Whereas the debut of Webtoon on the U.S. inventory market dominated comics world headlines final month, South Korea’s different big purveyor of cellular comics and serialized fiction, Kakao Leisure, and its Tapas platform have been quietly shifting forward with their very own plans for the fast-growing market section—and expressed hope that an IPO may be of their future as effectively.
“Kakao is the main storytelling know-how in Korea and truly launched the webtoon format,” mentioned Jayden Kang, chief working officer of Tapas Leisure and VP of the worldwide story enterprise for Kakao Leisure, alluding to the primary identified webcomic, printed in 2003 by Daum Communications, which merged with Kakao in 2010. “We’ve got the heritage and historical past to carry this sort of business to the world.”
In 2021, Kakao Leisure acquired Tapas Media, a U.S.–based mostly app based in 2012 by entrepreneur Chang Kim, for $510 million. After an preliminary aggressive enlargement of operations to develop premium authentic English-language content material, Tapas abruptly modified route in the summertime of 2022, shedding key workers and refocusing on user-generated content material and materials in style in its Asian markets. At this time, the platform is greatest identified for such huge hits as Solo Leveling and The Starting After the Finish.
“From my perspective, there may be solely 5 to 10 % market penetration for digital content material” within the U.S. market at the moment, Kang mentioned. “In Japan, it’s nearer to 70%. So there’s a protracted approach to go. And we’re approaching that by bundling content material and capabilities we’ve from Korea and Japan to increase the U.S. market. We’d like extra advertising and marketing spending to coach and prepare shoppers to understand the format and content material we provide.”
One space the place the corporate sees nice progress potential is in serialized on-line fiction, or “webnovels.” Longtime head of publishing for Tapas Alex Carr was lately promoted to government director of publishing improvement, including new tasks for inbound licensing of recent webnovel content material to his present function in managing the publishing partnerships that carry Tapas webcomics to print.
“Which means I’m reaching out to particular person writers and rights holder to assist carry nice content material to the serialized format that may shock our present viewers and assist us have interaction new readers,” mentioned Carr. “The objective is to make them much more profitable and shine a larger highlight on their works for readers.”
Each Kang and Carr see webnovels as the bottom of a media worth chain that may additionally embody webcomics, commerce books, and dwell motion and animated media for broadcast or streaming—reminiscent of the favored Solo Leveling anime sequence—in addition to video games and merchandise. This is similar mannequin that Webtoon efficiently promoted to traders, who warmly greeted the corporate’s IPO.
One benefit that Tapas gives creators is the power to make use of the dimensions and data-based capabilities of the platform to achieve a wider viewers. “We would like our webnovel success tales to be as huge as our comics success tales,” mentioned Carr. “Now could be the time for authors to get in on a platform that makes a speciality of monetization of this content material, publishing to a devoted group of readers that already love genres like romantasy and romance-adventure that they know from the comics.”
Carr cites Tapas’s breakout hit The Starting After the Finish, which started as a webnovel by the creator TurtleMe and subsequently tailored right into a massively in style webcomics sequence. “I really like the idea of matchmaking between authors and artists,” mentioned Carr. “The [prose] author could be as concerned or as fingers off as they need, however our objective is for them to be delighted by the ultimate product, as a result of then they would be the largest megaphone for the venture.”
By way of commerce ebook partnerships, Carr mentioned that Tapas lately added Darkish Horse Books to a listing of companions that additionally contains Andrews-McMeel, Scholastic, and Yen Press. “As of March, we had 5 volumes of print content material throughout three publishers, and all through the remainder of the 12 months, we’ll most likely have 5 extra books within the US relying on how briskly we will get them produced,” he added.
At the moment Tapas’s print technique is about evenly break up between the commerce ebook channel and the comedian ebook direct market. There’s additionally rising curiosity from libraries, as librarians have acknowledged the recognition of webcomics and internet novel content material with youthful readers.
As a result of Tapas usually appeals to a youthful demographic, Kang mentioned that there have been no rapid plans to include content material from Radish, the net novel platform that Tapas acquired in 2021, whose main viewers includes grownup girls. That mentioned, Carr famous that there are some potential synergies down the road between the 2—particularly as soon as the Tapas cohort begins to age up.
Tapas is optimistic in regards to the success of its technique, regardless of a post-Covid slowdown that has affected all the leisure business. “Plenty of progress occurred within the first and second quarter [of 2024],” Kang mentioned. “We nonetheless count on double digit progress from final 12 months.”
Kang, who spoke to PW the day earlier than the Webtoon IPO, mentioned that he and his colleagues are watching carefully and rooting for his or her competitor’s success: “I strongly imagine the Webtoon itemizing goes to be an enormous alternative to broaden the market and focus the eye of companions and creators.” As as to if an IPO one thing that Tapas would contemplate, “I hope so, positively,” Kang added. “We’ve got acquired funding from international traders for Kakao Entertaintment—so sure, sometime we’re positively wanting ahead to that sort of occasion.”
Correction: An earlier model of this text incorrectly asserted that the sequence The Starting After the Finish originated in South Korea; slightly, its creator lives in Seattle. This text has additionally been up to date for readability.
