So, there are a lot of good Comics/Novels on Tapas. One major downside though is you have to pay for the premium ones.
I completely understand that Writers and Artists need some compensation for their work, and
Most of the time if a seires is really good I will go ahead and pay for it.
But, I am curious how many people do pay for premium episodes.
Feb '19
Feb '19
I do! Only a few, though, and I'm quite picky when I'm spending my ink! I stick to ink I can get for free, but I like supporting other community comics, so buying episodes from the premium stuff is for things I really like. However there are a couple comics I adore (one incubator, one premium, in particular). So far I've only found one novel that I really felt was worth the cost of ink. And I've read that one probably 3 times?
But yeah, I hold premium to a higher standard, and most of it doesn't strike my interest regardless.
I rarely do. So far there's 1 premium series that I've been buying episodes for, since October or so. I've given out much more ink to other community artists though (mostly during Inksgiving, but a few random other instances as well). There are a few other premium series I'm interested in maybe buying eventually, but I wanna make sure I'm going to actually have time to read them first xD a lot of my free comics I'm awful at actually keeping up with :X
I've never spent actual money on a premium series but i have used ink from ads and bonus ink to pay for episodes
i think i follow a lot more "wait for free" series so there's a little less spending unless im really eager to get to the next chapter (or i accidentally skipped over a chapter and want to read what i missed)
Getting ink for the ads (the rare times I'm able to do that) isnt' so bad so because of that I'm more willing to use the ink system.
Honestly though, I'd rather spend my inks tipping artists instead, cause most of the series I'm reading don't have locked episodes but I still want to give artists some money.
If I like the story, ya. You should be able to earn free ink through the app if you don't make enough money
Sure! If I like the story! In all honesty, I end up giving ink away to creators way more often than I use to it buy Premium content 
I buy ink and spend it on a few premium series here and there! It's honestly not that expensive. If you guys have a spare $5-10 every now and then to toss in you can actually get a lot out of it and can support people in the process. 
I pay. Most series cost around 20 cents per episode, which means my Starbucks latte that I buy without giving it a second thought would pay for about 18 episodes of a comic/story that someone spent a ton of time and effort on.
Because of that I don't really get the complaint of comics not being free. Maybe I'm too old and grumpy.
I buy them, but with ad ink. Only because I used to get a decent amount of ads, enough for unlocking a good number of comics and give small tips to authors
I really don't but mainly because there's so much great free stuff that I can't keep up with it alone.
No reason to pay for stuff when my reading time is already stretched thin.
If talking about the the Premium section, I tend to choose wait-for-free series from here. Most of the time I read them after waiting, and buy their last several episodes (not-unlockable by waiting), only if I really liked the series. Even more often I just drop them at some point. There are always some exceptions, though.
For example, I've bought near the half episodes of "Crimson Tracks", when they were on sale. Also I've bought nearly a quarter of "Villains" episodes. If these creators have made a good work, which has been able to capture my attention, why not?
But in general, I certainly prefer to spend an ink for tipping small, not-premium authors.
I absolutely do, all the time.
We pay for every other form of entertainment, itās ridiculous to me how people treat comics as if they should be anything different. Tapas has done a truly wonderful job at selection, too? I love non-premium comics, of course, but Iāve very very rarely seen any that reached the quality of premium comics both in art and writing. Similarly, Iāve rarely spent money on premium comics and ended up not enjoying the story. Artists deserve to be paid, it sucks how little people are willing to see that, it sucks seeing people complain and whine about needing to pay literally like, a few cents per episode?
Just take that $20 you were going to spend on watching a movie and put it into tapas, youāll literally get months worth of content.
I sometimes have a day where I run a load of ads on the side while I do other stuff, to gather up ink to buy full packages of episodes. Lets you binge it later.
I think most people who complain about premium not being free are usually either very young or don't think art should count as a job. In the former case, they just haven't learnt to understand the connection between time spent (and the many years and tons of money that went into forming the skill to produce this type of content) and money received. Usually they will change their minds a couple years into adult life, having experienced the concept of "time spent = money" from the worker's end.
In the latter case, there isn't much we can do. Usually these prejudices are brought down through generations of selfish entitled people who think that only services and actions they deem valuable and legitimate deserve payment. They expect entertainment to be produced for fun, in our spare time, and given away for free. Because it's a fun job so of course it can't be a real job. Us idiot artists should just go get a REAL job, right?
Nah. But that's what they think. It's impossible to reason with people like that.
Some people are also just plain entitled. You encounter these in any business. Restaurant personel, for example, have to get used to politely declining customers that attempt to haggle their way to free beer, free meals, pretend they didn't like a meal after they already ate all of it to avoid payment etc etc. People who legitimately do not care about the consequences their cheapskate behavior has for other people, as long as they sneak their way out of having to pull 10 bucks out of their wallet they are happy.
The next step in entitlement is thievery. Deciding that not only should you not have to pay, but noone should and you shall become the pirate jesus by providing the people with the free content they deserve!! And from there, you get pirated content.
Or, in the case of restaurants... That one time I watched a customer trying to wander out with one of our salt shakers stuffed in his back pocket...
Entitlement sure is petty.
i used to unlock a bit of a single Premium series with Ink but then i thought how impractical it is. Especially for long ongoing ones.
So for now i save my Inks for tipping artists, while straight up paying for a bunch of episodes when it's done OR when i actually have time to binge read (which still didn't happen yet...)
but yea, i'm willing to pay. That being said tho, there isn't much Premium content that appeals to me. But that's a topic for another discussion...
I don't think it's particularly helpful to broadly generalize everyone who isn't partaking in premium comics the way you want... then name calling/ink shaming them.
There's amazing content on the free side of the wall and amazing creators who are working within that economic model. Choosing to read series like ...
...and so many more... and then using my available ink to support them is a choice, MY choice... not a consequence of "prejudices" or "entitlement".
Where I live there are no ads Ink.
Ink IS money for me.
And yes I do read 1-2 premiums comics.
Any support I get I count as cash and is very happy to receive ( even if I know it is ads ink, bc for me, I count it as money.)
I've so far only bought one series, The Extreme Dog owner but I intend to finish reading most the wait to read comics I have going on rn. I also bought a few episodes of Crimson Tracks which I'm reading with the waiting method as well because I was left in such a cliffhanger part, lol.
I'd happily purchase more episodes but it's so hard for me to get ink for free since I cannot really afford paying money to get ink. I get barely any ads and if I do there might be just one or two, I can't watch the demos and most of the time I'm not in the "intended target group" for surveys. I guess I should get the free ink from playing the game (I tried) but I don't enjoy the game at all.
