by Sara Fox
I sacrificed my health to become an author. Now, where I am thriving is shutting down.
It’s 2 A.M. As I write this, I’m sitting on the bathroom floor with my computer on my lap since I can’t turn on the lights in my studio. Can’t wake up the five-year-old, right? I should definitely be sleeping on a national holiday night in Japan. I should be catching up on much-needed rest because of my weekday work schedule. Full-time doing mentally taxing work during the day, and part-time BL author on Tapas by night.
I rarely have a day off without some writing or editing. I write/plan during my lunch breaks, evenings, and weekends. Having four contracted novels would burn out anyone, and boy, am I feeling it.
But it’s all for a dream that I’m making for myself—to be an author who can do this full time and share the genre I’m passionate about. It’s already a luxury to do what I do and help pay the bills.
I didn’t get traction like this until 2023, though.
My writing adventure started in 2020 during the COVID lockdowns. I was bored. Like, seriously bored for months. I eventually decided to try webnovels, and narrowed it down to Tapas. It’s a privilege to say my first novel, “Fox Fire,” did pretty well from day one, getting 250 subs in the first few weeks as a totally new author. I stayed consistent in publishing chapters until I had my son in 2021.
Yes, I did write a chapter in the hospital at 5 cm dilated!
When my newborn arrived, I struggled deeply, being a new mother in Japan without my family in the States. I was lonely. I had postpartum depression. The help I needed wouldn’t help… so my true breakout story, “The Vampire’s Last Omega,” was born. It started as my emotional outlet when my baby was three months old. I wrote whenever I could instead of napping, pouring my soul into it.
The Tapas Community… They’re amazing. They supported me when I wanted to give up. My readers were my rock.
And when I finally felt my life getting better, my dad died suddenly in 2023. I didn’t make it in time to say goodbye. Dealt with the funeral and emptied his apartment days after he was gone. When I was in the States, I saw that the TrueLoveOnTapas contest had begun a month prior.
Joining after dealing with a huge loss? Crazy… but I’m kinda crazy. I entered the contest while grieving. It was like a calling to go for it. A sudden urge despite my mental state.
And I won. I remember getting the winning email that I had landed a Top 15 finalist spot. Let me tell you how I screamed with happiness just before my work shift! It was a gift from my dad, as I say. One of the last things he said to me was, “I’m proud of you,” when I told him about my writing.
My Tapas career officially began. I met the most amazing staff who prepared me for the Premium program and showed me how the industry worked. The managers in the novels department were so dedicated to us and to helping our stories shine. I was assigned an editor from Korea because my genre was BL K-pop. They listened when I struggled, cried, or had amazing news to share.
When my vampire omegaverse novel was offered to go from Community to Premium after breaking the one-million-view mark, my world changed even further. I took the offer, gave them my other pitches for the future, and then was an Honorable Mention in the AF Tourney Contest in 2025.
I worked damn hard, providing five chapters a week, working full-time, and raising a young child with developmental delays. Yet my audience stayed to support me. My schedule was like that for over a year, commuting from 6 AM to 6 PM, and writing from 9 PM to midnight. Every day. No rest. Just work on my deadlines and raise money for the little home we will build soon, since our current 110-year-old Japanese country house is in shambles.
My workload was, and still is, a lot. I don’t sleep much. I have bags under my eyes, but I was determined to keep pushing myself and break into the industry. Crossing two million views for a novel, placing first in the Fandom Showdown, events, collaborating with talented artists for covers, Inkies Awards nominated… I seriously love my experience on Tapas, even though I was dead tired. I wanted it, and I went after it. I might also have secret news, but I’m not allowed to share it yet!
My author name grew to the point where I could make decent money, even after Tapas and Apple Store took their cuts.
Until… today. Korean news outlets reported that Tapas was shutting down, and then I received confirmation. Devastation would be a massive understatement. I crashed out and broke down all day. What the heck is the parent company doing, not telling their creators and changing the site well in advance without explaining?! Our livelihoods and contracts are up in the air.
My upcoming new house, my kid, my bills, and my future are all I can think of. My friends are in the same boat, because we are losing our community; losing what made Tapas “Tapas.” It was hard to grasp that all those years of becoming gray-haired, sacrificing trips, skipping fun times, and no sleep have now led me to an incoming wall, where December is that permanent wall.
Where do we go from here? Integrated? Left behind as Kakao starts a new website for localized works, which already have a following, adaptations, etc.?
We indie creators are now abandoned, or at least it feels that way. Our readers spent their salaries on unlocking. Potential creators won’t get to showcase future pitches, including mine, which I had several planned with Tapas. A place where people came together to share snippets and art will be gone. The community was great at that—lifting each other up, just little fish in a big pond. I sincerely loved helping incoming Premium authors with their questions since they came to me in the DMs, and also giving tips to those who wanted to join the program one day.
I don’t know what the future holds for my friends, creators, audiences, and staff who will be affected. I’m angry. I’m upset that we found this way, after random Korean websites did. Like, why did I have to find out via a news article shared on Discord?
It’s a shame that the community will be split and people will go elsewhere. We love what we do, and we want to keep doing it. Isn’t that unfair to end it all like this? We consider Tapas our home and it’s no different from getting an eviction notice without a place to go. What we have had there since day one, when the website formed as Comic Panda in 2012, is unmatched anywhere else.
Please don’t let this be the end of our community, the local IPs, fandoms, and passion. It’s a missed opportunity to find the next big IP from the local source. We have the drive and ideas. We have the community. We are more than a random tab on the app consumed by localized works.
I have so much left to give. Outlines planned. Ideas noted. Covers done and paid for.
All I can do is wait to see what my fate is after over six years as GiveMeThatBread.
GiveMeThatBread “Bread” is an author who writes BL, supernatural, and omegaverse. Top 15 finalist in the TrueLoveOnTapas and Honorable Mention in the Action Fantasy Tourney—Bread has amassed over three million views. She has been living in Japan since 2018. When Bread isn’t at work, she’s probably writing, listening to SHINee, or sleeping.
