Apple Books signs 3-year Webtoons contract in South Korea

The audiobooks section tells you ‘narrated by Apple Books’

In order to enable it to provide a rich collection of titles in the increasingly popular Webtoons format, Apple Books has signed a three-year deal with South Korean Web comics start-up Kenaz.

What are webtoons?

The webtoon format was developed in South Korea. They are short, vertical full-color comics drawn and visualized to exploit smartphone screens.

The format has already spawned streaming TV hits, such as zombie classic All of Us Are Dead and Sweet Home.

Webtoons are becoming popular across the world.

A recent Celsys survey proves the growing global appeal of the webtoon format, particularly among creatives.

It found that 41.9% of European creators read webtoons with readership growing in France, UK, and Germany. (Celysys makes the popular Clip Studio Paint application which is built to create content in the webtoons format.)

The US hasn’t really caught the webtoons bug quite yet but given its existing passion for comic and comic culture, it’s a format that will certainly become more popular, giving Apple a chance to lead in this market.

Coming to Apple Books ‘in near future’

Under the deal, 30% of webtoons published by Kenaz will appear on Apple Books first.

It’s thought that webtoons will be introduced via Apple Books in the US in the near future. The first content to be produced under the deal arrived in Apple Books Japan last month and will be made available across all 51 nations in which the service is available.

Here’s a gratuitous clip of All of Us Are Dead. I enjoyed it.  I guess we’ll see a few Apple TV titles based on webtoons it provides that get popular, too. Everyone likes a good zombie horror.

A two year discussion that became a deal

TaiPei Times claims Apple has been discussing the plan with Kenaz since September 2022, when Books global head Kashif Zafar and head of content Sasha Norkin allegedly flew to Seoul to discuss the deal. It explored the idea for two years before making its move. Apple will be competing with local players Naver and Kakao, China’s Tencent and ByteDance, and Amazon in this space.

[Also read: What is Apple Books for Authors?]

A report in TaiPei Times tells us Kenaz is currently working on a webtoon version of the Gladiator movie and with French writer Bernard Werber to convert his Ants trilogy into webtoons.

The Celysys survey also found:

• 51.5 per cent of French creators surveyed read webtoons, up 23.1 points from the previous survey in 2021.
• Webtoons are read most by men in their 30’s and women in their teens and 20’s.
• Countries with higher webtoon readerships also have more comic creators.

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