6. Our Experience Publishing on WEBTOON CANVAS: Why It Didn't Take Off

In 2022, we published two webtoons on Canvas — "There's a Piglet in Everyone" and "The Archive." The artist was Kostya Dubkov. Regular updates, quality translation. Result: a thousand views and about a dozen comments per episode. Little. You could say it's pitifully little, almost nothing.

Let's break down why this happened.

Setting. A story about children in a late Soviet dacha summer setting — nostalgic and warm for us. For a global audience — alien and incomprehensible. Romance, fantasy, and drama in modern settings are much more interesting to global readers. Yes, we weren't sure about this from the start — but we hoped for the best. Turns out, in vain.

Publication period. We released completed stories over 2–3 months. For CANVAS, that's pitifully short. Hits run for years, gradually building an audience. A short release doesn't have time to "gain momentum."

Promotion. We didn't attract an audience — neither before the start nor during. CANVAS has no built-in promotion tools; all traffic must be driven from external platforms by yourself. We didn't do this — we didn't know about it and didn't know how.

Visuals. Kostya has a cozy, warm style. But the CANVAS audience is used to bright, colorful, realistic, detailed, and dynamic comics. "Piglet" was also black and white — a minus for clickability in the feed.

Conclusion: CANVAS is about years, external promotion, meeting audience expectations, and visual packaging. We were wrong on almost all points.

IMPORTANT! If a comic doesn't take off on a platform, it doesn't mean it's bad. Maybe you, like us, hit a "perfect storm." If Canvas didn't work out — go to Tapas, Mangalib, "Author's Comic," or message editors at publishing houses directly.
Have you published on CANVAS? What was the result? 👇

In the first comment under the post, I'll leave images from our first webtoon — Kostya later colored them.