Line Webtoon

Webtoon (styled as WEBTOON) is an online publisher launched by Naver Corporation in South Korea in 2004. As the name suggests, it publishes webtoon, a name referring to compact digital comics in South Korea. The platform is called Naver Webtoon in Korean, LINE Manga in Japanese, both Dongman Manhua and Webtoon in Chinese, and simply Webtoon in English, French, Indonesian, Spanish, Thai, and German.

The platform first launched in Korea as Naver Webtoon and then globally as LINE Webtoon in July 2014, as the Naver brand is not well known outside of Korea and some of its services are also not available outside of the country. The service gained a large amount of traction during the late 2000s and early 2010s. In 2016, Naver's webtoon service entered the Japanese market as XOY and the Chinese market as Dongman Manhua. On December 18, 2018, Naver closed down XOY in Japan and migrated all of its translated and original webtoons to LINE Manga, its manga service that offers licensed manga. In 2019, LINE Webtoon was changed to WEBTOON in English and Spanish and French versions were launched. In 2020, WEBTOON transferred and serviced to Naver Webtoon Corp. In November 2020 WEBTOON established a new subsidiary called WEBTOON Studios[4] which is for licensing their English properties.

The platform partners with creators to publish original content under the WEBTOON ORIGINALS[5] banner and hosts a number of other series on its self-publishing site CANVAS. LINE Webtoon comics can be discovered through the "daily system" function, along with being read and downloaded for free on computers and both iOS and Android devices.

History

LINE Webtoon was founded by JunKoo Kim in 2004, under the name "WEBTOON," after he watched the manhwa industry crash in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Kim, who grew up reading Japanese manga and Korean superhero comics, was looking for a way to get new comics created because he found that there were very few new comics coming out. Kim theorized that tall, scrollable comics would work well on the World Wide Web, as users were already used to scrolling through web pages. Because of this unusual layout, Kim initially had difficulty finding artists to create webtoons on his service, but he found that manhwa was willing to do something different because of the poor state of the local manhwa industry.In May 2020, it was announced that WEBTOON was being transferred and serviced to Naver Webtoon Corp.

Global launch

On July 2, 2014, the LINE Webtoon website and mobile app were launched worldwide, allowing international artists to upload their own works to the service. Hundreds of webtoons are available in the self-publishing section of Webtoon, known as CANVAS, where artists can be paid based on page views. Naver Corporation selected 42 webtoons (including Noblesse, Tower of God, and The God of High School) and one new webtoon by an American artist to be available on the service in English at launch. According to 148 Apps, the service offered "plenty of content" at launch, as seven to ten webtoons were updated each day and the webtoons spanned various genres.

Partnerships

In April 2013, Naver Webtoon created a Profit Page Share program. This compensation program that allow artists to get a larger profit through advertisements or their own personal stores, but is shared between NHN Corp and the artists themselves.

In 2015, LINE Webtoon partnered with US comics veteran Stan Lee, Image Comics co-founder Marc Silvestri, and make-up artist Michelle Phan in order to promote their service.Silvestri brought his long-running comics series Cyberforce to the platform.[18] Various other established American comic book artists and cartoonists have also partnered with LINE Webtoon over time, including Dean Haspiel (New Brooklyn),[19] Katie Cook (Nothing Special), Seth Kushner and Shamus Beyale (The Brooklynite), and Tracy J. Butler (Lackadaisy).

In September 2016, LINE Webtoon partnered with the Patreon crowdfunding service, incorporating a "Patreon button" in the "Discover" portion of the website. This function creates an easier channel for readers and artists to mutually communicate. Naver invested US$3.6 million and $1,000 every following month for webtoon creators who reached a certain threshold of activity and popularity with a Patreon page.One month later, Naver signed with the Creative Artists Agency for film and television opportunities in the United States.

LINE Webtoon also partnered with DeviantArt in the second half of 2016, in the form of the "Artist Alley Tour". The companies were active at four Comic Cons: Boston Comic Con, Baltimore Comic Con, Rose City Comic Con, and New York Comic Con. Here, LINE Webtoon and DeviantArt held discussion panels, "Artist Alley Sponsorships", live draw events, influencer and creator demonstration areas, and on-site contests.

In 2017 LINE Webtoon and Legendary Comics expanded their partnership with the addition of John Barrowman's Acursian and season 2 of Firebrand.

In 2018 included partnering with Noble Transmission and Common for the new Caster series.

In 2019 WEBTOON's digital content subsidiary LICO collaboratively produced with Big Hit Entertainment to release Save Me as part of the latter's BTS Universe (BU) which revolves around the output of South Korean boy band BTS.

On October 15, 2019, Crunchyroll and LINE Webtoon announced a partnership to produce animated works of LINE Webtoon's catalog. The two will team up to tackle the distribution, licensing, and retail of the series produced from the partnership.

On January 19, 2021, WEBTOON's parent company NAVER acquired the popular user-written story site Wattpad. Wattpad will be partnering with WEBTOON—which it had already done in its 2020 Watty Awards Contest—to provide more opportunities for creators.

In June 2021, Wattpad and WEBTOON announced that the companies will merge their studio divisions to create Wattpad WEBTOON Studios.

In August 2021, it was announced that WEBTOON would be partnering with DC Entertainment to create standalone webcomics that “will appeal to all fans, without the need to know or read any previous stories.

Userbase

The userbase of WEBTOON grew rapidly after the service was released globally, with 10 million people reading on the platform daily and 35 million people monthly.In Asia, several webtoons receive 5 million views per week. In 2016, 42% of the webtoon creators on LINE Webtoon were female, as were 50% of its 6 million active daily readers.75% of the users in North America are 24 or younger and 64% are female.

As of July 1, 2019, WEBTOON has grown to more than 100 billion views annually.