Manta will open its platform to independent creators on November 16. The webtoon and manga app, run by the Korean publisher RIDI, announced the change on October 7 and framed it as a way for self-publishing creators to reach new readers without going through a studio or an agency.
The mechanics are straightforward. A separate section of the app will be devoted to independent work. Creators get profiles and a creator studio for uploading episodes, and they publish directly rather than pitching. Readers get a place to browse those series, comment on them, and talk to the people making them.
Manta is also promising money, eventually. The announcement says the company plans to make it easier for creators to earn from their work in the future, and that it hopes to move some independent series into Manta’s official lineup. Both are future tense. No revenue split, no payment schedule and no selection criteria have been published.
Existing series stay where they are. Independent titles go in their own section starting November 16, and the licensed catalogue is unaffected.
There is an interest form open now, and Manta went out of its way to describe what it is not: it is not an application. It collects contact details from creators who want to be told when the doors open. Anyone treating it as a submission queue is going to be disappointed.
The timing is not subtle. Manta’s other announcement this month is a rescue program, and it exists because a competitor is closing.
The Tapas lifeboat
On October 9, Manta launched “Move Your Bookshelf,” a program that lets readers who unlocked episodes on Tapas rebuild those libraries on Manta at no cost. Tapas announced on October 1 that it is winding down after more than a decade, with service ending on March 31, 2027 at 23:59 PDT. Tapas also said plainly that unlocked content cannot be transferred to another Kakao service, which left its users with nothing but screenshots and complaints.
Move Your Bookshelf is the answer to that, from a different company. Readers can apply for select series where they purchased at least 10 episodes on Tapas, and there is no cap on how many series they claim. The proof required is a single uncut screen recording of their Tapas purchase history, submitted in its original file format, plus the episode ranges they own. Login screens, payment details and the episodes themselves do not need to appear in the video. Approved episodes land in the reader’s Manta library in the same version as the original.
Two limits matter. The program covers a list of eligible works, not everything on Tapas, so some purchases have nowhere to go. And every claim depends on a screen recording, which means readers who never kept purchase confirmations are relying entirely on what the app still displays before it shuts down.
A global release, also this month
Manta’s third announcement in the same stretch was on October 5: From the Burnt Ashes by Jeung-ji Ma launched as a Manta exclusive, with its first episode going up early on the platform. It is the service’s first “Global Release,” a label Manta uses for comics published and serialized on Manta and RIDI at the same time, so readers everywhere get each episode on the same day instead of waiting through staggered regional rollouts.
That detail is smaller than the other two but says more about where the platform is heading. Simultaneous global serialization is what the big webtoon apps built their audiences on, and Manta has spent years as a curated, completed-series service with a limited weekly slate. Opening a creator section and running same-day global releases moves it toward the model its competitors already use.
What independent creators actually get
An open upload button is easy to announce and hard to run. The questions that decide whether this works are the ones Manta has not answered: how discovery works in a section that will fill up quickly, whether there is any moderation or editorial filter, what happens to a series that gets traction, and whether “easier to earn money” means ad revenue, a subscription pool or direct purchases.
The comparison worth making is with Tapas itself. Tapas built a large independent creator base over a decade and still closed. A section inside a subscription app gives creators reach, but reach is not income, and the announcement is honest enough to put income in the future tense.
For readers in the meantime, the useful date is November 16, and the useful task before March 31, 2027 is getting that purchase history recorded while the Tapas app still shows it.
Source: Anime News Network, citing Manta’s official website and X account
Featured image: Manta’s Move Your Bookshelf program announcement, via Manta and Anime News Network.
