The core issue of Tapastic

thats true. id hate for tapas to be just creators reading other creators, because then youre not opening up the medium to new people, which is really important. that said, sometimes it seems like tapas favours the read-only element of the site, with handpicked work they make proper bank from. fair enough, but its a shame when it leads to very good new comics being suffocated, and takes away the validity of the webcomic route vs pitching your idea to a publisher. its definitely a balancing act, but for tapas, i have no idea how to balance it.

Yeah, agreed. You know, one of the things that's always made Tapas > Webtoons (For me) is the ability to communicate easily with my readers. I've probably missed a dozens of comments on Webtoons because I have no freaking way to know when I've gotten them, unless I just monitor every single episode I upload. I've had people approach me much more personally through private messages on Tapas, whether it was to just send me some nice words, ask for advice, or send gift art. That's something that will never happen on Webtoons. Creators are just flat out easier for readers to reach out to on Tapas.
Unnlleess we're talking about the app. :/ Then it's pretty much exactly like Webtoons, in terms of linking readers and creators. And that's kind of what disappoints me the most, because the biggest source of my readers has no EASY way to communicate with me, other than commenting on pages (Which, at least I get notifications for those on the site, unlike Webtoon). I get that the app is suppose to be geared more towards readers, but I really don't understand why it doesn't have any sort of notification system yet or any way to communicate outside of commenting on pages. Like heck, even the Deviantart app let's you check messages (or at least, when I used it years ago it did), and while the VAST majority of Deviantart is creators, I do know there ARE some people on there that are purely on there to watch and commission people, and those people probably find the fact that they can send and receive messages on the app pretty handy.
I wonder just how many missed opportunities there are out there. Like how many publishers or clients looking to hire artists have passed up an artist looking for work because they didn't even know the artist was looking for work because they don't see wall posts, or how many people have wanted to approach an artist about work but didn't because there's no way to contact them other than commenting on a page. Or heck, how many readers have just wanted to send a really nice message to an artist, but are too shy to post things publicly so they just never say it because there's no private message option (And I do get PMs like this from time to time, there are a lot of people out there that are just way too shy to post anything publicly). HECK! How many times have just READERS seen each other in comments frequently, saw they had a lot in common, and wished they knew how to contact each other to talk more?

Edit: And now that I think about it, how did you even handle that tipping contest that you held a while ago? What did you do if someone who was app-only had won it? Like, I would love to do some tipping contests later, but I have no idea what I'm gonna do if an app-only reader wins and I have no way to privately ask for their address to mail them a prize. I guess I can just tell them to e-mail me, but gosh, wouldn't it be so much more convenient if I could just send them a PM?

I thought that too, it seems like Webtoon is more for creators, the more you create the more views they get and the more you get paid

As a young upstart comic site I am disappointed in Tapastic, that they are bowing down to the standard of today's family friendly environment. If we are to move forward in the industry of comics that can change social standards. Sights like these 10 years from now can make an impact on what we view is safe content.

I don't really know about you but I think its silly that it's ok to show death and violence in comics but its really bad to show love making. And when it comes to the no gore; I find it hard to picture that a bunch of red on a 2D image computer screen is unacceptable( but I don't really know what their standards of gore is)

I think that Tapastic should allow people to make explicit stuff if they want they already have the filter. If Tapastic is worried about their image then they should only promote the stuff they want to see on there sight. That does encourage artist to follow their standard if they want to get featured. I really think you guys are shooting yourself in the foot telling people to read explicit content somewhere else. Those are potential readers and creators~

^^ I am referring to the Mature content boundaries section: (Violence primarily intended to be shocking, sensational or disrespectful is not ok, nor is sex or nudity primarily intended to titillate or arouse. Sexually explicit content or pornography is not allowed. Don’t post content that is predominantly sexual in nature, or intended primarily as an aid to sexual gratification. There are already plenty of other places to find that content online.)

Well yea, but Bloodroot on the front page has soft core porn in it, so it's weird. Definitely not family friendly

It's all censored and I've been in direct contact with tapas staff due to a few reports.
Basically, rule goes: No erect penises, no wet vaginas, no penetration.
Censor that and you're good to go.

Also, Bloodroot is primarily a story comic. It's not 600 pages of gay sex. So it follows that part of the guidelines too.

Tapas isn't as harsh on sexual content as smackjeeves is. I have little to no complaints when it comes to how tapas runs their business, primarily because I understand very well that they need to follow certain guidelines to be on Appstore.

I had forgotten about there business image... Ya they would need to do that so they can continue their app partnership. Makes sense. Thanks for clarifying that up for me JohnVincent. I now see why do that.

Moderator Note: In order to clean up the thread and get it back on topic several posts have been deleted. fyi

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

For those who don’t intent to make premium content/ want to put their content behind a pay wall:

There have been some things that bother me regarding the image Tapas is creating and the way new and older creators of free content are being treated.
Tapas started out as a great host for independent webcomic creators. Open community, open minded staff, everyone is welcome… Those aspects haven’t changed much, but there are things that keep adding up which have been bothering me for some time now.

1) There seem to be no clear guidelines for the spotlight. They just seemed to be picked randomly. Some of the previous series haven’t even uploaded in months. Plus a spotlight where drug abuse is romanticized? No offense but personally I get a bad vibe from that. Pretty art doesn’t make it okay.

2) Why are there extra banners for certain series? Not that they don’t deserve the attention but the banners never change. What are the criteria?

3) The shirt banners – how about some variety? Not 3 banners for 1 series. There sure are a couple other creators who’d like to offer shirts, too.

4) Trending – what’s the algorithm? Because sometimes series turn up that are in no way active. Just curious.

5) The Top 10 comics? They may be the top premium comics. But there are free series who beat them easily in popularity. That’s false advertisement imo. And also a slap in the face for the real top 10. They carry the largest audience and pull in LOTS of new readers to Tapas with their free content. Tips and ad rev can’t make up for that.

6) Lots of comic hosts allow to include Patreon directly. Not just a link. I guess that would cause some conflict with tipping? I’m just trying to understand the decision that was made here. If artists could include Patreon, they wouldn’t have to come across as pushy with constantly reminding their audience to pledge.

7) This sounds harsh, but I don’t see much new quality content popping up lately. The site has been flooded with low quality comics from creators who expect to make quick $ with tipping and ad rev.
Maybe some quality management should be considered. Dunno how honestly, without alienating people who just start out their comic career. I know Tapas wants to be open to everyone, but something needs to be done imo.

It feels like Tapas’s been changing in a direction I won't be able to identify with in the future. It’s audience, the new type of popular content. I could go to webtoons, smackjeeves, make my own site. Sure. But Let’s take a ride on the assumption train first.

My audience is fairly small. It probably wouldn’t hurt as much to start over somewhere else if I needed to. It would take lots of work, but no big loss. Most of the big names have their audience outside Tapas. They could probably get back up somehow and don’t depend on Tapas desperately.
And those in the middle? I feel like they are the actual core of Tapas. This site is their home base. They are just a few steps from breaking through and becoming independent. But they are also kinda trapped. Because when they move, only some of the audience follows. They’d would have to start basically from scratch. But even then, they’d take a big chunk of Tapas’ audience with them. The audience which helped to establish Tapas and make them grow.
It feels like Tapas has abandoned them. For quite some time noe it’s been all about premium content. Of course Tapas needs to earn money. They are a business after all and as such have bills to pay. I totally get that.
But the way creators seem to be ignored don’t sit well with me. Tapas is not sending a good message to them imo. Tapas wants to become more professional but why does it feel like they neglect the creators who want to become professionals with free to read content as well?

I feel conflicted. The community is chill, the tipping feature is awesome. The staff listens to feedback and acts on it. Great basics. I want Tapas to work out for creators of free content again. That’s why I make the effort to write all this.

Will Tapas go back to supporting the non-premiums too, in regard of marketing? Or are premiums and books going to be in favour and nobody cares anymore about those who create free content?

People like me, who work to become established professionals and try to built a pleasant and sustainable audience, need this kind of information. Because the way it’s now I’m forced to look for alternatives. Some bigger creators already left and I know from a couple others that they consider that step too. I’m not talking about mirroring my series. I’m talking about leaving. Because Tapas’ environment is heavily changing and I’m not comfortable with it.

Tapas wouldn’t probably have to care about losing a couple of (small) series but what if gradually everyone is walking away?

How about pushing different genres more? And featuring good stories that stick, and not just offering a quick fix to a fluctuating trend? Encourage people to create good content! Disclose the guidelines for the spotlight /extra-banners/staff picks so people have some more tips on what to improve!

If you want to be professional your image has to be professional. I get that it's hard sometimes but this weird vibe has been there for a while now – I’m sure that’s not Tapas’ intention. But this is how I feel about the site.

In any case, thank you for reading my thoughts and assumptions. I know it’s a lot to take in, but I hope to get a response from @Staff.

This a fairly big nut to crack in one reply.

To begin, we understand what you are saying, and there are days when we feel the way you must be feeling. You know, those days were you update and push to social media, don't make "Trending", stay on "Fresh" for only five minutes, and then get seemingly swept under the rug until your next update. 10+ hours of work on one page, gone in a moment. You watch your sub count actually decline because your update reminded some people to unsubscribe. Meanwhile some seemingly new creator out of no where posts only two one page episodes for a-gag-a-day (8 panels total) and receives a Staff Pick and a Daily Snack and just catapults up to 2K+ subs with a snap of the fingers. You're left wondering . . . whhhhaaaattttt. How's that fair?! It's not.

Unfortunately its just business.

The truth is that Tapas is a business and Tapas has to change in order to survive. Remember Inkblazers? Ultimately they couldn't stay open because they couldn't remain revenue neutral. The webcomics model is changing. Ad revenue continues to drastically decline. Tapastic had to find a new way to make ends meet and pay back their preferred shareholders.

Readers are constantly going more and more mobile with desktop users on the decline. Tapastic had to keep up with the times by building an app, one that likely cost well northwards of $500,000. We estimated in another post that their payroll is probably in the neighborhood of $50,000-60,000/mo. Ads aren't enough so they've gone into monitizing the reader base into purchasing Premium Content. First comics and now books.

Premium content is likely now the main source of revenue for Tapas, followed by their 15% tipping commission, and lastly ads. In order to stay in the green, Tapas is going to promote whatever generates the most income for them, which means the Premium Content. This explains why the Top Ten is the top ten. They likely also have metrics that measure which merchandise is selling and which series have the highest tipping activity and features them in the t-shirt banners and the tipping section.

As far as determining who gets a spotlight or a daily snack, a lot comes down to social media shares. Tapas wants to continuously grow its reader base. They know that for every X new readers they are going to sell X amount of Premium Content. If they feature something that ends up going viral on social media, most likely its going to draw new readers to the website or app. This is why gag-a-days are so popular for being featured. Humor sells, especially at 4 panels with a beginning middle and end, that takes less than thirty seconds to consume vs. a long form that requires a serious time investment on the reader's part and no quick laugh. This is also why content that is highly relevant gets featured. For example, back in July 2016 when Pokemon GO came out, if you did something related to it on Tapas, odds were you got a Daily Snack. Meanwhile if you create something that just doesn't seem like its going to get much attention, they aren't going to feature it. Tapas can only feature so many things each day and each feature they hand out is essentially a limited quantity valuable resource worth real money (tips/subs/Premium Content sales) so they're going to be selective on who gets a nod. Also series that they spent $10,000 back when Tapastic first opened as a bounty to attract big name creators are also going to get priority because there's an underlying investment the company wants to earn back.

It's not personal, it's just business. If your book you submit to be premium isn't going to be profitable after editing expenses, staff is going to reject. If your comic series doesn't come off as being something that is going to draw in new readers, it won't get featured.

We hate to see Tapas changing but it is the nature of the beast because publishing as a whole is changing. Hiveworks in its current state will probably not last. Ad revenue continues to decline and it has no mobile app. Webtoons oneday someday eventually has to make sense financially to LINE, otherwise there will be major changes there.

Tapas is just trying to get ahead of the ball because they see the writing on the wall. Currently their focus is to just keep growing as quickly as possible, which means sometime this year they will be adding open ebook publishing on the app. The goal there is to cut into Wattpad's huge readership (>2x Webtoons) and ramp up their own readership, then sell Premium Content to the new readers.

Most creators here, ourselves included, would LOVE for things to remain back in Tapastic, when things were a lot more relaxed and free and it seemed like creators had the run of the site. However that just can't continue because its not sustainable. So what we're seeing and what we're feeling is facing reality.

Staff time is increasingly becoming limited as they all have increasingly more tasks to do, so you may not get a reply.

We will do our best to quickly answer your seven bullet points:

1) Spotlights are based on what Tapas reader demographics are. Fantasy. Romance. LGTB. OR anything the content director deems highly sharable. As you point out, pretty art makes it highly sharable. OR highly relevant. Heroin use is up 145% since 2007. It's a topic that is commonly making the news.

2) Banners "never change" because they have to be hard coded in. Hard coding = time = money. Its less expensive to leave things static.

3) Sales metrics likely drive which shirt banners are present. If its selling the most, it's going to be shown. Also the banners are likely hard coded in as well. (See 2)

4) Trending is likely based on (Views + Likes + New Subs)/Old Subs over a period of one minute, with new subs having a much higher weight than likes, which is a much higher weight than views. If you have a bunch of subs that don't engage with your series, you won't trend, or if you have 10,000 subs but they trickle read over seven days, you won't trend because it has to happen in a short period of time.

5) Top 10 is for selling Premium Content. Premium Content sales from the top 10 likely heavily outweighs any revenue the actual top 10 generate via tipping and ad revenue.

6) Patreon would conflict with tipping. It's also directing traffic to go outside of Tapas. What for-profit business would want to direct traffic away from their site?

7) Can't answer this one since "quality content" is subjective. It would be great to see Tapas hire a community manager to try to engage with all of us on social media, answer forum posts, and make us feel valued. That used to be Michael's job, but he's so busy now with so many other things, he really can't do it any more. Tapas probably can't justify the cost in hiring a community manager either because of the cost/benefit analysis.

To close, we're not crazy happy about how Tapas is changing, but we realize that its just reality, and have to learn to accept the changes. All things considered it's the best game in town because:

A) its not gated so anyone can publish
B) offers mobile app reading
C) anyone can earn some income (tips+ad revenue)
D) there is a large readership already available for free if you can get their attention (Trending or a Staff Feature)
E) an excellent creator community
F) free hosting and no need to manage a website
G) Long term survival rate

There's not too many other options out there that meet all these criteria. . . if any.

All of this business talk makes it all sound very DOOM and makes it sound like anyone that isn't a premium content artist is going to get fucked over. I don't want to believe that's the case.

It scares me a little because I'm just now starting to approach making a living from my art that I could, just barely, live off of. Being transgender and having a normal job didn't work out all that well as a combo really for my mental health.

You are a success story. You're reaching points most of us would like to reach. You're proof that through a TON of hard work non-premium artists can earn an income eventually.

It's too easy to give in to doom and gloom and decide what's the point. It's a challenge to notice limitations and come up with creative solutions around it.

People have pointed this out but there are a TON more readers than creators. My readers are mostly readers only, without their own series.

the core issue of Tapastic is getting those readers to tip, or perhaps expanding the amount of series available for keys only. Also artists trying to hustle can't get rewards out easily because of the discrepancy between the app and the desktop site, too.

I think they are working on these things though.