Introduction
The current indie publishing platforms are designed to exploit creators and readers in every way possible. Self publishing platforms have provided storytellers a way to easily publish, but created an environment of exploitation, superficiality, oversaturation of poor quality titles, lack of community, lack of platform democracy, alienation, intense competition of viewership, manufactured products over authentic storytelling, and the practice and acceptance of free labor. The way of things is unsustainable for everyone involved. Readers struggle to find stories they care about in the ocean of bloated catalogues, creators struggle to reach their voice out from the depths of the ocean, yet there are those who profit from the struggles of readers and artists. Are we not frusterated with this environment? As storytellers and readers, it is our duty to critically examine the environment we practice our hobbies in, but we rarely do this, even though we wish for the wellbeing of people in this space. Below I will discuss the how and why of the problems of the indie publishing space.
Platform Exploition and Manipulation
What Are Indie Publishing Platforms?
Indie Publishing Platforms are digital platforms which allow creators to self publish and distribute their stories without the need for the traditional publishing house route. Some examples include Amazon KDP, Webtoons, Tapas, Namicomi, and Mangaplus Creators.
How And Why They Exploit?
These few platforms rely on thousands of creators to depend on their services and resources which creates a dysfunctional power dynamic between the artist, platform, and reader. When theres millions of creators wanting to self publish their story, the average author has no leverage, and so they accept producing chapters hours on end for free, overwork, predatory IP contracts, and even sacrificing their own story vision form something more commercialized, all in the hopes of one day obtaining a significant number of readers to gain a liviable income. Readers not only have no say in what gets published and are forced to dig through bloated catalogues, but face microtransactions, artificial cliffhangers, chapter upload time gatekeeping, and invasive advertising.
Why this happens? Because us artists and readers allow it. Artists have been conditioned to undervalue their labor. In consequence, the companies behind these platforms have grown too comfortable profiting off what we produce practically for free, even though it is us who produce what makes these platforms profitable.
They understand artists love what we do. That love is weaponized. to offer your beloved stories a place for readers around the world to enjoy, but in exchange for you to happily give away your love and hard labor for free and be thankful for the opportunity given. A platform where any aspiring creator can publish their story, with the chance to make it big. This is free labor bait.
Creators produce stories that provide value (readers, ads, eyes), creators are paid, if lucky, a fraction of the value they produced, the company takes the rest. Little to no say in how these platforms are operated. Manipulation. They can do this, because the artist has been trained to want less than the value they bring while believing any alternative way of doing things is nothing more than utopian thought.
In the Case of Webtoon, example
Webtoon for example has hundreds of thousands of creators build up Webtoons catalogue for free. Many do so for the chance to become an originals creator, believing that title will lead them down a path of prosperity. In reality they would be forced into a contract where Webtoon owns your stories printing rights (Webtoon pays 2k USD for printing rights when third party publishers can pay as much as 6 figures), merchandising rights (You would not be allowed to produce merch of your own IP), and become your agent, forever being reliant on Webtoon and its services. That is only if a creator gets their title known from the depths of the ocean of millions of other stories. This predatory platform chooses not to fully compensate their originals creators, and rewards their canvas creators not with income, but the unspoken promise for their story to be exposed by hundreds of millions of readers. This too is largely a false promise.
The Result of Platform Exploitation and Manipulation
Lack of Ownership
Owners of the platform profits more from the misery of readers and artists
Bloated Catalogues
The results are felt and heard by everyone. In 2023 there were around 24 million creators on Webtoon owned platforms (Webtoon, Wattpad), yet only 13 thousand professional creators were paid an average of 48k USD a year. This isn’t taking into account these creators needed to pay for assistants, editors, colorists, background artists, lettering, and in the end they were left with even less than the original payment that wasn’t enough for survival to begin with. The top 500 creators made at least 100k USD from Webtoon, equating to 0.00002% of creators making a living income depsite all 24 million contributing to Webtoon’s catalogue in some way.
- Bottom 24 Million (99.9995%) – $0 to Peanuts
- 13k Professionals (0.0005%) – $48k Average (Varies)
- Liveable Earning (0.00002%) – $100k and Above
- Top Earners (0.000004%) – $1 Million and Above
How can everyone prosper , where bloated catalogues with little quality checks form? The lack of quality control results in more stories being published than readers can actually read or care about. When the supply of stories becomes more than the demand, how can all creators get compensated for their work? They can not, the condition of the lottery work environment doesn’t allow it. This means over 99.9% of creators who dedicated their time to produce content for Webtoon with the promise of millions of readers and wealth at their disposal, get nothing in return.
Whar happens when there are more stories on a platform than readers can care about. Million There are a few creators able to obtain viewership. Assuming their works are of higher standard, the vast majority only get compensated with mere likes and comments. The occasional one out of a thousand dedicated fan who wishes to monetarily support can only do so on another platform (Patreon for example). This is a deplorable model for a platform or any profession. In no other industry are you expected to work hours on end for free. It guarantees the creator makes an unliveable wage and forced to have another job in order to live and continue to produce stories for their viewers and fans even as a professional.
The ones who wish to generate a liveable income from their profession need to create stories that will be popular, not stories they necessarily care about the most. Trending story tropes have greater chances of generating income for the author and platform, not stories that will attract less viewers, even if the author enjoys creating them more. This trap feeds trends that are consumed and disposed of without second thought. What is popular generates more capital. Mediocrity pays easily.
Readers accept this catalogue, as they have been conditioned to behave like cattle and expect comics to be free and consume them with little effort. With no need for the reader to use income they earned for the stories they want to read. This not only demoralizes those who spend much of their time and labor creating stories with little in return, but devalues the medium of comics from the readers perspective.
Note, this moral failure is not inherently the fault of the reader, but a consequence of the environment the reader consumes in. Readers themselves are exploited and belittled by the platforms. Bombarded by invasive advertising and the addictive need to obtain phantom coins to read stories they’re invested in without feeling like they spent real money. This is no shock when these companies label their audience as “consumers”, because in their eyes, you are cattle who will consume anything with little pushback. No questions asked, little emotional attachment, distant behavior from all parties. There is no sense of community on these platforms which prioritizes content feeds and algorithms over emotional attachment of curated stories.
Bloated cataloguies creates a need to fight for viewership and attention
Reading a product instead of a story
Lack of Community
Accepting the Exploitative Environment
What scares me the most about this situation is not the fact platforms exploit artists, no. It’s the fact said artists willingly accept and defend this mediocrity. Happy with any milestone they make under their exploitative environment just for slim hope their story becomes popular enough to jiomn the one percent bracket. Posts celebrating reaching tens, hundreds, millions of viewership, yet the revenue does not equate to the amount of exposure they gained. When they can only buy a sandwich for the month as their reward… what is there to be celebratory of? Your rewards are being stolen. It is disheartening to witness this manipulation in practice.
What we see is the result of years of creators being conditioned to normalize the hustle culture these platforms promote, how you the artist are worth less than what you really are, how your proof of labor should be free. What is free has no value in this world, what is free, is disposable. This reflects not only how these companies view you, but what these platforms hope you produce, disposable content made for cattle to easily consume, not art.
You Cannot Fix What Is Designed Against You
Creators are Not Saved By Ad Revenue
cant solve a problem within the bounds of the system if said problems are a result of the system itself.
An artist making money from ad programs is a counter-argument I unfortunately hear a lot. They speak as if ads are the answer for artists’ compensation of labor and viewers wallets. But this is not true. When looking at numbers reported by Webtoon creators who must have over 1k subscribers and 40k views to have ads, the majority make between 1-8 USD per 10k views. How is this proof of the creators merit of labor? Shouldn’t 10k views equate to 10k USD? How is this a fair exchange? It isn’t a fair exchange, you shouldn’t exchange anything. Selling a product you made worth 10 USD but only getting back 1 cent is robbery, and knowing nearly 100% of creators publishing on platforms do it for free, what conclusion would you have other than creators are being robbed at a mass scale?
Conclusion
The conclusion is unavoidable. Publishing platforms have failed in compensating creators hard work, quality checking catalogues, forming reader and creator bonds, and the list goes on. A sense of community has never formed on these platforms because of these failures.
Sooner or later those failures will build up and be the downfall of these “successful” platforms, but then what? Creators will migrate to other newly propped up sites with the same offers, same contradictions, same monetization models. Creators and readers will accept them because they are conditioned to want and need them. In truth, it is the owners of these platforms that want and need you, and when you diverge from the their needs is when their predatory platforms die. It is understandable these companies wish for you to believe they are the only answers to your problems.
An artist publishing on Webtoons, Tapas, MangaCreatorsPlus, NamiComi, or any platform which promise you viewership in return for hosting your work, are taking advantage of your passion. These platforms were never saints who turned against you, they were created for a different interest than yours in mind since the very beginning, to exploit you. And they are willing to hide behind false promises and continue to manipulate, extract, and harvest every ounce of your being untill the very end. This is the hard truth.
Macaw House, however, is a solution, an anti-thesis to it all! This website is a platform built by artists and readers, for artists and readers. Hobbyist writer or professional, everyone will be rewarded for their hard work, be part of a community that encourages participation and engagement, and have access to a library full of curated stories from all around the world. A better platform is possible.
Future Topics
There’s a lot of opinions I have on this industry, ideas for this site. From worries of the future, theories of IP ownership, the platform stages, challenges, etc. These topics are all swimming in my head and I’d like to write them down, and will write down.
The next entry will discuss a solution to our problems, Macaw House itself. Going into detail of the stages, ideas, plans for this platform and how it combats the current practices of the industry. This is more than a critique, journal, or even a website. This is a movement for those who want change to finally see it, grasp it, and become part of it.
