00:00.71

Varethane

And we begin.

00:02.28

Star

Wow.

00:03.54

Varethane

Hello, and welcome to Varethane, where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today we're going to be talking about recent developments with Tapas. I'm Varethane, my pronouns are she, they, and I make the webcomics Chirault and Wychwood.

00:18.83

Star

And I'm Star. My pronouns are she, her, and I make the comic Castoff.

00:24.15

Varethane

So at the time of this recording, the official Tapas announcement about the closure has just gone up. Literally, it just went up like a couple hours ago. But the word got out last week and the community is still reeling. A lot of webcomic creators have built a lot on the tapas platform so lots of people are feeling stress with the announcement that Kakao, the company that owns Tapas, is “consolidating their properties” and closing it down.

00:54.13

Varethane

Tapas has been around for a long time. It really started coming into prominence in 2012 and 2013, together with Webtoon, as the mobile first apps that would host your webcomics for free.

01:05.49

Varethane

And over the years, there was a lot of forum, culture, community, it offered a lot of promotional tools to reach readers as well as opportunities to earn money.

01:18.22

Varethane

Because this news is so fresh, we're mostly just discussing it from our perspective as creators right now. But we're gonna get into it. I do have some questions prepared. The first one is, what was appealing about the Tapas platform for you when it first launched or when you first heard about it? And when did you join?

01:45.39

Star

I actually didn't really know much about Tapas until I think around the time that I was planning to start Cast Off, which was 2014, 2015-ish.

02:08.36

Star

Before then, I was kind of on my several year sabbatical from making webcomics. And when I was making my first webcomic, I was on DeviantArt and Smackjeeves and Manga Magazine.

02:23.34

Varethane

Oh, the good old days.

02:24.58

Star

The good old days, back in those times. And I remember you know Smackjeeves was okay but I think maybe I just wasn't really feeling it at the time because this was before it died, Pretty much all of those platforms i just mentioned have gone the way of the domains they're no longer functional except for Deviant Art who's just like a shambling corpse of its former self um

02:50.17

Varethane

Zombie. It's a zombie of its former self. It's very sad.

02:53.62

Star

ah Basically, it's a zombie riddled with the AI viruses. Gross. They keep sending me emails even though I keep unsubscribing from them because I don't. It's like I don't want to hear about your ai bullshit go out of here.

03:06.79

Star

But yeah, and so it's like, you know, I was planning on having my own site, but it was my first time I had ever made my own site for a comic. And I was, you know, wanting to join some platforms to pull my audience over. and I can't remember if I was on Webtoon from day one or not.

03:26.32

Star

It might not have been. I think it was just my website and tapas at first, maybe. But I mean, I liked Tapas when I first joined it and I still do to an extent. We'll get deeper into it later. But I mean, you know, the whole goal was , OK, well, I'm going to do my best to market my own site. But this is another platform that I can use to try and grow an audience. And I was really starting from nothing back then.

03:53.64

Star

Because my first webcomic had like maybe a hundred readers on a good day.

03:59.22

Varethane

Yeah, I think the platforms were really appealing at that time for established webcomic creators to build mirrors.

04:05.84

Star

Yeah.

04:05.79

Varethane

basically for extra promotion. They would be supplementary to having your own site. In those early days, anyway.

04:13.85

Star

Mm hmm.

04:13.82

Varethane

it's It has changed. But anyway.

04:15.65

Star

Yeah. Listen, at some point, I'm sure this is just going transition into us spilling tea about comics at some point, I'm sure. But. Yeah, it's like, you know.

04:28.33

Star

I wasn't like super duper involved in the community, but it felt like the space was friendly and I liked being involved on it. I didn't have really any complaints at first and i think i did find a lot of readers there in those early days. I was never like super duper popular i think even now Castoff has like

04:50.73

Star

I think I just hit 20,000 subs over there. My Webtoon mirror is like three times that size. like It was never the biggest platform, but you know I felt generally positive about it, especially when I was first joining.

05:05.02

Star

What about you? Thane

05:07.01

Varethane

Well, I was also kind of a late adopter to both Tapas and Actually, I did make my webtoon mirror relatively early after launching Wytchwood. I think it was about.

05:18.87

Varethane

less than a year or so after I... I launched the webcomic on my main site. I made the Webtoon mirror. And then, a little after that, I got into Hiveworks, which had a contract that prevented me from making a new mirror anywhere else. So that kind of put like a hold on joining Tapas.

05:40.37

Star

I forgot about that part.

05:41.86

Varethane

Yeah, that was a whole that was a whole little blip. in ah

05:44.66

Star

I remember, and like, I didn't see, like, the actual happenings. I just remember seeing a whole bunch of Hiveworks people suddenly announcing that they were getting mirrors. And I'm like, I guess they fought hard enough and they got that.

05:56.03

Varethane

Yeah, it was around 2020 when that happened. It wasn't super long after I had joined. Anyway, part of why I had made the mirror on Webtoon rather than on Tapas first. I think Webtoon at the time was still kind of newer. This was like 2019 or so. And tapas. I had been kind of warily keeping an eye on because the first time they ever.

06:22.04

Varethane

entered the webcomic scene. In 2012, they did it under a different name, which was Comic Panda. And they had a bit of a...

06:28.84

Star

Bit of a thing about this, I remember.

06:32.51

Varethane

Yeah, it it's it's one of those, like, I feel like they probably weren't doing it maliciously per se, but they basically started scraping existing webcomics to add to their platform without getting permission from the creators. And it left a really bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. So when they rebranded to Tapastic initially, I was like, oh, but, you know, suspicion.

06:57.27

Varethane

I didn't join. right away then there was another bit of controversy a few years later where they changed some clause that introduced like a right of first refusal thing which basically meant that people on Tapas might have trouble.

07:13.36

Varethane

getting their work published in another place. Like they would have to get permission from Tapas in order to do it.

07:19.34

Star

Which is wild.

07:20.40

Varethane

I know for for like a platform that you just kind of join for free and like is not. Yes. Anyway.

07:26.35

Star

It's like i understand that for like their contracted series that they're paying

07:29.82

Varethane

Yeah.

07:31.27

Star

Bye. That's kind of like... Hmm.

07:34.09

Varethane

For the community comics who are not like, you know, working with an editor, they're not like under any big like clause or label. They're not getting paid a living wage or anything by the platform. Anyway, those two kind of things combined made me a little warier of it. So I made the Webtoon Mirror first. And that one did really well. And then in 2020 I got invited to the creator credit program

08:00.27

Varethane

I believe that's what it was called. And I ended up joining because by that point, my perspective on it had softened somewhat. I was meeting a lot of other creators who were on Tapas and really enjoying it. And the community was pretty big by that point. And the staff were really active in it.

08:19.51

Varethane

So when I got invited to that program I was like, you know, that sounds like a pretty good deal. Like you can join and basically. get access to some of the monetization stuff right away instead of needing to kind of build up readership because otherwise you have to meet certain levels. uh and that aspect of it was nice, but...

08:40.20

Varethane

honestly almost the bigger draw that made me sort of change my view is how nice the staff were. Like they were really active and organizing all these like events and collaborations. I remember right after.

08:55.29

Varethane

I signed on, there was this little thing where for Easter, they had creators do like a little Easter egg. that would go like at the end of the update that they posted around that time and then readers could find like each of the easter eggs and there was some sort of ink thing that went with it but it was nice kind of making it feel like a community.

09:17.71

Star

Yeah, I also remember, I think this was just a community thing. I don't think that Tapas itself. Maybe it was. I don't remember.

09:25.22

Varethane

I got a formal email about it. I think it was actually initiated or at least encouraged a lot by the staff.

09:31.72

Star

Yeah, like the Easter one probably was, but I remember I was invited to like a Christmas themed one. um where a bunch of people made like little holiday one shots and then it's like okay and then we'll pass the buck to the next person and basically you know like encourage people to go around and like read other comics is so it's like the comic before me would promote Castoff and then Castoff at the end of its little one shot would promote this other comic.

09:59.88

Star

It was like the idea of just a little holiday letter writing thing going around. And that was actually what started the tradition I did for a couple years where I did holiday themed one shots for each of the main characters.

10:14.08

Varethane

Ah.

10:14.79

Star

Because the first one I did was for Vector and that was the one that I actually did for the ah like the Tapas Christmas campaign.

10:21.78

Varethane

Ah That's awesome.

10:22.21

Star

Yeah, and then I ended up doing, I think, two more. I did Ariana's the next year because it was a short one. And then Frankie's I didn't do for several years, but I finally did do his. Maybe someday I'll do something for the other characters, but I don't know what I would do at this point. And I think there was like at least one other collaboration I was involved in at some point.

10:46.15

Star

That was either community driven or Something, I can't, it's been 10 years.

10:52.62

Varethane

I know. I think on the Webtoon side, that was kind of my first introduction to some of the community type stuff that these vertical scroll platforms.

10:54.50

Star

ah

11:04.56

Varethane

tend to go through and i actually took part in at least one I think a couple of those collaborations on Webtoon. One of them was like a back to school event.

11:17.33

Star

Yeah, I did that one too!

11:16.65

Varethane

Yeah there's so many creators in it it actually worked really well as like an introduction to a whole bunch of different comics and t was really cool seeing that it actually got a good response from the readers because a lot of the time something like that people might be like it's not story I'll just skip it but it does feel like the reader community on sites like that is actually really open to kind of exploring and checking out other stuff And I think one of the things that I.

11:45.12

Varethane

kind of came to appreciate about Tapas once I started kind of looking at it more is that the staff were involved in helping those things. Not to say that there were none that were.

11:57.53

Varethane

like 100 % community initiated, but it felt like the staff were kind of watching, whereas on Webtoon, people kind of do their own thing 100 % and the staff is just in their black box, like not interacting.

12:09.54

Star

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you mentioned the creator credit program or something or other that Tapas was in. Were you in the early access program as well or no?

12:21.16

Varethane

I'm not actually sure I might have been. At the point when I was... in those because my webtoon mirror was super active and I was in hiveworks and so on I wasn't actually spending a lot of time kind of cultivating the tapas.

12:38.58

Varethane

I kind of didn't.

12:40.30

Varethane

promote the way I should have.

12:40.01

Star

The early access thing was invite only.

12:44.20

Varethane

That might have been... what I was in.

12:46.80

Star

Okay.

12:47.26

Varethane

I think so.

12:47.62

Star

Because. I remember that there was definitely like some sort of monetization, something on both Tapas and Webtoon had something similar, I believe. Because Webtoon definitely had the, oh, if you have this many subscribers and you get this many page views a month, we'll throw you like, say, $100.

13:04.27

Star

And it's like, if you get this many subscribers and this many page views, we'll throw you $200. And I was in like their $300 tier for like six months before they ended the program entirely.

13:14.80

Star

And I was like.

13:15.49

Varethane

I know!

13:16.27

Star

Come on, man. That was paying like two bills.

13:18.94

Varethane

I know

13:20.01

Star

What the heck?

13:21.11

Varethane

Webtoon had such a good monetization program before they strangled it.

13:23.61

Star

It did, and then they... gutted it and replaced it with tipping that to my knowledge was never fully implemented.

13:32.47

Varethane

Yeah. Anyway we're getting off topic of tapas

13:37.73

Star

Yeah, it's not about Webtoon.

13:39.40

Star

Listen, one day, hopefully soon, we'll have the death of follow-up. Listen I have such beef with Webtoons. I’m praying on its downfall at some point just so people at conventions will stop asking me if my comic is on Webtoons. I get so it's like oh i read your webtoon and it's just like

14:02.80

Varethane

I get that.

14:02.69

Star

ah My dentist is going to get mad at me if I keep grinding my teeth like this.

14:06.60

Varethane

Yeah.

14:08.02

Varethane

So second question, ah what were the downsides to tapas and what are we not going to miss? I feel like we've already kind of started to tap in on this, but let's let's open the tap.

14:14.63

Star

\Ah! Huh? Well, yeah, so... I think... Yeah, we've kind of touched on a little bit a lot of it.

14:27.94

Star

There was a whole, it kind of started in kind of an unsavory way. And I know a couple of people who just never joined Tapas because they didn't trust it. I personally, at this exact moment, am having a little bit of beef with them because...

14:43.05

Star

Like I said, I'm in the early access program, which is kind of like this invite only monetization feature that replaces the other monetization option that they will usually offer that is not invite only. And basically what that is, is people can use their in-app currency.

14:59.40

Star

to get early access to comic episodes. And so it was basically like, people who wanted to read pages early but couldn't afford Patreon could just watch a couple ads and earn enough money like that in app currency to download episodes early.

15:16.80

Varethane

Maybe I wasn't in it or maybe I just didn't know how to configure it. So I never actually, cause I don't think I ever had.

15:20.73

Star

I definitely had a person that I was in contact with.

15:26.90

Star

There was like a Slack channel and everything. So I don't know, maybe we were in two separate things. But yeah, the early access program has actually been pretty great. I've been earning like.

15:37.99

Star

a decent amount of money from that. It's not a ton but it's you know, it's like 40 bucks. It's like half my water bill. And I'm sure people who earn a lot more or have a larger audience on that platform are using it a lot more. um But the problem is that when you join that program, it kind of takes away a lot of the autonomy.

15:59.97

Star

of your presence on the platform. Because here's the thing is that I have to get episodes approved before they get scheduled on Tapas. So I'll like, I'll go in there and post something. And I've never had a problem with them censoring me or anything. It's just usually I have to wait for someone to go in and manually approve it um i think the person who is in charge of manually approving episodes for my comic has been taking a sabbatical since the news leaked.

16:29.44

Varethane

Hmm.

16:29.48

Star

That the site was shutting down.

16:30.67

Varethane

understandable.

16:31.77

Varethane

Honestly.

16:32.68

Star

I mean, like, yeah, but you know, I'm trying to tell my audience where else they can find me. And I literally can't notify them via the comic until someone hits approve on that update. And it's been a week and a half.

16:44.33

Varethane

Oh, that's brutal.

16:45.56

Star

I'm like, I scheduled this like a week ago and no one said approve on it. And I've got people in my discord asking me, Star, are you going to keep posting the comic until the website shuts down? I literally can't schedule any more updates of the comic until someone checks their inbox.

17:01.60

Star

So I guess I'm just kind of sitting here until then.

17:05.76

Varethane

Oof. Oh, boy.

17:07.63

Star

Yeah, so so that's that's my personal issue where it's like, do I need to f***ing email somebody?

17:14.32

Star

I have empathy for them because it's like a lot of people just found out they lost their jobs. But it's like, I would love to notify my audience where to find me elsewhere.

17:25.06

Star

Please let me post an update.

17:27.30

Varethane

Oh man, I didn't even know it worked that way.

17:30.05

Varethane

It's a mess. I mean, this is getting into a bit of kind of speculation, but like apparently the way that this news dropped took the whole internal structure by surprise. Literally nobody knew.

17:43.98

Star

Yeah.

17:44.39

Varethane

And then suddenly it was like, oh, by the way.

17:46.60

Varethane

shutting down. Ooh.

17:47.52

Star

Imagine finding out that you're going to lose your job from an article on the internet. That sucks so bad.

17:56.53

Varethane

I mean, as far as well. It does remind me, there was an incident a long, long, long time ago now, like over a decade, where an animation studio closed down here in Toronto.

18:08.54

Varethane

And this was when I was working like around the block from it at another studio, which has a ton of friends in between the two places. And they learned that the studio was gone literally by showing up.

18:18.98

Varethane

on Monday morning to go to work and finding a sign on the door.

18:22.22

Star

Oh God, I think I remember you telling this story somewhere.

18:23.25

Varethane

Yeah. I mean, when these things happen, it's catastrophic.

18:29.87

Star

ah

18:30.66

Varethane

It's really startling. So I definitely feel really bad for the staff and the creators who've been relying on it.

18:37.27

Star

Yeah.

18:38.83

Star

And I mean, I follow at least one person who like was, you know, contracted with Tapas to create their series and they're just like well

18:46.82

Varethane

Mm hmm.

18:49.82

Star

I don't know if we get to do more of this because. Uh...

18:55.63

Varethane

I mean, a lot of the staff are also webcomic creators. Like we're all in kind of the same community.

18:59.77

Star

Mm hmm.

19:01.47

Varethane

We're all doing the same thing. So..

19:03.71

Star

Yeah.

19:04.82

Varethane

Ugh.

19:04.99

Star

I feel so awful that this is probably going to be the death of a lot of beloved series just because people were making it and had the ability to make it because they were getting paid by the platform and if they're no longer getting paid then it's not sustainable anymore

19:19.32

Varethane

It does remind me of, we mentioned earlier in the episode when Smack Jeeves went down and there were a lot of comics that were on that platform that got deleted when the servers closed.

19:25.55

Star

Ugh.

19:31.81

Varethane

and may never be re-uploaded anywhere because sometimes like you know something finishes. And then years go by and the creator is just moving on to a different stage in their life and they're not going

19:45.32

Varethane

take the time to you know spend hours re-uploading it somewhere else ah And so it's just gone.

19:50.07

Star

Yeah, especially if you've got like a really long series with like pages and pages and pages especially like these infinite scroll comics they could go on for a long time

19:56.31

Varethane

Mm hmm.

19:59.92

Varethane

Yeah, for sure. Before we do kind of move on to the next one, I did have a couple of kind of little little things to mention about this the tapas side that

20:12.20

Varethane

I won't necessarily miss. It's a funny. kind of subject because I feel like a lot of the things that that were kind of tapas. little issues are things that...

20:24.13

Varethane

will not be gone. without tapas because webtoon kind of shares a lot of this. Both of these sites ah kind of followed a pattern of launching with big fanfare and being super welcoming and open to indie creators with all these, you know, monetization, promotion tools, all these options. So they successfully.

20:47.59

Varethane

captured a huge swath of new creators via their the webtoon canvas and the tapas kind of community their early access their creator credit all these programs. But they both...

21:00.25

Varethane

also kind of followed. a similar pattern afterwards where after they'd kind of become established in the scene, they started focusing more and more on their originals or the comics whose

21:14.69

Varethane

rights they kind of own. And slowly... squeezing off their like I don't know what to call it. They're free. They're community creators like the canvas.

21:25.29

Star

Community series, I would think.

21:25.67

Varethane

I think on Tapas, it was called Community Series. But yeah, like slowly over time, like the community stuff would show up less and less kind of on the main page would be like, we're going to focus more on the roster of these licensed works or these originals and kind of less and less. So this was Webtoons when they removed their ad program and replaced it with tipping um and tapas.

21:50.48

Star

They replaced, in quotes, with tipping that I...

21:52.05

Varethane

Yeah. Yeah.

21:54.35

Star

Ugh.

21:55.41

Varethane

tipping everybody loves it. But yeah tapas started focusing a lot on licensing translated comics like ah from korea as well as novels and so at a certain point the main website if you were to go to like tapas and you're not logged in or anything that entire opening scroll is all like you know just licensed work instead of stuff from their communities.

22:16.98

Varethane

It got harder and harder.

22:17.49

Star

And it's all villainess comics that look exactly the same.

22:21.95

Varethane

Indeed. So

22:24.69

Varethane

That aspect of it where you can join a platform and then be like kind of slowly squeezed out of visibility of it. I think that side of it is a little insidious for the community.

22:37.09

Varethane

as well as the kind of readership patterns, because both sites encourage a very shallow level of reading where you just hop from know between 100 comics as you're kind of scrolling you like binge read one update here and then one update there It can be very addictive for the for the readers, which is how the numbers get inflated to be super huge.

23:00.47

Varethane

I feel like the numbers on these platforms can be really deceptive. Because I've seen webtoons and tapas comics with huge readerships like their subscriber counts you'd be like wow this is a successful title but then when they try to fund a kickstarter off the platform those readers don't.

23:17.88

Varethane

follow them. And it can mean that it's kind of a struggle to get traction on things outside of their kind of closed ecosystem. And it's a weird…

23:30.65

Varethane

It's like both you can get a lot of success, but you can also be kind of deceived as to what it's actually doing for your comic. Depending on what kind of things you're trying to achieve I guess.

23:44.73

Star

Yeah, I guess what I'll say kind of on that subject is at least in my personal experience, Tapas was at least a little bit less frustrating than Webtoon because Webtoon does not let you include hyperlinks.

24:00.21

Star

in the description of their posts meaning you know if you wanted to say link to an off-site kickstarter, people would just have to like manually copy paste the link.

24:11.32

Star

from like a plain text description and no one would do it.

24:11.45

Varethane

It was the worst.

24:16.00

Varethane

It's the Instagram model

24:19.31

Star

AHHHHHHHHH!

24:19.51

Varethane

where Instagram also loves to throttle links. They really want to control where people are going.

24:23.41

Star

They don't want people to leave the website. And it frustrates me as a person who tries to cross promote a bunch of different things. it is like anything that doesn't let you post a hyperlink is just dead to me emotionally

24:39.39

Varethane

Right?

24:40.56

Varethane

Sucks.

24:40.11

Star

But tapas does let you do hyperlinks in fact. So this is actually something we haven't talked about and it's really something that i've only just gotten into.

24:52.19

Star

The nice thing about Tapas was it wasn't just for web comics. You could also post like prose on there as well just like text format. And I had been posting chapters of my novel that I'm working on Tapas as well. That was like the main place I was hosting it aside from Patreon.

25:10.43

Star

And I was getting a lot of good readers over there. And when the site announced that it was shutting down, I was just like, hey, I made a website. It's just a landing page right now, but I'll eventually have the story up there so you can go read it. And here's the mailing list. And I've already gotten like a ton of people who've signed up for that mailing list.

25:28.58

Star

And I’m like, this is because I can post a hyperlink in the description! Unlike somebody. Webtoon!

25:34.92

Varethane

Seriously.

25:36.28

Varethane

I'm glad that that's been working out. It is going to be tough to find a new spot to post it, though, for prose, there's not a ton of...

25:45.73

Star

Yeah, it's like there are things, but like people are putting in my recommendations, these websites that I've never heard of. And I'm like. I'm just gonna make my own site.

25:55.90

Varethane

Well, it's like the most famous one that I know about is Wattpad, which has a deal with Webtoon, but has gone fully onto the AI side of things.

26:03.61

Star

Oh, has it? I've never been a fan fiction girly, so I know that, like, AO3, you can post original stuff on there, but it's like if you're monetizing it in any way you're not allowed to post it there, and I do also post it on Patreon so it's like…

26:17.04

Varethane

Mm hmm.

26:18.40

Star

And then there's Wattpad, which I've only heard cringe things about Wattpad. It's like, I'm sure there's good stuff on there, but I just always hear it said with a tone of derision. There's like… Wattpad.

26:30.09

Star

But then aside from that, like where do you post prose? The answer is... I don't know. It's a good damn question. But so, like, tapas was nice for that and now it's dead, and webtoon doesn't have that functionality but screw Webtoon! So whatever.

26:47.14

Varethane

Yeah.

26:48.39

Star

But yeah, and then like as far as you know, going back to the webcomic side of things, Yes, both platforms did definitely have a problem where they prioritized promoting, like, the series that were paid, like partnered series.

27:01.14

Star

Definitely Tapas also did this. But I can say that I definitely did get multiple shoutouts from Tapas even after they kind of started shifting more towards focused stuff.

27:12.98

Star

Like, my novel that has like… maybe four chapters uploaded, got a shout out in just a random like, hey, here's this week's hot community stories. Here, you can check them out. It's just like an aggregate list of a whole bunch of new ones that people can read. And I got a bunch of new subscribers from that just out of nowhere.

27:38.17

Star

They just just did it! Like, they didn't tell me they were gonna do it or anything, they were just like heyhere's some free promo! And they would do like those little aggregate links, just, they got beamed into people's inboxes a couple times a week.

27:49.61

Star

And I was like. Hey, all right, I'll take it. Webtoon never did that.

27:55.18

Varethane

I mean, Webtoon does have, like, its internal…. I guess both sites do have little feeds of things, because Webtoon has all these, like, the “weekly hot”, and, like “monthly hot” or “new”.

28:04.30

Star

Mm hmm.

28:08.06

Star

Yeah I guess just in my experience the webtoon one has definitely shown less community comics?

28:16.30

Varethane

Mm.

28:16.53

Star

And the Tapas one, I've definitely gotten more mileage out of just because I feel like I was getting a Tapas promo like at least once a year for a while. Which, you know, it's not a lot. But it still happened with some regularity, as opposed to Webtoon.

28:30.43

Varethane

I wonder if it's kind of a difference of scale that kind of affects that sort of thing, because I would have to look at exact numbers that I don't have, but I do have the impression that there's more, like, Canvas titles on Webtoon overall.

28:42.35

Varethane

So maybe the promos are diluted a bit more.

28:50.73

Star

Maybe.

28:52.95

Varethane

Because when I first started on webtoon I got several... little promotion things like that, that really boosted my readership almost immediately.

29:03.25

Varethane

It was very quick. It went from like, just launched to like 30k in about two months or so. And it was all through these kind of little

29:17.72

Varethane

I don't know if I ever got the hidden gems one, but there was, like, a “just launched” or something like that. And I think there were three or four of these little promos that kind of happened in quick succession. But then it kind of tapered off after a while.

29:34.00

Varethane

And I feel like it might be that the ecosystem there is just…. just huge.

29:37.66

Star

Yeah, just a lot larger.

29:38.36

Star

That would make sense, yeah. But I mean, that's kind of why it's like, you know. As opposed to being small fish in a big pond, you're small fish in several ponds of varying sizes.

29:50.97

Star

Which is kinda what you want to aim for with platforms is like, you know, you just slowly but surely build an audience that will, you know, hopefully eventually follow you over when the platform dies.

30:01.82

Varethane

Yeah.

30:02.55

Varethane

That does kind of lead to the third question for today, which is, how are we feeling about what comes next? And what do we want to bring with us from the Tapas experience? What do we want from future webcomic platforms? That kind of thing. So, you know… what now?

30:20.78

Star

Yeah, I mean... It's hard because I feel like it's happened often enough that a platform shuts down, a lot more people are going to be less likely to trust new platforms, which is fair and completely reasonable.

30:40.59

Star

I'm kind of hoping that, you know, as difficult and...what's the word I'm looking for? Like, not necessarily newbie friendly that making your own website is. I do hope we kind of start seeing more people like….

30:52.58

Star

I keep hearing the whisperings on the wind, like, bring back web rings and all this kind of stuff, and I'm like… Yeah, maybe we just start promoting more comics that have their own websites that are under their control.

31:13.01

Star

It’s like, I understand the desire to use platforms, but like, this is just another really good example of how you can't really trust them to last forever, because stuff like this can and will just happen out of nowhere. And it sucks. But the key thing is to know that it's a possibility and have contingency plans in place.

31:28.77

Star

But you know, I mean, I would hope that maybe we start to see, like, a change in the culture around platforms.

31:34.01

Star

Maybe… I just want webcomics to be respected– I guess my thing is, like, as an art form.

31:46.30

Star

As a community. And it just feels like a lot of times like Webtoon and certain aspects of Tapas, like we said, just kind of treat webcomics like something to be milked for money.

31:59.43

Varethane

They’re a commodity.

32:00.57

Varethane

It's just a product

31:59.53

Star

yeah, exactly

32:02.21

Star

And I hate that. And I just, I want people to respect the creators of the series that they love so much. and follow them and continue to support them. Even if the platform goes under. And I want webcomic artists to stop being screwed over by these platforms. It just, ah it kills me.

32:23.33

Star

But it's like. It is the winds of change. I don't know. I feel like I should ramble. Thane, take over quick!

32:28.51

Varethane

Yeah I feel like One thing that I hope can happen is that more creators can realize that, like, you should avoid putting all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak. Especially if that basket is not something that you own.

32:43.41

Star

Yes.

32:47.51

Varethane

Like if Tapas is the only place that you have ever posted your comic… Just like back in the day, there were a lot of comics that were only on Smackjeeves.

32:59.34

Varethane

And it's kind of funny how many parallels I see between the two experiences, because Smackjeeves also had a big community of creators and readers together, at that point in time it was a forum.

33:12.11

Varethane

And I think Tapas also had a forum for the creators.

33:16.27

Star

It did, yeah.

33:18.20

Star

I don't know how active it was

33:19.77

Varethane

Yeah, everything's been moving to Discord these days. But a lot of the Smackjeeves advantages were very similar to the Tapas ones, where you had access to their community of readers and people could put likes on your title and go and follow things.

33:33.49

Varethane

And then it's even similar the way it got shut down, because it got acquired by another company and then… It was rough, it was like… So Smackjeeves got bought. I can't remember by who, it was Comico or something like that. They purchased it and there was an agreement with the owner of Smackjeeves that for one year he would still have veto power over anything that that new owner decided to do. And so for exactly one year, Smackjeeves got, better than ever. They were introducing all these new tools for customization and for uploading and things were looking bright, I was like… well, Smackjeeves, despite the buyout, it's in a pretty good place. And then that one year ended, the clause was done, and they immediately turned the site into like a weird half-hearted clone of webtoon

34:25.57

Varethane

And then, like, six months later they were like, this isn't working! We're gonna shut it down. You have one month, see you.

34:31.97

Star

Ugh.

34:31.84

Varethane

Very sudden. That kind of turnaround.

34:34.08

Star

Stop trying to turn web comics into a hyper-profitable industry! It's about a bunch of nerds making comics in their basements. This is not your new venture capital. Get out of here.

34:46.55

Varethane

The obsession is real.

34:48.54

Varethane

I hope that... I mean, not that I think Tapas was like a malicious force in webcomics or something, but I hope that people can start to branch out a bit and take kind of ownership over the spaces that their comic is being presented in, and to realize that any of these platforms that see you as a commodity, they could change their rules at any time. They could disappear. They could kick you off. Like they can be very unpredictable in terms of what they do.

35:18.56

Varethane

They don't actually care about your work, fundamentally. They care about how much money it can make for them. And if that stops, or they just, whatever happens, that can just kind of be cut off at any time.

35:33.43

Varethane

So if you own where your work is being presented, if you self-host or at least kind of branch out to a lot of different spaces, it gives you a little bit more of a safety net if something happens to one of them.

35:49.81

Varethane

Because it can be very... very unpredictable. In terms of a positive direction, kind of where to go. For getting a website set up quickly, I've seen a lot of recommendations for Comic Fury going around, which is kind of rightly so, honestly, like the praise that it gets.

36:09.20

Varethane

It has a lot of options for customizing the website and it does actually support vertical scroll layouts.

36:21.48

Varethane

The way that you can modify a Comic Fury website. It'll let you add like widgets to promote, like, a patreon or a ko-fi or something like that. Like, you can kind of connect it to monetization, options even if they're not necessarily built into it as a platform for the kind of passive income that you can get from sites like Tapas and Webtoon.

36:36.76

Varethane

There's a service called Comicad, that I really recommend for anyone who has the ability to kind of customize your site, if you can add a little widget to it. It's a service where like a lot of comic creators have joined it and you can make your own ads.

37:05.74

Varethane

You can publish ads on your own website and then other web comic creators can basically pay like a few cents to appear on your site, and I think it's a really neat service. It's like, it's ads, but they're not like weird gross ads for cars or bizarre things. It'll mostly be for other web comics. And I feel like it's a really neat thing for the community.

37:26.56

Star

Yes. Castoff has a comicad space. Whoa, you could advertise your comic on Castoff's website! I've got a little thingy in the sidebar.

37:38.19

Star

The average bid is like 50 cents to a dollar a day or so, I think. But 22,000 daily average views. Yes.

37:48.95

Varethane

Woohoohoohoo!

37:51.29

Varethane

Yeah, I've got Comicad going on I think both of my web comics at the time and like they have a homepage on Comicad that, like, scrolls through all the different comics that are in the platform.

38:04.03

Varethane

And it's like it's got a lot of people in it now. It's pretty neat.

38:08.19

Star

It's good sampling

38:10.59

Varethane

Yes. Another thing that I think is worth looking into for anyone kind of wondering about how to find readers off of tapas–because that is one of the things that the platforms definitely make easier, is that they give you…I don't want to call it exposure, but that's the first word that comes to mind, to a lot of readers.

38:27.95

Varethane

Like, you can be found very easily when you're on Tapas or on Webtoon. But there are ways of still getting your work out there off the platforms too, it just needs a little bit more kind of legwork. Whether it be going on social media, that's probably how people first find a lot of these things.

38:51.53

Varethane

But through that, you can discover all kinds of other spaces. There's collectives, there's other communities of creators, which opens up options for cross promotion. You can draw guest art and pages. You can share posts from one another, or link back to other webcomics’ sites.

39:12.47

Varethane

And a couple of good spots that I would want to kind of name drop for this sort of thing, is the Spiderforest community.

39:22.86

Varethane

They do have an application process to fully join the collective, but there's an open Discord server, which anybody can join at any time and start chatting with folks there. And then, of course, there's the Varethane community Discord, which also has a lot of creators on it.

39:38.94

Star

peace including us occasionally. Wow, crazy.

39:43.26

Varethane

Ho, ho, ho.

39:44.23

Star

Hehehe. But yeah, I do just kind of want to like spiral off of that. I think now more than ever, it's important to just come together with the community.

39:55.41

Star

Figure out where your favorite comics are. You know, they announced that Tapas will be fully shut down by March. So just like, you know, you have a couple months. Take the time.

40:08.53

Star

Make a list of all the comics you follow, figure out where their creators are elsewhere, make sure that you learn how to use an RSS feed, perhaps.

40:33.61

Star

Shutdowns happen. It sucks when it does, but if you are a reader of comics, do not let this be the end to your favorite series. Like, if they're going to continue elsewhere, make sure you find a way to continue to follow them and support the creators because I'm sure they're also going through a lot of heartbreak over this if they had a good audience built up over there.

40:57.96

Star

It would be very good of you to continue to support those artists wherever they end up. If you are a webcomic creator... Or you know even someone who was, I got a couple of comments from people saying that they were planning on eventually posting their comic on Tapas and now they're kind of a loose and adrift and they don't know what to do. And it's kind of just really disheartening.

41:19.10

Star

Platforms have died. It will continue. The best thing you can do is just not let it be the thing that stops you.

41:31.56

Star

It's just kind of a part of Doing the Thing. You just kind of got to take the waves as they come. And just be adaptable. Like Thane said, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Get your own website if you can.

41:50.06

Star

And don't let a platform sinking into the sea, be the thing that stops you from chasing something that you're passionate about and that you really want to do. Because comics exist with or without platforms.

42:01.62

Star

And you got this. Thumbs up emoji.

42:03.33

Varethane

Yes. Yeah.

42:05.11

Star

hehehehe

42:06.36

Varethane

I think the the main thing is as a creator, like, you can go, you could take that work anywhere. And you can get set up in all kinds of spaces. It doesn't have to be Tapas.

42:19.54

Varethane

It doesn't have to be Webtoon. So we actually have a list on the Screetones website of various platforms and sites upon which you can post your comic. And there's options for self-hosting too, and we also have a blog post about that with a list of different se rvices and content management systems that you can utilize. So we'll get those links in the description of this episode, if you want to check them out as a resource while doing research.

42:54.11

Varethane

There's a lot of cool places that you can get set up.

42:58.29

Star

Yes, the internet is your oyster and you must find the appropriate oyster to call home.

43:05.31

Varethane

No one can keep a good webcomic down.

43:08.88

Star

The oysters are attacking! There's so many of them.

43:11.38

Varethane

Uh oh. Oh god!

43:12.99

Star

Oh, God.

43:15.51

Varethane

Anyway. I think that that is a roasted red pepper and goat cheese wrap.

43:23.37

Star

With oysters.

43:23.55

Varethane

Indeed. Ugh! Actually, take that one back. No. Send it back to the kitchen.

43:31.16

Varethane

But thank you so much for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments, let us know what you think. And for next time, I've been your host, Varethane, and you can find my work at chirault.sevensmith.net and wychwoodcomic.com.

43:46.65

Star

And I'm Star and you can find my stuff at castoff-comic.com and nowhere else now, I guess.

43:54.56

Varethane

Nowhere at all.

43:55.80

Star

Nowhere at all like i stopped posting to webtoon because they Pissed me off and well.

43:56.86

Varethane

Nowhere at all.

44:01.19

Varethane

ha

44:01.80

Star

RIP Tapas. Let us say a prayer.

44:04.28

Varethane

RIP. Rest in pepperoni.

44:07.18

Star

Rest in pepperonis and oysters.

44:11.04

Varethane

See you later, slappers.

44:13.29

Star

Bye!