We have to say that the changes to the website aren't exactly what we would have in mind if we had any say in the matter. First off, yeah, the Forums almost have disappeared, being relegated to the bottom of the page. At first we thought the forums had been eliminated in their entirety!
The text and look of everything is definitely going to take some getting used to. It's fairly hard on the eyes. Everything feels massively "blown up" where the "Tapas Tipping Has Arrived" section takes up half of a screen shot. Plus when you click on it, all it does is lead to a collections, not any actual tipping functionality on the website, which would be mildly confusing to any new readers.
It definitely feels like there are "winners" and "losers" with this update.
The new layout gives the premium "paid" content top shelf. The top 10 comics are all "premium" (for sale) series and the top 10 books are all "premium" (for sale) series. The third self is new "premium" (paid) comics. The fourth shelf is new "premium" (paid) books. The majority of the fifth shelf is paid.
For a company that began with independent creators in mind, and has a "creators first" motto, it feels like that the company culture is changing and the website is reflecting that. Whereas before the independent stuff came first and the pay stuff came not far after, now the pay stuff is in the spotlight in a major way and the independent stuff is a very distant bottom, an afterthought. We'd like to see the data at how many readers scroll down that far, because its probably going to be a minority. After all, only 10% of Google users go beyond the first page of results. Let's face it. It's a lot of effort to scroll that far. How many readers are going to do it?
Another big concern is now the website is going from "semi dynamic" to "semi static". We use the Tapas app every day and the content it promotes changes very infrequently. At least at Tapastic.com "Popular" changed up some and "Trending" was constantly in flux. Now the top 80% of the website is going to look the same day after day. How is that engaging to new readers?
Additionally the placement of all the premium content on the top of the page makes little sense to a new reader who cannot actually purchase the content through the website but instead must purchase through the app. What happens if they don't understand that? It would make more sense if you could purchase the content on your desktop, but currently that's not possible. Consequently, how many first time visitors are going to click "They Say I Was A King's Daughter", become confused because they can't read beyond the early free stuff, and then leave the website? It used to be the first things you could click were free in their entirety, so readers had a chance to look around and get a feel for Tapastic. Now everything in the first third of the website is suddenly gated.
Before today we felt like we had a reasonable chance, with a lot of updates and hard work, that we could slowly make our way to the top, ending up more often on Trending and eventually one day on Popular. Now the top of the ladder has effectively been made the bottom, which leads us to wonder, how will any new creators ever "break out"? Both of our series benefited from landing on Trending from time to time, now it feels that the value of "Trending" has largely been diminished. If new creators feel like they have no chance on Tapas, won't that create a decline in creator engagement?
Tapas doesn't owe us an audience. That said, when indie creators spend $1000s and 100s of hours marketing, bringing a new outside audience to Tapas, they and their premium creators largely benefit from that, meanwhile the indie "unprofessional" (Medium article refers to the premium creators as "professional", so that means the rest of us are unprofessional?) creators are placed at the bottom, benefiting the least. It would be one thing if Tapas was spending $10,000s on marketing to place premium creators first, but right now it seems that the non-premium creators are spending more time and money on marketing and promotion that what Tapas currently is, yet we get bottom billing. Is that fair?
We really hate to say it but LINE Webtoons has always seemed much more friendly to new creators (with new series being easily discovered and gaining 100s to 1000s of subs in a matter of weeks, whereas those same series on Tapastic struggle for months to find a following) while Tapastic favored their high subs creators. This update and how it prioritizes paid over unpaid creators now polarizes things even further.
We realize that Tapas has to make money in order to stay open, but it feels like the company is becoming more and more like a gated pay publisher (The Big Five) and less and less an open platform for independent creators.
Our dream of making it to print just got a lot smaller today.
Meaningful success on Tapas seems now further away than ever.