Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcasts featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment Today. My guests are movers and shakers in the world of webtuns. What is a webtoon? You ask, well, keep listening, But in Hollywood shorthand, it's like a graphic novel meets a blog scroll meets a soap opera. David J. Lee is chief operating Officer and chief financial Officer of Webtoon Entertainment.
The Los Angeles based company is a big force in this growing digital storytelling medium that got its start about a decade ago in South Korea. My conversation with Lee was held January eighth as part of Variety's annual Entertainment Summit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. A week later, I got on a zoom with the top webtune creator Brandon Chen to get his perspective on this
cutting edge new format. My conversation with Webtoon Entertainments David jay Lee is coming up right after this break, and we're back with a conversation from cees with Webtoon Entertainments. David jay Lee, let's start a little bit and just unpack exactly what a webtune is. The best sort of the best shorthand description. Hollywood always loves it's this meets this plus this, But the best sort of shorthand description of what an actual web tune is is sort of
a mix between a blog and a manga. That might be a little oversimplified, But David, if we could start just by really sort of sketching out what when people go to webtoon users online, because it's a digital platform in terms of the core of the of the business and the storytelling, when somebody goes to a find a webtune, what user experience is that?
Yeah, it's a great question. And for those in the audience who may not have heard of webtune, I have the feeling you may have seen a great live action film and didn't realize it came from us. And if you have friends and family who are in our core target, which is the gen Z target, I know that they're familiar with us. Let me explain what the company is, but then explain what the experience is. So Webtune is
a company, is global. We've got one hundred and seventy million monthly active users, but We have twenty four million creators who are creating over one hundred and twenty thousand stories every day right new there for the taking by our gen Z consumers, and the experience is truly digital and mobile, and it spans way beyond one genre. It's
more than manga. It's any genre you can imagine. Imagine a gen Z consumer in their palm of their hand on a mobile device, with a flick of their fingers, can scroll and in a fraction of a moment see just enough imagery a few words to tell them where a story is going. And at the same time, these consumers are spending once they find their great story, thirty to sixteen minutes a day reading either a web novel or what we call a webcomic or a web tune.
For me, having started in the advertising business, it reminds me of a incredible next generation of a digital storyboard, which is why we love the one point three billion and reported revenue we generate on our platform. But we love the consumers get to see these stories as rich film adaptations on Netflix or Amazon Prime where you saw one that came out recently after Thanksgiving on TB And so we're a great untold story. People don't realize they've
seen our stories. And you know, I'd love to unpack a little bit about what we're all about here.
Absolutely yeah, I think. I mean, you had the audience at twenty four million. That is an astounding number. How do you even Before we talk about sort of adapting into other media, I want to talk just the mechanics of sort of how it works. It's user generated, so people can upload their they upload their imagery, they upload Now, in my understanding of it, it's largely kind of in
you know, comp graphic form, comic book form. But are you finding now people are uploading video as well with their with their web tunes?
Well what they're they're starting to upload if you think about it, these twenty four million creators, the vast majority have full time jobs. You know. A great example is a young woman named Rachel Smythe who was a brilliant graphic designer who thought she might have a story to tell in New Zealand and she can come to our site.
She did. It's called Canvas. We've worked really hard as a tech and an AI company to make it easy for anyone who thinks they might have a story that someone wants to see to create that story, either as a web novel or or if they have a sense of imagery, what we call a webcomic. And so these are if you think about our product, just like you can imagine going through a digital storyboard. You can scroll through vertically this unique format and see where these stories
are going. In the case of Rachel, she like many of our twenty four million creators, didn't realize that her story would allow her to be a global creator. She is a New York Times bestselling author in print, which we helped her enable. And we may be the only company that has shared two point eight billion dollars as
a core function of our business model with creators. That's why we have so many, because we're truly aligned to the fact that consumers want new stories, they want stories from unexpected global sources, and entertainment companies want proven, validated with market signal hits that come from places like us for them to turn into great pieces of film or
merchandise or games. So that's the reason why I think we have this unique ecosystem of a global consumption on our platform, these one hundred and seventy million monthly active users, a format that allows anybody to be able to see in a fraction of a second where a story is going, and a d risked profile for an evergreen source of stories, I hope increasingly for the media industry, which we're going to talk about more today.
I mean, you know, there's just no shortage of interest. You know, from the beginnings of Hollywood to today. The story the kernel. It starts with the story. It's a cliche, it starts on the page, but it's it starts with the story. And what's interesting in the modern age is that so many people are empowered as storytellers. I think in the past people felt like, well, I'm not a Hollywood screenwriter. I'm not, you know, but this is like a forum like so many other social media platforms are.
But it's such a specific forum. Let me ask us again a few more questions about the mechanics of the core web tune business. Does your company do you curate some of these? Do you see when things start to bubble up you curate them and help kind of recommend them or is it really.
Yeah, I think they're think of the experiences. We're very much empowering creators, as you mentioned, to be able to present the story in a way that everyone can consume. So a bunch of our technology, for example here in the US we call it canvas, allows a great amateur creator to see if somebody might love their story as a webcomic or on our wapat platform or web novel.
But then with one hundred and over one hundred and twenty thousand stories arriving every single day, a lot of our AI technology is to make sure that as a consumer, these gen Z consumers, they want an unexpected story, but they have to find it. So having AI based personalization engines to allow we call her Mattie as our target consumer. You know, she's maybe just out of college, or maybe she's getting a cup of coffee, and Mattie loves the
story that she's reading. But we know so much about what she loves that presenting her the ability to see the next story is a big part of our underlying technology. And then there's a large amount of this also which is geared around ensuring that we protect both the creator and the consumer to ensure that the content is safe. But also we all as content generations generators, fight piracy.
So a large amount of our tech is to make this ecosystem healthy and because we're global, that's required us to be a tech company at origin, which we were bored out of, a global tech company, but a media and entertainment company in reality as now that we're generating. We have over nine hundred adaptations of stories outside our platform, one hundred of which are rich film releases in TV and movies. You know, two of Netflix's all time top
ten projects ever came from us, right, what are those titles? Yes, so all of Us are Dead was one of them. And Through My Window, which was an unex affected web novel that came out of the Spanish and language creators, was amazing. But you know, every quarter this happens, right, Love Me, Love Me in Italy, you know, seeking me votes from Spain. We talked about last quarter Sideline, the Quarterback and Me. The day after Thanksgiving here in the US was a top five hit on two B which
start no a back this great social media star. So more and more, I think the world is waking up to the fact that people love a good story, and they love it in all formats on our platform, as a webcomic or a web novel, but certainly as a rich film release, a live action release on either TV or on the big screen.
How do you with over one hundred thousand stories coming in? Did you say every day?
Every day?
I can't even imagine, you know, the ranks of studio executives that it would take to process that. How do you deal with content moderation? I got to believe that not every one of those people are good citizens. And you know, maybe there's some stuff that you don't want on the platform. Do you reserve the right to say, hey, this isn't right for web tune?
I mean, this is where our technology comes into play. I used to be in businesses in mobile gaming and other consumer businesses where we were relying on a lot of hard work by a lot of humans. But while we have that, we have the benefit of cutting edge AI technology our own, but we're very happy to partner with whoever has the best, and we like to think that we provide a real advantage for creators on piracy and consumers on safety. But a large part of it
is also market signal. You know, when you have one hundred and seventy million monthly active users across multiple languages across the globe, and they are so protective of the community that we have, they're a big part of our warning system as well. And you know, we can talk about all the policies, the technology. We like to think we are cutting edge here, but I think the core is what's differentiating is the technology we have and the
community base we have and the track record. You know, Protecting creators and consumers has been our story since its origin, and it's taken us over ten years to arrive as now a public company at scale. But now that we are, we can have these one hundred and twenty thousand stories that we think are readable and safer consumers arrive every day.
I could imagine that that with that kind of volume, you'd have to have an AI tool, you would have to have something so you have certain red flags that they're looking for. Not to hammer on this, but you know, content moderation is a big subject for us. Let's talk about so how does it work with the creators and the business model. The more people read, the more it's basically a revenue share.
Yeah, so we share in the success of amateur creators as they become superstars. And there are so many examples of folks who didn't realize that they had a voice that deserve to be heard. Our model, while simple, is really hard. You know, it is difficult for a company to do what we've done because this to twenty million dollars we've shared means that we're in it with them. And from a consumer standpoint, you know, we don't force heavy subscriptions. You know, Maddie as our gen Z target consumer.
By the way, over seventy percent of our consumers in North America say they can't find the stories they find anywhere else. Same percent says that their experience on our platform is more fun than great companies like Roadblocks and TikTok. And the reason why that's true is Maddie can serve her as long as she wants, and when she finds a story, it feels like her discovery, a bit like discovering a real or a video that she feels no
one else has seen. She only pays fifteen to seventy cents to see the latest breaking episode of the story that she picked, and we are patient. We let our Maddie's take all the time they want to find the story they want, and she doesn't have to always pay. She can watch a video, maybe it's an advertisement that's akin to the genre. Maybe she's watching true beauty and there's a you do a beauty ad that she finds
relevant that allows her to see that next episode. So we make it super easy for our consumers to be as empowered as our creators to pick on their own time what they want to read and see. And I think that's that patience over the last decade plus is the reason why we feel gen Z is we're not reaching them. They're reaching out to us for stories they can't find anywhere.
That's a good way to put it. Very much so with with gen Z, what are the metrics for the for the part of the platform that does have advertising or some kind of sponsor message, what are the metrics that matter? Is it just total clicks? Is it time spent? And kind of curious about the intricacies of the business model.
Yeah, you know, it's a great topic for those who are interested in this. A lot of the businesses that I've been a part of, you know, you basically canbalize your content business if you shove your ad business up. You know, I think about my mobile game days where I'm pushing gotcha for paid content at the expense of time spent on an ad. This is the only business I've ever seen where deep engagement helps both sides. Let me explain. So first, who's looking at the content matters.
We like to think we have demographic goal because while we got a lot of users, we have users spending thirty to sixty minutes per day, and they're the attractive, somewhat hard to reach users. This gen Zjen, Alpha and beyond. By the way, plenty of fifty year olds like me love our content too, because we have every genre a
creator could imagine on our platform. But then, in addition, just as I mentioned, if Maddie or if I are not feeling like I want to pay fifteen to seventy cents, if I watch an AD and I get to see the next episode without having to pay, we know that our cohort data suggests once they read more because they have more confidence that one of the next one hundred and twenty thousand stories could be the one for them. This is the only evergreen source of content I've been
a part of. If you think about every other business, I've been a part of the content static. So you're either monetizing in ads or you're monetizing and content, but that content has a shelf life. Here, I have one hundred and twenty thousand stories arriving every day from a growing global set of creators, curated and benefited from AI and technology. It's the reason why this growing at business, and we were really not focused on our advertising business
until very recently here in North America. We're solely focused on our creators and our consumers and content. It's why I'm so hopeful that we can actually increase our household penetration by offering relevant ads as an alternative for people who may not want to pay to see the content that that arrives on the platform.
And when people in the pay model, is it a monthly subscription or is it a pay as you read?
Yeah, so there are two ways, and we like to make it super simple. We want Maddie to only have to pay a micro payment of fifteen to seventy cents for an episode that she wants to read she picks by the way. You know, everyone likes this idea of having access to a library of content. So this first thing, these micropayments for the late breaking episode is called a fast pass. And then we have another way, which is
called a daily pass. So if someone wants to see a bunch of content where episodes are not being written live every week anymore, because we have an immense library of proven hits in our platform, hits from all parts of the world. It turns out, by the way gen Z likes seeing stories from unexpected sources and from cultures and languages that are not their own. It's a wonderful consumer trend that we benefit from. So these are the
two ways. The majority, though, I would say the majority of our pay content is when Maddie has pre identified it a great story and she knows that the next one is coming out in a week or so, and she wants to be the first to see it along with anybody else. That fast pass is the very simple way that we keep the experience fresh.
That's great. To your point about just you know you want to go, you want to take this avenue, Take this avenue, Take this avenue. My mom, let me ask you do you do you with You can't possibly host that, you can't keep things on the platform in forever. Do you kind of periodically call through and you know older things maybe are not are not either not available or not platformed as much. How do you manage the volume?
Well, we our origin, We are an independent public company listed in the summer on Nasdaq, but for years, our origin was out of this great company based in Korea called Navor, and many of you may not have heard of it, but Navor is the Google and Amazon Plus of Korea, amazing technology. So because our heritage was tech, our ability to manage large amounts of data is the
core capability of the company. We You know, I can't claim to say that we will keep every piece of content forever, but we certainly have the capability of bringing back content that has been serialized for years. So one of the things I wanted to mention is if a creator has a great story, this vertical scrolling format means that on a weekly basis, they're seeing episodes We've seen hit stories span over a decade of life with i'ming new,
fresh episodes hitting every week. Because by serializing, you continue the journey of the storyline versus a static piece of content, which has a shelf life that is defined by the user experience. And that's why we always try to extend the life of the content we have, because we know that it can be serialized or brought back as one of these great film releases that I've mentioned, and so we again, we have a patient headset and we're so data driven that we know that stories don't die easily.
I want to talk about a bit an exciting film project that you all have coming up, but I want to ask you a question. I think a lot of people are probably thinking, who owns the copyright the creator webtune? Do you share it?
Yeah? We want our creators to feel like they own their content, but at the same time, we want to share and enable their success so much. You know, when a young creator is writing in a language and doesn't have the resources to know how to present it across the world to a global audience in multiple formats and multiple languages, that's where we like to think.
Are you do bring a lot to the table? Yeah?
And so as a result, generally, when a creator has a voice that's clearly being heard, we convert them to what's called a professional creator and we voluntarily enter in agreement where we generally have distribution rights in our platform, but we want them to own their content so that if they can be a great Netflix film release, that we can do it with them. And you know, we
have relationships. We want to article that was recently written claimed that we may have been the source of over half of a major streamer's film releases in a country, and you know I can already tell you that, and we're going to talk about it increasingly in North America. I think twenty twenty five is going to be the year where, now that you know that we're the source of these stories, you're going to see more and more of our great platform stories arrive as live action films,
either on TV or on the big screen. One of which we're going to talk about for the first.
Time, got a pretty cool partner lined up in Margo Roby and her Lucky Chap Productions is developing a property. Tell us about it.
Yeah, we're excited as a feature film. I mean, listen, I want to make sure we're clear. We're excited about all the live action films that are going to come out in the next few months. But one that's particularly interesting is stack Town. Stacktown started as a horror webcomics story had over eighteen million views. It's the story of three protagonists that arrive in Stacktown, and you'll have to watch it to see the rest. Read it on our platform.
But partnering with Lucky Chap, Margo Roby's production company and their notable success with Barbie.
And the other little movie we heard about last year.
Yeah, I think it goes to show that our stories can live in any format, and it goes to show that our creators have the ability not just to be very successful in our platform, but that we're really aligned to that creator's success now as a live action release.
I gotta believe. I just still can't get over this creator database. I gotta believe every literary agent in Hollywood, the smart ones are calling through your platform on a daily I wish.
I think our almost maniacal focus on our platform, more and more creators, more and more consumers, more and more content, has meant that the upside I think we see in advertising and the upside and crossover ips just what we call these books that we're enabling, these films, these video games and merch we're just getting going. In fact, in North America, our web team Watpad Studio is really only
less than two years old. We have a great studio called Studio en based in Asia that has been further along, which is why so many more consumers in Asia know about the films that originate on our platform. I think it's an exciting time, because I would love, you know, in the next few years for every literary agent or anybody else to be scrolling with us through our stories because you know, we have proven data around these digital storylines that we know resonate and we know who loves
them across the globe. So I'm very hopeful that we'll have a bigger presence outside of our platform.
Do you ever if something is really strong and has a has a you know, volume, do you ever create like dedicated ebooks around because that would seem like you could do that pretty easily.
Yeah, we're just beginning to explore it. You know, we now have as reported, over five hundred million dollars of capital in the bank and going public in the last couple of courses, we generate positive operating cash flow, so.
Your phone is going to ring so much.
Well, we finally have that balan shaping that number out there to be able to consider in a very careful prudent way, using our own capital to speed up adoption. The good news for US is I think this organic adoption here in North America and in Europe where we're just getting going, is happening without heavy investment. But I certainly am interested in finding interesting creative ways to speed up how creators can present more stories to consumers here.
And very little, very little off you know what you'd call off air marketing. I mean, it's been such a word of mouth business. It seems like are there markets or regions where you do any kind of advertising or marketing push?
Well, in North America, we've just begun to partner with other great companies. So for example, one that I thought was interesting is we partnered with a company called Duelingo, who shares this great global gen z engaged audience in a very different way. I mean, these are folks interested in learning about new cultures and languages, and we partnered with their duo of their iconic owl. And what I
loved about it is we created new content. We created a series of new stories on our platform in collaboration with Duelingo. We saw over seven million views of this content. It was a very authentic way for us to leverage the fact that we have the same engaged audience that they do. But instead of it being you know, a paid marketing deal only, it was more authentically about creating content that people were enjoying. You're going to see us
do more and more of that. We recently did a deal with Discord that I thought was also similar and that we share growth amongst this attractive young audience who want to be picking content on their own terms and so doing deals like that, or frankly seeing movies that you didn't realize from a fandom standpoint came from us, and you're curious about what else did that creator write,
what other permutation of story occurred. I think that's a great way to or more organically drive adoption amongst we only have like sub five percent household penetration. In other countries we're fifty percent. So the largest market here is the market with the greatest growth opportunity for us. So you may see us, as I mentioned, using very prudently some of our balance sheet to speed up what has been largely organic in our spend on marketing.
Are you in the market for you know, additional content assets, production capabilities, or other forms of you know, creative elements that could come into it.
We are, I mean, the company has a history of very prudently using acquisition as a way to One of the great examples is our webcomic platform in Japan. Is last quarter was the number one consumer app in Japan, including mobile games. It's called Lii, manga and pan. But it's our business and it was you know, we call it the rocket ship business. It was built off of an acquisition we made of a company called Ebooks Japan,
so that was the launch pad business. So there are examples geographically or maybe to complement our existing capability where we're not going to be shy. Having public currency as a newly listed public company, I think gives us another tool to be able to consider acquisition. But at the same time, you know, in our S one and when I talked to our investors, we haven't talked about inorganic M and A as being required for our growth. It's very much opportunistic.
You don't need to go acquire market share, you.
But we're very open to it and have a pretty good history in doing it.
David, before you can't, I know you've worked in various pockets of media, but you've also worked for companies like best Buy and David helped bring us the Impossible Burger. What does your back in public companies and companies that have worked in very different retail, you know, different sectors different from media and entertainment. How does that inform your leadership of Webtune, which is a very innovative company.
That's a hard question answer. I think the oddity in my background is there's only been one common theme, which is I tend to enjoy working on companies where the consumer is looking for something different and technology is finally enabling it. So in the past it's been large companies like turning around best Buy or del Monti or Zinga. More recently, startups like you know, launching a plant based burger at Impossible Foods. What I love about web Tune is that it's a business that I feel is a
combination of consumers wanting great stories globally. It's using AI to promote human creativity, not talking about the darkness of it replacing humans. And I feel good that my gen Z kids are reading it, you know, like having them feel like they could be an author and a creator and having them pick content that I think is appropriate for them to choose and read and engage and talk about it. For me, I hope it's the last job I ever have. We'll see. I came out of public
company retirement. Like I said, I would not work for another public company five years ago when I was launching the Impossible Burger and here I am. So for me, this is special. This is a different kind of company.
Don't go anywhere. We'll hear next from Brandon Chen, a top creator of webtoons. After this break, and we're back with my conversation with Brandon Chen. He's a prolific creator of webtoons and digital novels. He's known for popular series such as Just a Goblin, among many others. He's based in New York, but his work travels the world, and yes,
he has his eye on growth through trans media. As he explains, I will just start at the beginning, Brandon, how did you get into becoming a creator for web tunes?
Yeah, so I started off as a novelist when I was from the ages of fourteen. I published my first novel from fourteen to seventeen, and then I continued doing novels until I was in my early twenties. I think at the time it was really hard for me to do what I really wanted, which was Japanese manga. I'd been obsessed with mangas ever since I was a kid, and that was not really a medium that was possible in the United States.
And so how I fell into the web tune space.
Was you know, I read web tunes actually when I was in high school, and I knew about the medium. At the time, it was a very Korean dominated medium, not as many creators here in the US. But over time, obviously that's changed. And I won a competition in Japan or had a very viral submission that's was actually for
Japanese manga. But then I got a web tune publisher that gave me a serialization deal out of that competition, and from that publisher, then web Tune saw that project and wanted to receive a pitch or two and then from there I started just a Goblin and samay No tourre at Webtune and then you know, that's obviously ballooned into a much bigger partnership beyond that. But yeah, that's how I got started. It started off with a love for Japanese manga and then pivoted over into web tunes.
Amazing. So wait, now at fourteen were were you publishing your novels online? How did you how did you publish initially? Do that initial publication?
Yeah, so when I was fourteen years old was when I started the novel. So I was just publishing chapters kind of like in a web normal web novel format on Whatpad, which at the time had a lot of.
Different stories on there.
And you know, I had like I was like fourteen, I got like one hundred thousand reads and I was like,
this is the best day of my life. And then, you know, obviously I took that and that the reader feedback and packaged into a novel which was distributed on on Amazon for ebook and print, and then I could just kind of continued that that process of producing novels, learning how to storytell along the way, and then eventually, like again, pivoted over into more of a visual storytelling space after I had a project in Western Comics which
taught me how to work collaboratively, collaboratively with with artists, and then you know, the rest is is history.
Wow.
Well, I mean that's right there. There's a lot. You're very industrious teenager right from the get go. What what is it? Would you say? What is the what is the sort of classic characteristic of a web tune something published in that format? What makes it different from a novel or a graph or a manga or you know, a comic book.
Yeah, I think like a key difference is definitely like in terms of pacing. But if I just talk about the format for a second, like web tune is a medium that is again very very modern because it is optimized for the digital format, particularly your phone, so you know, it's better to read it on your phone than it is on your computer. But and that's because it has this kind of vertical scroll format where you know, you're kind of very active where you're scrolling through the story
as you're reading. I kind of like to think of it as like watching still TV and you're riding a bike and if the more you ride the bike, the more the TV moves sort of and that's kind of like you know, using your finger to make the web tune move. But yeah, it's vertical scroll, pretty bite sized chapters, you know, fifty to sixty panels on average, and it's colored, which is very different from Japanese manga, which has traditionally
been uh, you know, black and white. And the stories on there are quite diverse in the types of content that you can tell for the different genres out there. So yeah, it's a pretty it's a pretty new medium. There's a lot of different things that make it different from novels and TV and all that kind of stuff, and a lot of it is you know, the serialized format obviously, and also you know the pacing as well.
And do you do your own illustrations? Do you do your own graphics? No?
So I'm a writer and a producer.
So you know, my kind of role in this space is that I come up with a idea in the shower and I got a web Tune and I say, you know, I build a pitch essentially, and I say like, hey, like and this comes from my background in consulting, is that I can make pretty PowerPoint decks. Hey, I have this great idea. You know, would you be willing to partner on this? And you know, Webtune says yes or no, and I still you know if they say yes. You know,
I staff those teams with artists. You know, usually it's a lead artist, and there's also you know, assistance that help them, like backgrounds, coloring, all that kind of stuff. And then you know, I'm involved like kind of every at every step of the production, So storyboards, in game coloring, lettering, I'm kind of art directing at those different phases as well as writing the story. And then you know, I have a little bit of a social media presence, so
I help market the story as well. But yeah, that's kind of my my role in the different stories, and we we work on somewhere between five to ten web comics that are serialized, which is pretty exciting and they're quite different. So my brain is getting tugged in all sorts of ways. But I also think about the accessibility at a transmedia level, like, you know, would this work well as a film, would this work well as a TV show and animation? Could I see this franchising beyond
just just web tunes? And that's that's all strategic stuff that I think about. At the concepting level.
How do you know when something is really resonating with an audience.
What's really great again about this the webtoone platform is that you can see that kind of sentiment real time. You know, there's a lot of different indicators that can indicate how a series is performing. They have like likes, they have comments, and you can see those comments in
real time. I can press publish and then within the next hour it's like you can see if people love it or they hate it, right, And obviously the community is really really nice, so you know, it's it's quite fortunate that you know, they're well receiving of a lot
of the different stories that we tell. But I think like that's the thing about serialized format that's really or digital serialized format that's really interesting, is like you know, you release each week and you get that feedback immediately, versus like, you know, as someone who did worked in novels, it's like I spent a whole year in darkness pretty much without knowing how it's gonna work, and then you press publish and you know, you hope it works out.
Same with like film TV. People spend years on these things and they have no idea what people are going to say, and getting that feedback has been really great.
And then also like you know, let's say a reader says, I really like this character because of XYZ reason that actually sometimes gets me thinking if I didn't have original plans for that character, like, oh, maybe there's a way, you know, people like this character more than I anticipated, maybe that can inform how I progress the story, like
in the future of that kind of stuff. So that's been, you know, again a benefit and something I really like about the serialized websine format, And I think it can be quite motivating, I think, because I think, you know, working in darkness for so long, the only thing motivating.
You is yourself.
But the readers, the readers can be the most motivating in my opinion, way more motivating than I can hide myself up in the mirror, I think.
And what do you find that you have readership around the world? Do you find is it concentrated in in like the US and Asia or you really feel like you you are getting feedback from all over the world.
I think there's I do have readers that definitely follow me from all over the worlds. I think the webtern Us platform that we primarily work with a lot of them, A lot of the readers are from the US, so.
I'm definitely what more well known in the US.
I think, you know, my goals on a broader level are to you know, be more international. So obviously you know the stories, and that's all stuff that I think about, you know, in terms of trans media, and also like when I'm creating concepts, it's like, how can I make sure that this is a story that can resonate hopefully on the international level, like if it were to be localized to Japan or Korea because that's that's also where there's a lot of web web tune readers and consumption
are are in those countries. So that's all stuff that I think about and obviously is a part of the strategy.
What are the benefits of this platform form for a young creator who does not have a following, is just starting out, that has a story that really want to tell in this medium?
Well, I think through serialized storytelling it's a great way to learn how to storytell. I think when I was younger, you know, it was all about there was so much time spent planning. And this is the thing I see a lot about a lot of new creators. It's like there's so much time spent planning and being paralyzed with wanting to create the biggest story, the next one piece or Harry Potter, when ultimately the best way to learn
how to storytell is by releasing things. And I think that webtoon as a format and any sort of story, the serialized storytelling medium allows for you to learn because it forces you to do something, It forces you to release, It forces you to put something out chapter one and then and then you get some readers on the platform and they want chapter two, and you have to give them that.
So I think there's a lot.
Of learning as a as an early creator that you can get from, uh from working kind of in this sea your last format. And again, webtune Canvas has a really accessible what's it called, platform for publishing for newer creators.
I think so yeah.
I think like I didn't know about canvas at the time, and I was fourteen, and I didn't know how to work with artists or how any of that stuff worked. But if I could go back, I would say, like it would be really cool to test my hand earlier on to create one shots or create like a like a short series that could teach me more about the production process earlier on.
Interesting. Well, Brandon, I'm so grateful for you to take the time to talk me through this and my kind of rudimentary questions here. Anything that I didn't ask you, anything that's significant about the storytelling opportunity, the business opportunity of web tunes that you'd like to add.
I think, you know, webtune in the format is a great way for a lot of creators to tell a amalgam of different stories, like there's a there's really U Sky's the limit. I think it's like one of the best ways if you are a creator that wants to go eventually transmedia. I think webtune is a great testing
ground for a lot of concepts. Like you know, it's it's it's cheaper to create a webtune comic than it is to try and fund a full on Marvel television show, right, So I think like it's a great way to learn how to storytell, it's a great way to to build IP and uh, you know, if that that's a goal of any creator, I think, like you know, it's something that people should be looking at.
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