Tapas is turning into Webtoon 2.0?

[Chocolate]

Eyo have y’all noticed that Tapas is no longer promoting indie works from everyone? Or new promising series? Now it’s just buying rights from Korean mahwa artists and promote professional works.

Honestly, I miss the old interface of Tapas and it’s unique ways of promoting new works, and not just pure Korean mahwa.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Oddly enough, after visiting the homepages of both sites just now, Webtoon's looks much less "commercial" than Tapas'. Half of the comics in the front-page lineup aren't even manhua/manga style, let alone the samey, super-polished 'literally just professional work' manhua style that's plastered all over Tapas.

If you move to the Webtoon Originals page you'll still find diversity, meanwhile if you move to the Tapas Originals page, you'll find far, far less. ^^; I don't think Tapas is turning into Webtoon, I think it's becoming its own monster...at least Webtoon has a section of the website devoted to indie creations clearly marked on the top menu. Tapas does not, and it doesn't seem like they're particularly interested in making space for us anymore...

[Chocolate]

Yeah, Tapas was promoting and featuring a lot of indie comic in their front page a couple years back. But not nowadays anymore.

[Pandastrophic]

I was about to type out the exact same thing. I actually think its more like Webtoon becoming more like Tapas with the increase in their launch titles but even with all that scrolling the front page of the app you'll find a section for the indie comics so there is still come visibility for us. I have no idea how anyone is able to find indie comics on Tapas anymore.

[arxianfall]

Just Korean companies having a money fight between each other with their Korean IPs.

I'm/We're here just for the U.I. features so we don't all feel forced to start a wordpress site and search for templates.

[Chocolate]

I would love if there’s a webcomic hosting site like the old tapas for us indie creator to show our work.

[kitkatxk]

Yeah not to mention just the horrible disregard for their novels entirely. I seriously want to find a home where we can have good reach and get an actual fanbase instead of this sorta jump back and forth where we are completely obsolete and uncared for. Three years ago I was featured once. Because I was lucky and a staff happened to read and love my novel. I did good for a while after that. But then it went stagnant and now all they promote is samenesss. Actually on the novel front they haven't even updated the novel section in over a year.

[Llyrel]

-Cough-

May I suggest you...

ComicFury: no premium vs community series, all recently updated comics appear on the home page of the site without distinctions, lots of customization options, possibility to monetize your own site through ComicAd, no ridiculous censorship. The reader base is much smaller compared to Tapas and Webtoon, but if you're an active member of the community and do some promo (e.g. using ComicAd) you can bring quite a lot of views to your comic website on there. I mentioned this many times already, but my CF site, despite having less followers overall, has more views than my Tapas and WT pages combined.

FlowFo: very new, but seems to have a decently sized reader base. The home page features some of the most popular works, but doesn't make a big deal about it. The Discover page lets you see ALL comics that got recently updated, not just the paid/most popular ones. Everyone can monetize their comics, no need for a contract. Got promoted by the staff a couple of times on their social pages and managed to get a few readers despite doing little to no promotion of my own.

GlobalComix: equal opportunities for both indie and published creators, has a newsletter featuring different genres each week where anyone, no matter if they have a contract or not, can be promoted. Again, has options to monetize your comics without having to wait for a contract as well as a bunch of guides, tutorials and a very active community to support creators.

The options are there, it's just a matter of seeing which one works best for you

[darthmongoose]

I have no idea how anyone is able to find indie comics on Tapas anymore.

Does everyone in this thread use just browser/desktop Tapas? On the app, it's actually pretty easy to click the "community" tab at the bottom and view literally just indie comics. It's like a whole indies-only version of the Tapas front page, complete with features and everything. Getting a feature there is pretty great for sub growth too.

[Pandastrophic]

Ah sorry i might have an older version of the app on my phone without realising. I'm glad that section is there then

[kitkatxk]

Ah, No I never use the app like ever. I would love to see the differences between the two of them. I should check it out. But the fact is they don't have a writer dashboard there so you can't do anythign for writing on it. So most of us creators use the desktop version as they don't have a creator space on the app for us to use.

[IndigoShirtProd]

And though it may not seem like much, on browser they do have "New from the Community" and "Community Comics" towards the bottom of the front page. So there at least two chances for promotion, though the likelihood of getting a feature is an entirely different issue.

[LadyLily]

I'm so happy to see another novelist speaking about this here. Tapas will now go out if its way to avoid helping novelists.

Remember at the beginning of this year we were given the opportunity to turn in blurbs for our novels? It was supposed to be a big deal, and Tapas was going to share our blurbs across social media sites.

Suddenly, they stopped talking about it but "coincidentally" enough, they created a new "Meet the Creator" blurbs for comic creators. It was the same format we were told to create, but this one was all about promoting creators of comics. Nothing about novelists what-so-ever.

When I and several others asked about it on Discord and Twitter, we were told we can still turn in our blurbs (although they weren't going to do anything with them). "But in the meantime, check out our comic creator blurbs!" Major slap in the face.

They really do not care about us. It's their prerogative on their site, but why give us a platform if they're going to go out of their way to bury us?

[Awesomeness_Studios]

Honestly I'm starting to think that nowadays the way you find out who's a reader and who's a writer is what version of Tapas they use . The mobile version as far as I know is like the spot for all the readers to go to, and that's why Tapas takes special attention to it more than the browser version (and probably why the Community Tab is still app-only to this day)

[authorvicomara]

As an author posting my story on Tapas, I'm also sad about Tapas not caring about writers/indie works.

I understand they want to make more money and focus on what's hot, but dedicating one talented employee to work fulltime with novels shouldn't be a such a huge money drainer?..

I have quite peculiar tastes, so the 'popular' stories/comics often do not meet my preferences, therefore I've learned to completely ignore the Tapas homepage/recommendations.

[kitkatxk]

I agree. I want to look for a webnovel hosting platform that treats their writers nice. And is for serious posters of the chapter by chapter format.
Webnovel is a leech that is there to claw your soul out. And not a safe bet. While wattpad has this stygma that its oversaturated and not for serious writers at all. It has this idea that oh if you write on there your novel is probably not very polished or is kinda trashy or a fanfiction. So then it makes writers who want to be taken seriously out and off their site.

I know they have been working to polish it up lately, but its a bit hard to pull away from the label they kinda got going.

I want to find a site that can treat novelists who want to be treated and taken seriously nice. And not just that but not try and claw away their soul to do it using slave contracts. There are too many sites that have an invested insterest in taking advantage of writers.

[system]

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.