Ok, I'll start out with this - I LOVE Tapastic! Before Tapastic, I was just dragging along, trying to gain any semblance of an audience. Within a year, I've amassed a fantastic crowd of supporters and readers and I know I ave Tapastic to thank for that. The staff, the community, the ease of use of the site, everything! It's so well put together and a perfect combination of everything a webcomic hosting site should be; easy to use, promoting new voices, accessible to new and experienced comickers, plus a novel support system and ad revenue system.
However, to quote a very popular Tumblr text post...
"Hi Tapastic, "
I am afraid
I am VERY worried about your plans to do away with the Tapastic Support Program. Everything else, I am very interested in, but this sours any good news the rest of your announcement carried. I'm concerned on a number of fronts, but I'll begin with personal ones first. I'm a college student. A poor college student. I have tuition to pay, food to buy, and bills I'd LIKE to start helping my family out with (car, phone, etc.). As of right now, I'm blessed to have 30+ people supporting me with $100+. This is money I was hoping to see each month of the coming year, a potential $1200 that I could use for college, leaving my soul-sucking job, and paying for bills. With this in jeopardy, I'm understandably worried.
I'll leave out any in depth critiques of Patreon, because numerous comments before me have spelled out all my concerns about the site. I don't trust it, it's clunky, and back when I DID use the website, I earned approximately half of what my supporters were donating to me (about $12.50 of the $24-26 people had pledged). Between that and the general lack of any motivation for most people to put up with multiple sites just to support an online artist, I'm again very worried. I will say that if you are planning on rolling out a way to streamline a Patreon/Tapastic combination, I'd be all aboard. As much as I'd dislike the choice of website you'd be partnering with, as long as we could keep the existing system of supporter-only walls on content, scheduling, and milestone rewards, I'd be content with working through another site. However, I don't see such a program being easily implemented without a lot of work and problems occurring.
This leads me to question the entire idea of trying to include a way to purchase bite-sized content through the app. How are we going to go about this? Will I need to start shutting off entire sections of my webcomics behind a paywall to earn anything close to what I am currently? Why does the app coding take precedence/interfere with the desktop version of the site? Is there any way to find a mid-point? I've never been convinced that in-app purchases have ever been a wise idea, especially within the general demographics webcomics cater towards. I'm hoping you can clear some of these concerns up for us!
Another thing I worry about is whether this is being done because of the costs of running the Support Program. If this is the case, I would MUCH rather see a increase in your cut of our earnings, rather than just tossing the baby out with the bath water. I understand that profits are a integral part of hosting a site of this magnitude and scope, but I hope there is some way to preserve this wonderful service. It's such a painless way to cater to our supporters, allows us easy ways to lock content and keep track of our best patrons, and it encourages people to stick around! With the new system you've mentioned, I can only see it locking out new creators from easily accessing a wide audience and any profits they could have potentially earned. However, I acknowledge that all of your plans have been revealed and explained, so for now I will just worry.
Novels? I LOVE the idea, and I look forward to your plans on implementing them into the website, whether it be within the same sphere as webcomics or through an affiliated sister site. Collaborating with major publishers? Another big plus.
I've really enjoyed my experience on Tapastic, and owe a lot to you all across the board. I'd really hate to see a website that was such a blessing turn into something I could no longer stand behind. I look forward to the Thursday talk, and I'm sure you'll either assuage my fears or help us work towards an acceptable middle ground!
-mancam