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Publishing, HarperCollins, Macmil-
lan/Tor Books, Penguin Random
House, and Simon & Schuster.
Victoria Lee’s fantasy novel The
Fever King, an Amazon title, launched
on Webtoon in March. Other forth-
coming webcomic adaptations include
Dan Wells’s supernatural murder
mystery I Am Not a Serial Killer (fall
2019); Justin A. Reynolds’s time-travel romance Opposite
of Always (fall 2019); and John Mayberry’s coming-of-age/
zombie novel Rot & Ruin (spring 2020, S&S).
Webtoon’s site and app attract about 55 million global
visitors monthly, and about 15 million global readers daily,
according to spokesperson Kim Estlund. Since its launch in
the U.S., the site has focused on building the brand and
growing the number of creators that use the platform,
Estlund said. Some Webtoon series (among them Lore
Olympus by Rachel Smythe and True Beauty by Korean artist
Yaongyi) attract more than a million readers a week globally.
The Webtoon site interface is designed to display theequivalent of a comics panel (rather
than traditional pages) in a vertical
scroll on both the website and the app.
Readers can also download the con-
tent to read offline. Webtoon offers a
diverse selection of genres and illus-
tration styles, although manga-style
drawing is the most prevalent.
The platform’s business model is
designed to allow fans free access to its weekly updates of
new comics, but readers who want to read ahead in long-
running comics series can buy access to advance issues via
the Webtoon app’s Fast Pass program. Additionally,
Webtoon launched an ad-sharing program in 2018 that
allows creators to generate income without making their
content exclusive to Webtoon.
All content uploaded to Webtoon is owned by its creators,
not by Webtoon, Estlund said. The site hosts about 2,600 titles
that are exclusive to Webtoon and publishes hundreds of
titles and content updates daily; according to a spokesperson,
it has published more than a million webcomics to date.