Ah, I'd love a dark mode!
Well I got busy with life too, but I often find myself deciding against writing advice or giving my opinion here because I just don't have the energy to deal with the potential backlash; I need that energy for other stuff most of the time.
As for audience distancing, I do still add little authors notes on my updates to give people a small idea of what's on my mind or what's going on in life. I avoid letting it be too personal these days unless it touches on a topic that may be relevant to reader's lives. For example I may talk of experiences with dysphoria, discrimination and spiritual/paranormal stuff (all within the realm of the things I also write about) - but I won't tell people about family drama nor go into details about my romantic life.
As for responding to reader comments... I wouldn't have time for anything else if I still did that actively. I used to be one of those people that thought creators who didn't reply to comments were just cold, but having experienced an overflowing inbox firsthand... there's only so much time in the day and I have a life outside of my work!! I do read comments on my most recent update and reply once in a while if I have something to say. But that's as far as I can go.
Being too active with your fanbase when you're at a certain level can actually be dangerous. Being an online business, webcomic artists are already at higher risk of people with certain obsessive personality traits thinking they have an intimate relationship with you. This can turn volatile, just look up a few stalker cases and you will know what the development can look like.
I have a friend who ran into a very weird situation with a person, not quite stalker level but still obsessive and toxic. The person asked to be their friend, spammed them with messages, got angry when they didn't reply "fast enough" and would get very agressive when things didn't go their way. As for myself, I was sexually harrassed by a dude for 3 months straight, and someone once went apeshit in the comments all over my comic because I politely said no when they asked me to date them...
Holy crap, you good? I hope that harassment stopped, all the best wishes for you.
The thought of creepy, obsessive readers legitimately didn't strike me as a possibility. (Probably because I never had that interaction.) Those kinds of situations are what my nightmares are made up of. Thanks--really--for the insight; I'm all the more wiser for it.
Winter fest, right in the middle of summer for me. I didn't get involved because it was irrelevant to me.
Kind of like they wanted me to get involved in thanksgiving themed events. I don't even know what thanksgiving is about.
I just wanted to say that this has been a fascinating thread to read. Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts~
I don't really have much to say about visibility. As a reader, tapas has always been kinda confusing and even more so with the whole premium and non-premium thing. Other comic sites tend to really separate the two, but as a creator I can see why that might feel like you're being shoved aside if you're not premium.
It's a delicate issue. It's in their interest to foster growth of smaller creators, but they also need to make money (people reading premium comics on aggregating sites isn't helping). Personally, I want what's good for the site overall because I think that would result in more readers and opportunities for everyone. I also really don't want Webtoon to become the only available comic platform that offers an audience.
People get to premium and popular by making content that audiences want to see and I don't hold it against them. I do understand the frustration of smaller creators, of course, considering I am one, but there's really no point in being jealous; frankly, I am way too busy in real life these days to be a premium writer, and even if I could solely rely on premium writer income, it would be a bad idea considering how unstable that career would be, anyway (never rely on internet income, folks). However, I absolutely think that Tapas could do a better job advertising smaller novels/comics without sacrificing their popular stuff with a simple design change.
I'mma go ahead and give Tapas a lot of praise here, too, because I owe the site what little popularity I have on here. They've featured my weird little stories like 4 times and they randomly featured my story in a collection recently which was really nice and unexpected. My work would probably go unnoticed on any other site, so I owe Tapas a lot, especially since I don't know how to market/don't want to try to market anymore. It's nice that Tapas throws me a bone every now and again because holy moly, trying to advertise on the forums and on other sites is extremely exhausting and not worth it, in my opinion, which is kinda why I stopped trying. Honestly, there's nothing more frustrating than having someone say they'll read your story and then never doing it. XD
That would be an awful business decision by Tapas though. To give essentially prime real estate to a work that had such niche appeal. I think you need to look into some other’s points about what work needs to work when featured as well. I’m featured regularly, and I can tell you that not all featured spots are made equal, and not all works benefit the same from it.
This can also happen if a series explodes suddenly then nothing happens after too. Struggling with this now in one of my series.
I do this all the time but... only with users I know have quality work and who I know aren’t going on the forums and running their mouths. I guess as I grew larger, I started protecting my platform more as every recommendation is part of my own reputation now.
Oh....so you're saying being featured is too valuable for "niche"/small creators like myself and we'd just waste the opportunity.
Well, when you put it that way....how could anyone have a problem with it?
Here we go...
I didn’t say that. In context, I was explaining that featured doesn’t always work the way you’d set it up to seen and that there are other things that work better for niche works than featuring. Like Jesus Christ, I’m a novelist on a webcomics site. Do you really believe I don’t know what it’s like to be the underdog or how hard it is to get attention?
Stop putting words in my mouth, stop twisting them to mean something you want me to have said and didn’t, in fact say.
Yup, there are only two swim lines for novels. I get it, I'm not going to ask for 50/50 because this site is far from 50/50. 
I can attest to this working really well as one of the authors KR here gave a shout-out to. I started posting on Tapas again after years of having just been a reader (and after having posted a horrific webcomic in 2014, lol)
What built the foundation of the platform I have here now, was that shout-out. We write the same genre and they knew their fans would be excited to read my work. That in terms got my works up on those trending charts. And that got the attention of the staff who've now featured both of the novels I have on my profile.
And while the feature did help one of the novels with a good push, I don't think that's what really did it. It's tapping into a niche audience who're crazy dedicated to that niche. It's networking with other authors/creators in that niche and share readers. We've done it on other platforms as well, and that shit works.
And this is not to say there isn't a visibility issue on Tapas. I don't know the struggle of comic creators since I haven't been one for the last 6 years. But as a novel author, networking really works wonders if you do it right.
Again, I will repeat that the point is ANY advantage is better than NO advantage.
The underselling of that advantage, by anyone who has received it, is completely tone deaf to the rest of us.
Until a bunch of people start lining up and testifying they LOST subscribers by being featured then my point, and the logic, stands.
We're not talking about something that exists in a vacuum though.
The wide majority of the creators involved in these discussions are doing all those other things as well. Everyone is trying to work the other angles too.
It's the underselling of being featured or front page visibility as a positive in potential gains that rubs me the wrong way...always has.
@skicoak I don't see anyone underselling the feature in this thread though?
Oh...it's in here too but it's prevalent in any discussion on the theme.
It's sometimes in the sentences where people add a "but " after talking about their gains from being featured so they can re-qualify what really matters .
Or telling us about how it "backfired" when something like 50% of the new subscribers eventually unsubscribed.. a gain of 50% is STILL a gain.
Does everyone who does it recognize how it sounds to the rest if us? Probably not.
Is it nefarious ? Nope.
It's just tone deaf.
@skicoak I don't know, man. I think a lot of people think a feature will be the golden ticket and after that there's no longer any work needed. The grind is done and you now have thousands of people tuning in for every update.
Telling people about their own experiences with how the feature worked for them doesn't seem tone deaf to me. It seems more like you don't like what they have to say - that maybe the feature isn't the be-all end-all to everything that is Tapas. And that chasing something you have zero control over isn't productive.
You're "guessing", and incorrectly, as to what I mean.
I keep repeating it....if something gains our group's comic even one additional subscriber then it's an advantage. I don't need advantages to be "golden tickets" or "be-all end-all" to continue to seek them in any form they take. Most of us understand that... It's insulting to think "a lot of people" don't understand that.
And while I have zero control of the process (and most likely HURT our chances by being vocal about it) I do have a voice that reflects my own and other's opinions about it.