I agree with you here. I'm detecting a problem in this discussion, that I want to try to put into words.
No one can say conclusively that "hard work" works, because no data exists on the people for whom it didn't.
Everything in this thread is speculation and anecdote, because no information exists regarding those works worthy of above-average merit that have not acquired it.
Some purely anecdotal evidence to say that 'hard work' spent making and publicising a comic does not always work:
If you spend enough time sorting by Fresh you will find an abundance of comics of equal merit to any premium series that, despite having updated like clockwork for several years and publicised regularly and tastefully in a variety of places are yet to achieve their audience goals. Sometimes this is sub count, but more commonly in my experience folks are happy to settle for nice regular discussions in a comments section.
The sub4sub folks we are so keen to see less of are often less shallow than we might assume. Are their goals overinflated? Perhaps. But this can only be decided on a case-by-case basis after reading their work, and coming to understand them as an author. If we here had all done that they would have their following and we would not be having this discussion.
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It is extremely hard to find unpopular things on the Internet, as they have no data to recommend them.
When a computer sorts data, it does so according to information it has on each item. The only field that is not connected to some measure of popularity is newness, hence the importance of 'Fresh'.
But this is not especially useful either, because to answer the question at the heart of 'The Popularity Debate', we need to find failure - we want to find the people who gave up - people the modern content platform hides by design.
I think everyone in this thread can agree we would all like to be recommended more things that are good, but not popular. This could go for any platform with unnoticed independent creators on it, but I think Tapas as a brand is actually ideally placed to try.
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My proposal:
Perhaps what we want to see is for Tapas to champion comics that are, numerically speaking "underrated".
It would not be a complex feat of statistics to return a list of comics that passed a certain threshold for 'consistency', taking into account length of episodes, and the regularity of updates etc..
...This has so so many issues don't even get me started - trying to put a number on what is basically "effort" is so wrong for so many reasons. But, personally I think it'd be infinitely better to what we have now, where it gets harder and harder year on year to find new things that no one else has found before.
It would not be complex to query those highly consistent comics and return ones with very low/slow growth/popularity.
Just a one-off query letting us know how many of those comics there are in Tapas' database would be truly groundbreaking information. To be able to sort by 'Undiscovered' next to 'Fresh', 'Popular', 'Trending' and 'Binge', even if it weren't on the front page would make so so much difference. In fact, it would validate everyone in this thread making the 'but think about poor Tapas' case in this thread, because then we might actually have a way of knowing whether they had a point or not.
It's easy:
- If I can find a bunch of great comics under 'Undiscovered' that make me go 'hot damn how does this not have more of a following'... how long's this guy been going like what... a year?? they don't have a point.
- If I can't, they do.
I can already find that under the Fresh tab with a bunch of time and effort, so you needn't ask me who I think does or does not have a point here.
To set up an 'Undiscovered' tab when browsing the 'comics' or 'novels' pages would take very little developer time. If it turned out there were a bunch of great comics/novels under there, making it available as a feature for all users would have no intrusion on the rest of the site, would further Tapas' image as 'the webcomics platform with a nice community', and would do a world of good for the health of the community as a whole.
However you feel about whether Tapas needs to do more or not, at this point where we all lack the evidence we need to conclusively say either way... wouldn't you at least like to find out?
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If someone on this forum asks 'How do I grow my following', all the tips people give can be summed up in four words: 'hard work and publicising'. In all cases, 'hard work and publicising' is the advice that is given, but right now there simply is no evidence to say conclusively whether 'hard work and publicising' works in all cases.
Everyone who says it does and is happy with their audience progression share having put lots of hard work in publicising things in common. Lots of people who have put lots of hard work in publicising feel disillusioned and miserable.
I would call on the former group to be empathetic with the latter.