brings me to my question. Would it be a good idea to delete the episodes I currently have (and comments and likes there-in) and then re-upload them in much smaller chunks over the course of a week or two. Or would it - as I've started to now - let the original big epsiodes sit there in their original format but upload future chapters in the more bite-sized style? My worry is that this wouldn't address the mobile readability concern.

The comic is here, I don't want to make this a begging for subs thread, but hopefully you'll see what I mean by the readability thing.

Is it possibly considered bad form to delete and re-upload episodes in order to make things more prominent?

[gateofselidor]

Yes, reuploading the comic in smaller chunks would definitely be a good idea. I did that with my own comic, and had positive reception for it. It's much easier for a new reader to clear a substantial archive if it's in short episodes, that way they won't get lost in the middle of one because they had to stop reading for the day.

Split the chapter up into a series of scenes. Ideally around 3-5 pages at once is good, and definitely not more than 10. You don't need to delete your existing episodes - just edit them and remove most of the images, then continue re-adding the other pages in subsequent new episodes. You might want to give existing subscribers a heads-up first, so they don't get confused or annoyed by it.

[shiftingverses]

Thanks for the advice, I'll get on it tomorrow! I'll probably do it on a scene by scene basis, as most of my scenes fall nicely in the 3-5 page range. Going forward I'm doing it every six pages, as that's just how this script has worked out. It'll still be an episode every month or two, but hopefully it should still read well!

[DMBrigman]

It would also be beneficial to update only once per day. You can only appear in the Fresh section one time per day anyway. To maximize your chances of appearing there often make no more than one update per day for however long it takes you to post your comic. I would also suggest posting about your comic on other social media sites if you have them, perhaps getting some smaller comic sites to review what you have, even submitting to St Art Faire, to help drum up interest.

[Overlord_Thundersnow]

When I started, I uploaded everything I had in one giant chunk last year.

Biggest mistake you can make on this site. If anything, you want to upload a page every three days just to remain on the 'trending' page of your subcategory.

Now I always make sure to tell people who upload in chucks this sage advice.

[shiftingverses]

Where were you guys two years ago?

It seems in order to do this I will have to delete parts two and three as Tapastic doesn't let you insert episodes between episodes (unless in missing something?). I will let my subscribers know, and I'm totally screenshotting an amazing comment I got on number 2!