Chronoctis Express © Aerinn
It’s been an interesting experience – the Tapastic platform is easy to use and offer a number of useful tools for aspiring web comics creators to not only publish but also promote their work. It’s comics dedicated, unlike the perhaps more favoured and more well known Patreon, which is the platform of choice of many British creators such as Al Davison and Emma Vieceli.
We’re very slowly building a subscriber base, but it’s been quite an effort to get as far as we have, and illustrates how much work comic creators are putting into promoting their work to grow their audiences, efforts on a par with the intensity of promoting a crowdfunding pitch for its duration.
Sadly, as even the more successful creators will relate, gaining readers is only part of the battle when it comes to self publishing online. Persuading those readers to back your project with real money, such as this beautifully-created manga-styled strip by French artist Aerin, Chronoctis Express, is another.
As comic creators are finding, and as web comic creators have found from Day One (sometime in the 1990s), not only do you have to have a great comic and publish it regularly – you generally have to gain a huge number of subscribers (or in the case of more traditionally published web comics such as Kate Ashwin’s brilliant Widdershins, or big league, long-running strips such as Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics or Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik’s Penny Arcade), a massive number regular readers.
Once you have that hard won mass audience – and that takes time and a lot of patience and promotion some creators don’t have – then you can, hopefully, start to generate some income, or persuade your fans to back you in your additional projects such as print editions of your comic. (I’m mentioning Widdershins here again because Kate has had considerable and deserved success getting backing for her print collections, as you’ll see from her latest campaign, which has gained double her planned target).
The opening page of Chronoctis Express by Aerinn © Aerinn
“I tried to earn money to make a living and continue to give new free pages of my comic,” says Aerinn of Tapastic, “but it didn’t work, so I have to stop it… Unfortunately, the support system in Tapastic does not fit what I can and want to do.
“I love Tapastic, but… I have to do choices that will help me, so I can make the maximum of pages of Chronoctis Express. It’s not easy to know what to do when we make self-publishing, that’s why I’m trying a lot of things to make a living from my art.”
Aerinn has detailed the considerations she made in making the changes, scaling back on the number of pages she’ll be drawing and switching in full to Patreon here.
Finding the right audience for great work, especially on the web, is a major battle. When you consider just how much work is out there, and how hard it is too find (despite “Best Web Comic Lists aplenty), I’m filled with admiration for creators who give it a try, just as those of us who published small press comics in the 1980s did with little chance of reaching the kind of potential audience you can today.
Equally, I’m hugely impressed by those creators who’ve made their creations such as success online, through talent, hard work – and a lot of self promotion!
I think you have to be pretty ruthless with yourself when you’re self publishing; if something isn’t working, drop it (never easy, I know, after all – it’s your creation) and refocus, look at what is working and do what Aerinn’s decided to do and concentrate efforts on what looks like the best option for your creativity to shine, both in terms of gaining an audience and in order to pay your bills.
• Please let us know what you think are the challenges of making a success of web comics creatively and ‘commercially’ (if that’s your aim – leave a comment below! What’s worked for you? What hasn’t? Spill the beans (and promote your web comic as well!)
Web Links
• Tapastic
Used by myself, Mike Garley, Nick Miller and a fair few other British comic creators, the team behind Tapastic is called Tapas Media, headquartered in Silicon Valley in the US. Their aim is build an open platform and community for indie web comic artists and visual storytellers to connect with fans.
• Patreon
Based in San Francisco, Patreon is a crowdfunding platform created by musician Jack Conte and developer Sam Yam. It allows artists to obtain funding from patrons on a recurring basis or per artwork.Basically, you carry on what you always have done and if folk like what they see, they choose what level of backing they give you. Patreon also deal with any of the tax issues in the EU that are the result of recent VAT changes over digital content by allying with crafts-focussed site Etsy as a ‘middleman’ service, using their larger presence to sort out the often microscopic payments on behalf of sellers using the platforms (WIRED news item on this here).
• i09: The Biggest Mistakes People Make When They Start A Webcomic
• Follow Aerinn on tumblr: http://o-aerinn-o.tumblr.com/ | Check out the official Chronoctis Express site: http://en.chronoctis-express.com | Check out Aerinn’s Patreon page
• Paste: 20 Best Web Comics of 2014
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Creating Comics, Digital Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Features, Links
Exploring Tapastic: The Weird and the Fantastic