Visibility on Tapas

Bit of a switch in topic but I kinda keyed into what @vothnthorvaldson mentioned waaay earlier in the thread about the horrible search functionality. Every time I see a conversation about visibility pop up my first thought tends to go to "it's hard because there's no easy way for readers to find you".

Tapas has almost no reader-comic matching system; the closest is to use the genre dropdowns. Discerning readers can think a little more carefully about how to find comics they're likely to enjoy (I literally have a mental checklist to help me pick out new comics to read on fresh) but this is a lot of effort. Yes, having a good story and good art is really important, as is a bit of timing, luck, and just knowing the trends, but to many creators, the luck and timing elements feel like they far outweigh any element of skill. As a reader, I also wonder just how many awesome niche comics I'm missing because I only check fresh late in the evening on specific days. I don't use social media, I can't be advertised to even though I'm a big spender on comics.

I happen to be doing work on recommender problems for my job and it's a fascinating field. Something like the "more like this series" option that's now available has the potential to be extremely helpful for leveling the playing field a little. A way to actually match potential readers to comics would be game-changing for small artists. Unfortunately Tapas resources are probably spread extremely thin right now. It just makes too much financial sense to push premium as hard as possible and build the site around that rather than develop a complex feature that may not benefit the premium comics as much.

I've been here since 2015 and am both a reader and a creator. I've purchased premium content and felt good about being able to support these talented artists. I haven't recently, not because I don't think they're good, but because our finances are so tight that my goal at the end of the month is to have enough money to buy a bubble tea after all the bills are paid. Lame, I know, but I love bubble tea and they're like $7 ^_^;

As for visibility on Tapas, my comic has always had really, really weird stat ratios. I started posting three days a week in 2015 because I wanted to share my story. I thought it was neat that people wanted to read it even though the art wasn't great and the story was really slow. I've learned a lot from this forum and by reading other creator's works and am very grateful that Tapas (Tapastic back in the day) exists. For me the new update has made it more difficult to find new comics and to get to the new pages of the comics I already read. They did fix the issue with previously read updates displaying as unread, so that's good

I think it'll take a month or so to really see how the view count is effected by the new update. I do put a lot of effort into making my comic and work on the areas where I'm weak because I NEED to draw what's going on in my head, if that makes any sense. So even if it doesn't show up on the main page anymore and gets no views, I'll still post it until it reaches the end.

Right, incoming wall of text. Going through the comic series section...there's quite a few changes I've found between the new and old design, and boy...are there quite a few issues. I think at least two things smaller creators will not like is the all section not having sorting options outside of genre and free/premium, and their names not being displayed below their comic covers.

I can see how these (among several other things) can upset smaller comic creators as these above factors could affect visibility in several ways. They also make it harder as a reader to navigate and sort through the site, with the site being even more limited and confusing than even Webtoon.

It's just astonished at this point.

Site-wide changes
- New All/Free/Premium comic selector
- Genre selection no longer in drop-down menu, instead is more in a Webtoon style top
- Author's name not displayed below comics, which in turn means there's no link to their profile.
- One genre and likes are displayed below comic cover/Premiums no longer show up to three genres below cover
- Old design gave 150 comics for each genre in popular, trending and fresh, among 5 pages with 6 rows with 5 comics each (for a total of 30 per page). In the new design, this is replaced by 5 comic rows not divided by pages, but rather needs to be scrolled all the way through.

Popular
- Default section upon pressing comics button now (previous default was Premium)

Fresh
- No changes outside of site-wide changes

Binge
- New section
- Not sorted by most to least pages at all, nor is there any way to sort that way.
- Reason(s) for comic selection cannot be determined

Tapas Originals
- New section
- Only one genre shown now under comic cover, vs up to 3 genres in old design.
- Old design could sort by likes (by default), subscribers, views, comments, date, name. No such options in new design, so the comics have no known order (if any does exist at all)
- Does not contain all premium comics, as while there's 273 premium comics in total, only 64 comics are in the Tapas Originals section
- This is despite the fact a few missing comics that were checked are listed as being published by Tapas Media. All 273 have not been checked for their listed publisher, though no other premium comic publisher is known to publish on the site, or is listed anywhere as doing so.
- The reason for this discrepency, and by extension, the existence of a seemingly incomplete premium section, cannot be determined.

All
- Old design could sort by likes (by default), subscribers, views, comments, date, name. No such selection in new design, so comics have no known order (if any does exist at all)
- Genre selection and free selection highly recommended, in order to limit the amount of scrolling that may need to be done among hundreds, if not thousands of unorganized comics

Premium
- Removed completely
- Alternate can be using All section, then selecting premium.

Issues
- In popular, fresh, and binge, free and premium together results in a disorganized, brick wall like shifting of the comic covers. This is due to the mixing of differently sized square free comic covers, and portrait premium covers. This is resolved by selecting either premium or free.

@joannekwan I agree with most of what you said. I wont give too much back here because when I'm ready I plan to say a few things on my own thread. good luck to you with your comics.

Be sure to post it when you do! I'd be interested in your thoughts.

This is one of the best threads I've seen on Tapas. A really civil, detailed discussion of the issues. Props to everyone.

One thing that's been touched on a number of times is that there's a certain amount of the Dunning-Kreuger Effect in action where people who are complaining about visibility very vocally are often really not making art or stories that are up to the standard where people would click them even if they were on the front page. They don't even realise that being boosted to featured status when you're still developing can actually be massively detrimental. (The dunning kreuger effect, in summary, is basically that people who only know a little bit about a thing massively overestimate how competent they are at that thing, while people who are intermediate tend to hugely underestimate how competent they are, and only the people who have reached a level of mastery have an accurate sense of their ability/knowledge level).

Let me tell you about somebody I really adore and admire. Her name is Katy Coope and she is one of the nicest people I know. She's warm, encouraging, clever and conscientious.

Katy Coope is about my age, in her mid-thirties, and like me, when she was in her teens, manga was suddenly everywhere in the UK and we couldn't get enough of it! A bunch of us teenage girls all around the UK, we were all teaching ourselves to draw manga.
But something really wild happened to Katy that didn't happen to me. When she was FIFTEEN YEARS OLD, somebody from a book company approached her and asked her to make a book on how to draw manga.
You've seen these, right? You've seen people making fun of these books online? Yeah, they were drawn by like... a random fifteen year old British girl who by chance got picked up by somebody from a UK book company because they happened to meet her and she could draw manga a bit and they wanted a manga artist.


People have relentlessly trolled this woman for her entire adult life, and her name is so heavily associated now with "bad drawing" that she pretty much stays out of the public eye and works as a designer and tends to go by a different name. It's a shame because she actually did become a pretty solid illustrator, here's what her work as an adult looks like:

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You do not want to get featured or go pro before your work is ready. Being pushed into drawing a comic on a tight schedule tends to cause a period of stagnation. Artists who aren't under such pressure have more space to improve their work, meaning that if you're not quite there yet, it's actually better to work quietly as a relative unknown and then make your big splash when your stuff looks really good and pro. But also... you need to be realistic about whether your work is really pro quality yet, or whether maybe it could be better.

In my case, I haven't been expecting a feature, and I haven't wanted one while I'm still in the prologue of my comic because if I get featured, I want it to be when the story and characters are really properly underway and a feature would make the most impact. So I've been sat thinking "oh geez, they'd better not feature my comic while I only have like twenty pages and nothing's happened yet..." I deliberately haven't started a Patreon while still in the prologue for the same reason; I'll make a bigger impact if there's a decent amount of comic to read and we're at the core premise when I make a marketing push. I know that's easy for me to say, because I already have that confidence boost of "yeah, I've had my illos published by Penguin Randomhouse, I don't need Tapas to validate me." I know what it's like to deeply yearn for that validation. But I also learned from Katy Coope and many others how damaging it can be if comes at the wrong time.

Some of the people here aren't ready.... YET. Yet is the big word here. You WILL be ready at some point, but it might be a different comic, of you might need a bit more development first.
Generally by the time you get offered something like a feature, you'll probably be getting a following even without one anyway. Because it's very rare for a comic to actually be really, really good, have a significant number of pages (like enough to really get into the story) and for nobody at all to have found it. It can happen, but in most cases....well... are your backgrounds actually kinda sparse? Is your artwork actually maybe a bit rough? Do you only have a few pages? Is your premise actually pretty limited appeal? You have to be honest with yourself.

I didn't even think about that.

To be honest, I have a lot of thanks to give when it comes to Katy. The first book I ever got to teach me how to draw was that scholastic how to draw manga book. yeah it's pretty bad but for me in fourth grade it was miles better than what I could do and helped inspire me to learn to draw in the first place. It's actually what helped me realize that there were people behind the cartoons I watched. It's a shame to hear that she's been treated so poorly because of those books. They're not great but they certainly don't warrant that kind of reaction.

It's amazing that people are more than willing to work with artists who are terrible horrible people, but if you do something embarrassing once in your life when you're young you will NEVER get work.

That's giving me some Rebecca Black flashbacks actually... same thing happened to her. We'll work with Chris Brown all damn day but god forbid we give a now adult Rebecca Black a chance now that she's improved her skills.

Just hopping in as another person to confirm the sentiment previously brought up in this thread: popular and premium artists do not feel welcome here.

It's crazy how different people treat you in these spheres when you start seeing even the smallest bit of success. I started out as a small creator too, and saw the most significant part of my growth before tapas started spotlighting my works and asked me for a premium pitch. But the attitude frequently seen on here is that we all cheated our way there, cut corners, and will never understand the struggle of the small folk. If we provide our advice or input on anything, we have to brace ourselves just in case someone has a bad day due to anxiety over their comic not being "successful enough".

It's especially sad because it contributes to a special type of loneliness. See, when you grow in numbers you are already forced to distance yourself emotionally from your fans and obtain a more professional approach to them. The reason for this is that emotions are exploitable and can be spread to hurt you. People can start rumors, or get under your skin, or decide to obsessively start attempting to become your romantic partner. The last one especially is one I've had to deal with. Some people pull the last one but replace partner with best friend...

Add to this that many of us, especially in webcomics, already had few friends to begin with. You have to be a bit of an oddball to provide something people will notice, and many people in webcomics are lgbt people. In my case, I'm a trans gay goth dude living in a small town. Imagine trying to make friends.

And then you get rejected by one of the few communities you felt welcome in. Just because of numbers. Oftentimes, that weird trait you have that locals reject you for, is also turned into one of those "cheats" people accuse you of. "You only got where you are because you make gay shit". "Tapas treats you special because you are trans and they want to seem liberal and cool". "Edgy vampire bs may be popular, but that's because audiences don't know REAL QUALITY". These are just attitudes I personally have faced, so I'm sure there are many other variations...

It's all to the point that now when I meet new people, I usually try to avoid talking about the numbers. When they ask my job I just tell them I'm an author and illustrator. "Not that big, but it pays the bills." Even though I am proud of my growth as it's probably my biggest accomplishment in my short life, I have to keep it on the hush hush until I know a person close enough that I can trust they won't treat me different. I avoid letting people know where they can read my comic unless it becomes socially impossible to do so, just because if they look it up they'll see that number and it will change everything.

The one social perk I've gained is I can shut up those grumpy assholes that try to imply art isn't a real job and won't earn any money. That's when I ignore my usual practice and spit out numbers and earnings right at them. Satisfying, but will it ever compare to the social life I'm locked out of? Not really.

That's gotta be rough. I think it's very easy for people on the outside to see someone successful and make wild assumptions as to how they got there. It's as if no one is allowed nuance except for themselves.

To be honest the attitude changes could be seen in some parts of the webcomic community already at a few thousand subs, but at 20k was when I started feeling like I was viewed as the devil in the room, so to speak. If my memory serves me right, this was all growth I did through my own power. I had gotten on new and noteworthy once with a different comic, but that comic never got all that successful. The 20k mark I got to through the same tools as all creators had available to them at the time, but it was seen as if Tapas had somehow cheated me to that spot. Then when I started being spotlighted and became premium, it was frequently used as an argument AGAINST me and any point I had to make, trying to point me out as biased.

These days I rarely post here because I just don't feel welcome and any post I make runs the risk of adding fuel to the flames in any discussion. It would make anyone rather anxious, and I know there are other big creators who feel the same way.

Yeah, it gets pretty fucked up.
It's an angry, ugly monster that will use whatever they can find against you.
I was on the receiving end at one point many years ago when I had a moderately successful comic, and since then I've learnt not to be too open about my personal life.

I’m... Glad?
Guess we are frinds now?

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God I'm really glad all you Premium folk came out to bring up your two cents.

And that everyone has been respectful about you doing so. I think your insight shouldn't be discredited as biased. Everyone has biases and there's no problem having them so long as people are open and honest about those biases. It doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't have a voice on the forums. I even think it's fine to be against premium comics on principal, but there's a difference between not wanting to support them and treating those who make them poorly. Maybe if more people spoke up like you're doing now attitudes might change.

You shouldn't have to speak up, and really you don't have to, but I think it's been a really nice change of pace around here if I'm being totally honest.

I honestly think most people on the forums are perfectly fine with premium creators and welcome them, but it's that constant vocal minority that cause stinks. Or they'll just use it as an excuse to deflect from something they don't want to hear... that's always a possibility.

As one of the "Angrier" voices on here about some of these issues, let me wade in...

I think inherently the worst take on the value of visibility and being featured on Tapas is the cracked logic of underselling it to those who haven't received it.

Sure, I understand it's not a direct pathway to whatever defines "success" in this industry but the continued narrative of NOT acknowledging it as a mainly positive experience definitely colors my opinion of those who push that storyline. When a poster says it only led to "X" more subscribers, it's usually a number substantially way more than our group's current subscribers. It can't help but raise my ire.

The logic is simple.

If being featured got us ONE more subscriber, it's still ONE more than not being featured.

I, personally, don't have a built in bias to individuals that benefit from a system... but that doesn't disqualify me from attacking a system I, personally, see as flawed. I can understand that for those individuals, it sometimes seems like the attack is focused at them specifically.

But no, I respect the individual's grind and their individual paths.

Yeh I think we're mostly talking about the specific people who discount what Premium artists say simply due to being a Premium artist. You're more than welcome to buck the system while being respectful to those artists as I and a few others have said above.

Though I'll say as someone who's been featured out of the blue, it's a big high but at least the first time it happens if you're not prepared for the drop off (something no one warned me about, which I'm not blaming anyone for because it's not their jobs) then seeing your suddenly dwindling numbers for six months can also have a pretty negative impact on you.

I don't think anyone here is saying visibility doesn't matter at all, just that it's not something that's within your control, at least when it comes to Tapas featuring etc etc. so it's better to focus on the parts that you have in your control. Rather than letting your disappointment set in and develop a hatred for those who made it.

But I do have control over my ability to voice a dissenting opinion to the general practices of a site that maximizes it's ability to push Premium titles visibility while minimizing to the rest of us the role of visibility in "success".

Of course you do. That's completely unrelated to what I was saying which was that people here aren't saying visibility doesn't matter at all. Everyone here is free to voice a dissenting opinion about it. My point is simply that they're not saying visibility doesn't matter.

This has occurred for years, over multiple threads, and it's a general underselling of the experience.

Sure, no one is saying it DOESN'T matter but the majority are not painting it as the positive experience it's likely to be for the majority of us who haven't had it. It's tone deaf to suggest that these gains, of any sort, aren't extremely important to us in the double digit crowd.

I feel like another problem with the community is that it’s not much like... say YouTube, where people shout out one another and it actually feels like a really big community (which has its own set of problems) but collaborations are a thing and it’s community has a much less... let’s say sterile, vibe to it.

I remember when big collaborations with big and small sub counts happened back when it was tapastic, I rarely see that now unless it’s forum based and usually with small amount of people getting involved.

Now this could just have something to do with the fact that the DM system has always been a bit poo so after a few years people just naturally felt better staying in their own corners x3, but I do feel like the community isn’t very..... Uh outgoing? At least not compared to the olden days but this could be rose tinted glasses talking.