Tapioca Jump Magazine!

[Kyuu]

Dangg if this actually happens, it would be amazing!!

[Momomori]

Thats such a cool idea! maybe it could be like idk some sort of alternating thing that show cases different comics every week, like lets say comic artists can enter their comic in a raffle and the winner gets their comic featured in Tapioca Jump for a week! or smthn like that. if thats a bad idea tell me cus its 4am rn

[TheRabbit]

Sounds interesting, but I just gotta ask:
When you say "shoen jump style magazine", do you a weekly thing where we have to produce around 20 pages every week? Or a you thinking of only do 1-2 pages a week?

[yonseo]

That's a great idea! There are a lot of artists and this can give some a break while they work on their series.
If we have alternating comics this gives others a chance to polish up that next chapter and tutorial for their showcase in the magazine.

[yonseo]

Currently we are doing a monthly magazine. We do have to edit the magazine, put the work together provided from the artists and update a website. We have two people who will work under this project. If all goes well we can continue onward onto a weekly magazine.

We would like 15 pages per artist instead of a whole chapter. That way the reader can continue to tapastic or webtoon to read the series. Keep in mind that we also want a drawing tutorial from you the artist included after your mini-chapter.

This is ideal for comics that are currently ahead, meaning they have more than one chapter. If you are currently working on chapter one of your series you still have a tutorial to put together for us. That's a lot of work!

This is not set in stone of course! so we can always lower the page count per artist but we do want to provide something that can hook a reader.

[TheRabbit]

Ok, this sounds very interesting.

[J.Z.Castillo]

Yeah, this sounds like a fun idea, but what about distributing revenue? How do you plan on compensating artists?

[yonseo]

We are not distributing revenue to the artists, we are advertising and promoting their work for free through our website dedicated to the magazine. We do plan on selling the monthly magazine for a minimum of $5 dollars. This is to cover the costs of the website and our time on our end to edit and create a magazine.

If a reader wanted to support the artists, we will gladly redirect them to tapastic or webtoons and do that there.
If a reader buys our magazine, they are paying for your advertising through our magazine/website.

You don't have to come to us to advertise, however it's free for the creator.

If our magazine grows then we can include things like manga/comic contests with prizes, t-shirts and more.

[Wumbl]

I dunno if that's the best business plan... if artists want to post their comic up for free they'll just do it on another site.
Also, if people wanna read those artist's comics they'll do it through those sites that they don't have to pay for.
Making people pay for the updates doesn't work, really. There's no real incentive for the artist to publish with you... Especially since you're only a start-up and therefore have no guarantee for how many people will see your "magazine" in the first place.
People don't really want to pay for webcomics. The reason people pay for IRL comic magazines is because they are tangible.

[yonseo]

I understand where you're coming from. The comics that we do publish in our magazine will already be available at tapastic or webtoons for people to read. I myself am one of the artist that will put my webcomic on our magazine. I also have my own website with my webcomic available to read. My comic is also available on tapastic.

The reason for the magazine is to discover artists, not just comic artists, but artists. By providing half a chapter, the reader can continue to tapastic/webtoons to read it there. Some readers don't even know about tapastic/webtoons at all.
Even the ones that do know might miss out on a really good comic they have yet to stumble upon.

You can post your comic on your own website, webtoons, tapastic, reddit, etc.
People want their comic to be seen, and there's many websites, many artists.

The best business plan is one that doesn't go under. Make investments, smart decisions, and take action.
In order for us to pay the artists so that we can be a publisher/company we need to start somewhere.

You can post your comic anywhere really, this is just one option out of many.

To have readers see and discover our magazine we are starting off with a halloween theme which will be available for free during that month. Our magazine will contain tutorials and featured artists besides the comic.

[Wumbl]

Well yes, but who would purchase it?
Artists come to your magazine for extra exposure, but how many people are going to even see your magazine?
You can't know that yet.
This isn't a particularly strong business plan.

Tutorials, art and comics are all available for free, so why would someone want to buy a magazine full of advertising?
Nobody pays to be shown advertising.

You say it's to "discover artists" but if people want to discover artists they would probably prefer a personal approach. Maybe a better option is to publish the magazine for free entirely, and fund it with donations or patreon.

People only like paying for physical copies, usually.

I'm just giving you a rundown of things you need to have sorted out. If you already have a guaranteed reader base, then it's probably gonna work out. However you can't be sure how many people are going to actually commit to paying you just to show them bits of comics. You may have artists willing to take part but can you be certain that readers will want to buy it? What's your target audience?

After all, most webcomic consumers are just teens and young adults who would rather spend less money.

[yonseo]

It sounds like you are talking about a Kickstarter. That's a place we can see how many people are interested in our magazine. That's what my poll is for, as of right now 19 people are interested enough to vote.

There's your numbers.

Yes, we can fund it with donations and patreon but we want our team to have real jobs!
and not rely on donations. We want to include translations, editors and more.

We do want to make the magazine for free for some time, but were putting in our own time and efforts to make it happen.

Providing physical copies is something we want to have down the road. Were a small team, were not thinking about t-shirts, prints, and things like that. That's in the possible future.

[Luminosophy]

I'd personally be interested in a magazine because hunting down comics on sites like Tapastic and Webtoons is
A: A large chunk of my time I don't have during my day and
B: Almost next to impossible to find ones I like.

I've had much more luck on places like twitter and IG where I just get an artwork/ comic stream feed just by looking through my own profile. Only thing I'm confused about: "on a shonen jump style magazine in digital form for webcomic artists."

Does that mean it's manga/ shounen themed webcomics or any style/ genre period?

[Wumbl]

Hope you didn't think I was tryna put you down, I was just offering questions and stuff that could help you with planning for the future... I was raised by entrepreneurs after-all, and I see a lot of people forgetting this stuff. There's no stupid questions and it's almost too easy to miss something.

Also, many people would be perfectly willing to press a button on a poll but not to actually purchase the thing. Hell, most of the people agreeing on the poll are probably just artists who want to be in it...

I dunno. I just think perhaps the magazine should have more of a specific target demographic. As I already said, who is your audience? What do they want to read? Do you have some kind of quality standards or will you feature any comic at all?

After all, it might be tempting to be completely inclusive of all skill levels and genres, but that will put off readers who prefer more focused stuff. At least half of your readership will want quality over quantity.

I don't know how you run things at the moment but if you've already considered and accounted for all of this then you'll probably be fine.

[yonseo]

These are things that makes me excited! That's what this magazine is about, providing that medium.

A1) We can work on those things for our website. I would have to talk it over with the team, but that's a great idea.

B1) We can include tags! for starters.

Oh noes, it is not shonen style, I was only using it as an example. Were open to any style of art/comic.
I myself am a fan of manga style, but I find comics that are not in that style interesting as well.

[Luminosophy]

Wumblebumarts brought up a lot of good points, I asked about the shounen style thing because I could see that if you targeted a certain niche, whatever it is, you may have an easier time attracting a certain audience. That said though if you went for all round comics, tags would be huge. Seems like most comic hosting sites suffer from a terrible inability to properly both search for and categorize comics. Mine's listed under "fantasy" - but what kind of fantasy? Political? High fantasy? Modern fantasy? Action adventure fantasy? There's like 5 or 6 different themes my favourite comics have.

So that alone could just be the niche itself that attracts a readership. I would admit that I would prefer some form of quality over quantity as well. But how that's determined and by who I suppose is the next question. :0

[yonseo]

It's okay, I know everyone comes from different places, with different experiences, thoughts and ideas. I'm open minded.

When you say things like " I just think perhaps the magazine should have more of a specific target demographic" it's an opinion.
It's not about what you want. I have ideas too but its not about me. It's what our team wants.

There's room for improvement always. It's not that we forget, we are just growing.
That applies to everything, from the polish to the F.A.Q. and website.

[blackopsracing321]

Hi, not sure if you've heard of StArtFaire but they have been doing EXACTLY what you described here for over a year now (here's the link to check them out http://startfaire.com/home.shtml ) They publish a mag monthly with a lot of tapas creators. They do how to's, webcomic reviews, and they even held a webcomic awards event last December. Now I'm not trying to discourage you or anything, just wanted inform you of whats out there. Obviously feel free to continue with this project though, competition can only improve the overall product.

[Wumbl]

"If you have any ideas of what you would like to see in a digital comic magazine, leave a comment below!"

"It's not about what you want. I have ideas too but its not about me."

I was only commenting about these things and offering questions bc you essentially asked for it............................ sorry if I got the wrong impression but you did say you were open to ideas............................

[sarahrebecca58]

Maybe it can become it's own trail blazer.