Hi All!
At Tapas, we’re always looking for the best ways to feature as many creators as possible! With a seemingly endless number of comics and novels consistently updated on our platform, we needed a way to share series that are hidden gems within our community, for both established and new creators. With this in mind, the Staff Picks section was born!
Numerous creators have had their work featured and have gained exposure for their comics or novels. But how is the selection process actually happening? In this article, we would like to provide insight on what we’re looking for when featuring Community Creators, so you can better understand what you can do to improve your chances of your work being selected!
We’re also looking to include you more in the curation process! In the near future, we will make a post that will allow you to recommend your favorite comics and novels, which we’re looking to feature in a “Community Picks” section. Please take the information you’ll gain from this topic and start thinking about the kind of creations you would like to see featured on our apps and site. Stay tuned for more details on that!
Comic Curation - Where art and story mix
Despite a seemingly endless number of high quality comics on our platform, selecting Staff Picks can be a tricky endeavour. We have limited spots available and want to ensure that our readers can rely on the Staff Picks section always being filled with high quality comics. Here are some of the things we look out for when picking Community Comics:
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Your comic has exceptional art or story
Having amazing art skills is always a plus and makes it much easier for us to find your comic, but there are many stories we feature that showcase an amazing story without the creator being perfectly polished yet.
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You have at least 10 or more episodes and are active
For Staff Picks, we’re looking for more established stories that readers can sink their teeth in, so we’re looking for them to have a good length. The minimum requirement of 10 episodes we mention here is just a baseline - some comics have very long individual episodes and may require fewer episodes to be considered. We have found over time that series with greater episode counts have been more successful gaining subscribers when being featured. We also prefer actively updating stories.
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Your comic is legible on both web and app
Small or hard to decipher fonts, as well as tiny panels make the reading experience difficult for our readers, especially on our app. Make sure your comic works well even on small screens!
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Your comic doesn’t contain nudity and sexual content
Since our Staff Picks are featured on both the site and our apps, with mobile having its own set of content policy guidelines that we need to abide by, we have to select our featured comics with great care. While Tapas continues to allow non-sexual nudity on our platform, for features we avoid comics containing detailed sexual organs (breasts, pubic hair,...) even without sexual content, as well as comics with suggestive cover art. We recommend making use of the well known Hollywood format, like using cleverly framed scenes or scene cuts for your more steamy stories if you would like to be featured one day.
Since this is such a tricky subject, we review each comic individually and may even reach out to creators to see if certain scenes can be edited to allow for a feature.
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Your comic doesn’t contain gore and extreme violence without warnings
We’re always making sure that mature scenes are marked as such, so that readers aren’t blindsighted by the sudden onslaught of violence and blood. Please make sure to toggle on the Mature Content filter whenever necessary.
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Your comic had low exposure but is great otherwise
With so many comics created on a daily basis, some just slip through the cracks no matter how much we try to get everyone a spot in the limelight. Because of that, we’re always looking for the hidden gems that are amazing but have a low number of subscribers, so we can push them to a larger audience.
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And aside of that: Staff suggestions, and just good ol’ searching
Since we update our suggestions constantly, our curation team also relies on other staff members to make recommendations or digs through other creator’s subscriptions as well the Fresh and Trending sections to come across new comics we haven’t shared yet.
Some great examples that are following our comic guidelines:
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Lele’s Comics by Lelecomics
Lele’s comics is a great new slice of life series with very relatable, easy to understand stories and a unique, consistent design. Sitting at 16 episodes by the time of writing this, we’re certain that with continued regular updates, this comic will see great success on Tapas.
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Arcane Flames by Kutty Sark
Arcane Flames is a stunningly drawn fantasy comic with a well thought-out story and deep, tragic characters and sits currently at 19 episodes. While it already started back in 2019, the story has only begun and we’re looking forward to what more is to come.
Novel Curation - The Eternal Search for the many Hidden Gems!
With hundreds of new novels being published on Tapas on a regular basis, finding some of the amazing stories brought to paper (or website ;D) can turn into a real challenge. Our dedicated novels team continuously reviews novels to find the ones that meet the standards of our Staff Picks section. This is what we look out for:
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15 or more episodes, or a completed series
With the goal of providing readers a satisfactory reading experience, we curate for stories that are actively updating, completed, or have 15+ episodes!
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Strong beginning
A strong beginning is the key to hook in readers, and also us! Make sure that your stories begin at a high point and get us excited about what is to come next!
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Unique stories/concepts
We’re always looking for concepts that stand out on Tapas, and unique ways of presenting telling stories. When featuring, we also like to make sure that there’s a diverse spread of genres! So don’t be afraid to try something different!
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Excellent prose
We look for stories that are enjoyable to read on a sentence-by-sentence level! In practice, this means including both the fundamentals (good spelling, grammar, sentence construction), and more advanced techniques (use of figurative language, voice, flow, etc.)!
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High-quality cover art and thumbnail
Readers are visual and your cover will often be one of the first things that catches their eyes (as well as ours). You can make your own, using royalty free or paid assets or contact a designer or artist to commission great novels and banners for your novels. Please don’t take artwork from the internet without approval from the original creator!
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Your story isn’t an explicit erotica
We won’t feature novels with sex scenes described in detail and also like to avoid stories containing questionable material, especially if it’s not tagged as such (either with content warnings or a Mature Content filter). Similar to comics, we also won’t select novels with erotic covers.
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And aside of that: Staff suggestions, and just good ol’ searching
Just like for comics, our dedicated novels team is constantly hunting for amazing stories. For that, they check fresh and trending sections, as well as the forum and are open to recommendations from other staff members.
Some great examples that are following our Novel guidelines:
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--K by Twoony
--K already has 28 chapters and is very well written. The central conflict and strong characterizations are well established right from the first chapter! This kind of story is usually a great fit for our readers.
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A Single Chess Piece by akitku
A Single Chess Piece has a very unique setting (Byzantine Empire), has good prose and is regularly updating, currently sitting at 16 long chapters. We think that this story is just perfect for those readers who’re looking for something off the beaten path.
As you can see, a lot goes into our Staff Picks curation, as well as all other sections with curated content on our site and app. There are no machines that can sniff out quality content and our team is committed to finding and sharing as many great comics and novels as possible.
Please share your thoughts and comments below, we’re looking forward to hearing from you!
Isabell / AKA Ratique
Community Happiness Manager