VOL.69/2024.04

 

The Current and Future Ecosystem of Published Comics

 

2023.05.02

 

Fast-Growing Korean Webtoons

 

According to the Korea Creative Content Agency’s (KOCCA) “2022 Comics Industry White Paper,” Korea’s Webtoon market exceeded 1.6 trillion won in volume. It is the 4th largest In the world, following Japan (4.5 trillion won), China (1.8 trillion won), and the US (1.7 trillion won). Considering each country’s population, the Korean webtoon market is enormous. Korean webtoons show rapid share growth yearly in South East Asian countries, including Thailand and Indonesia, Japan, European countries, and North America. As of the 1st half of 2021, Kakao Japan’s Piccoma and Naver Line’s Line Manga took 70% of the digital comics share in Japan. Revenue of Piccoma was around 730 billion Won, and Line Manga’s (including e-book Japan) recorded about 800 billion Won (NEWSPIM, 2022.04.25.), competing to take the #1 place as a domestic webtoon platform in Japan.

 

 

Moreover, Korean and other OTT platforms, especially Netflix, Disney+, and Tving, are focusing on Korean webtoon as the original content IP of digital content. The common concern of all the OTT platforms is securing Original Content, and making Korean webtoon into dramas plays a pivotal role in such efforts. For example, Netflix has invested over 600 billion won in Korean digital content. Likewise, Tving is expected to pour 30 billion won or more into developing OTT dramas based on webtoon out of its 70 billion won of OTT drama production budget. Likewise, Korean webtoons are gaining popularity in Asian countries, including Japan, and are taking a massive part in digital content thanks to the flourishing OTT platforms in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

 

How Did the Structure of the Published Comics Change?

 

Published comics released in Korea had an inflection point in the mid-2010s. In the 1990s, comics serialized in published comics magazines by comics publishers, such as Seoul Media Group and Daewon C.I., were produced and sold under the name comics. Distribution was also mainly made to comic rental shops and cafes, driven by comics distributors. However, from the mid-2010s, as webtoons were serialized on webtoon platforms, such as Naver Webtoon, Daum Webtoon, and Kakao Page, the structure of creation, distribution, and service changed. As a result, the new digital media, webtoon platform, came to take hold of the core part of the new structure. As a result, its service distribution processes were more simplified than published comics, but its system became more complex than before.

 

 

Currently, Korea’s published comics can be broadly categorized into two. The first category consists of educational comics, released in separate volumes targeting children, and social science comics, which contain information or knowledge targeting adults. The other category includes independent volume comics, imported and translated overseas comics, or the published version of webtoon serialized on webtoon platforms. The former type may have different targets, but it is an educational comic aimed at delivering knowledge and information. The latter are fun and moving story-based ones made for entertainment and enjoyment. Interestingly, the webtoon’s publication ratio is smaller than expected. According to the KOCCA’s “Extensive Research on Webtoon Industry in 2022”, within the webtoon industry, paid content took the highest with 63.2%, while overseas content (17.4%), publication (6.0%), secondary copyright (2.8%), and advertisement (1.7%) followed in revenue. The survey shows that webtoon publication only takes 6% of the industry’s revenue.
Nevertheless, unlike the concern that webtoon will make the published comics market suffer, a survey showed that the publication of webtoon positively impacts the publishing market. The KOCCA’s “Extensive Research on Comics & Webtoon Users in 2022” shows that the share of published comics readers who have experience purchasing rose from 42.5% in 2020 to 54.1% in 2022. Also, the percentage of people buying published comics once or more every month increased from 39.7% to 59.7%. As shown above, the survey proves that webtoon fandom had a direct impact on the increase in published comics purchases. In a survey asking the reason for purchasing, the share that said ‘Webtoon I like were released as independent volumes’ rose from 17.7% in 2020 to 21.6% this year. The percentage of webtoon readers who have experience buying a separate volume of webtoon books also showed an increase from 22.6% in 2020 to 29.0% this year. Korean Publishers Association’s statistics on the publishing market show that the top 10 most-read published comics included famous webtoon, such as Yumi’s Cells (Wisdom House), Itaewon Class (Young Com), and Solo Leveling (D&C Media).

 

Is the Answer to Published Comics Publication of Webtoon?

 

Then, one might ask, “Is the answer to published comics publication of webtoon?” Unfortunately, the answer is an absolute “No!” No official statistics exist, but the industry consistently says that the webtoon’s publication count has increased since mid-2022. However, the sales count is falling drastically, unlike its past trend. Generally, to lead webtoon fans to buy published comics, publishers have often strategically sold published comics and goods through a crowdfunding platform, Tumblebug, targeting high-end readers. The strategy was effective in the past. However, from the mid and later half of 2022, it is said that popular webtoon’s sales count decreased from 20% to up to 40% based on preferred genre or target readers. There are three reasons behind this phenomenon: 1. Too many webtoons are being serialized or made into series. 2. The Korean book purchase rate dropped rapidly with digital devices. 3. OTT drama and movie views increased a lot.

 

 

As of 2021, the ratio of adults reading one or more books in a year was 46.9% in Korea, meaning that less than half of the population read books. More than anything, the 20s’ annual average books read decreased from 18.8 books in 2011 to 8.8 in 2021, showing a steep drop in 10 years, and teens’ (Aged 13-19) annual average books read dropped from 22.2 to 13.1, recording the 2nd most significant fall in reading, following the 20s. The result demonstrates that teens and the 20s focus on consuming digital content, like webtoons, web novels, games, and OTT, as the native digital generation. Likewise, teens and the 20s reading less is leading the purchase rate of published webtoon to drop. Another reason for the decrease would be the transition from mid-2022 when the COVID-19 pandemic changed to endemic.

 

What Future Lies Ahead of Published Comics?

 

Even I, writing this paper, cannot answer the question clearly, putting me in an embarrassing position. Once, I believed that the answer to the question was in social science comics, which target adults with diverse topics and fun content. However, excluding text-based educational cartoons targeting children, sales of social science comics for adults also fell in the published comics market in Korea. It is because the published comics in Korea have focused on education and training, and the trend is likely to continue.

 

 

The paid model of Emanbae (“You Learn This from Comics?”), a knowledge and social science webtoon platform with the slogan ‘Knowledge is a service too,’ is considered ineffective in the market. The paid platform on knowledge and social science for adults has a long way to go. Regrettably, the only apparent way to generate profit is to publish serialized webtoon for now. Publishers and platforms each have their issues to address. To resolve relevant problems, the collaboration between comic publishers and platforms seems more important than any other thing. As shown in the table below, if publishers and platforms complement each other, create businesses, and collaborate, both can build a virtuous cycle of webtoon serialization and publication, which may be the solution they seek.

 

 

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Written by Park Se-Hyeon (CEO of the FandomBooks, Planning Director of MStoryHub)