Is webtoons a good place to post a comic? Do you get any royalties and do you still own your work?
So far i think its pretty good?? This is my first time using it tbh.
I dont get royalties and i still own my work cause my comic isn’t owned by webtoons or like published threw them, It’s just on their free uplaod service called Canvas
Sorry to hijack your ask, Kroovv, but here’s some of my advice for Anon, as someone who’s been using Webtoons since 2017!
If you’re just looking to use Webtoons to post a comic, you can post it via Webtoons Canvas, which is different from Webtoons Originals. Canvas are indie series and are 100% owned by the artists who create and post them. Originals sign a contract with Webtoons and work with them as a publisher.
Pros of using Webtoon Canvas:
- It’s completely free to use and very straight forward to create an account and series.
- You can cross-post your comic to other sites like Tapas or Tumblr (or make your own website) - using Webtoons Canvas doesn’t mean you have to be exclusive to it.
- It’s easy to use and schedule comic posts in advance
- There’s a built in audience on the site, so you’ll potentially build an audience faster than you would by making your own website or using Tumblr
- If you get enough views on your comic you can join the ad-revenue program, in which you can make money off of the ads shown to people when they read your comic. The Webtoons ad-revenue program is a lot better than the Tapas one, in my experience.
- You can also link your Patreon to your Webtoons so there’s a little button after each episode telling people to join your Patreon.
- You could potentially get asked to join Webtoons Originals if they like your comic, but if that happens you’ll get a contract to negotiate (defs get a lawyer to look over it), royalties, an editorial team, and your comic would be exclusive to Webtoons. There’s definitely pros and cons or signing on with them, but that can be said for all publishing houses.
Cons of using Webtoon Canvas:
- Audiences on there expect long updates posted regularly, and they can be quite entitled in the comments. Luckily you can delete comments and block people on Webtoon now (not something you could do pre 2021) so that helps get rid of the bad eggs, but don’t let anyone guilt you into doing more work than you’re physically able.
- If you post page-a-week style comic and not a webscroll format you’re more likely to get those entitled “why isn’t this longer?” comments. Page-a-week comics can be posted to Webtoons but they don’t do as well as webscrolls do, and you’re not likely to get invited to publish with Webtoons if you do a page-a-week format.
- You have to agree to Webtoon’s TOS, and they’re VERY strict with censorship of things like branding, nudity, sex and violence. I’ve had Webtoon email me 3 times (once for a naked butt, once for a gory injury, and once for drawing a Honda logo on a car and one of my characters saying the word Instagram) telling me I had stuff that was against TOS in my comic and they’d removed the offending pages, and each time I had to go through all those pages and redraw the offending panels and then email Webtoon to request the pages to go live again.
- You never know when Webtoons is going to do something like change the TOS or go out of business or something, so it’s always a good idea to cross-post your comic to multiple sites. Webtoons and Tapas are the two places I post to (I’d do more but I’m lazy), and you can also make a Tumblr for it, or get your own website.