While the manga market, and more precisely the anime market, has never been so flourishing in the West and in France, it is the webtoon which is gaining more and more momentum, to the point of posing several problems. It is the encouraged economic model that is worrying, to the point of leading to major disruption of the market.
Sony and Crunchyroll, Number 1 for anime in France?
The ecosystem around manga in France has never been so impactful. A while ago, we were telling you about anime platforms and their prominent places. Sony understood this well by buying via Crunchyroll, Wakanim, by swallowing the content of the platform and thus recovering the series and films from the catalog.
For Sony and Crunchyroll, this is therefore a big blow and an important strategic positioning in the battle for anime streaming, with the aim of competing with Disney and Amazon Prime Video, but especially with Netflix.
The webtoon, an increasingly growing phenomenon
But beyond the platforms broadcasting the anime, it is the manga in digital version, in scan, which has the wind in its sails. The launches of Verytoon by the Delcourt Group, following those of Delitoon in 2016, Webtoon Factory two years later, Webtoon in France in 2019, or Toomics in 2020, it is a substantial market that is offered to fans.
Comes to be added to this increasingly abundant offer the launch of Piccoma. A platform offering webtoons, i.e. color comics, adapted to smartphone screens. Via one of the biggest Asian groups, Kakao, Piccoma, created in South Korea, which, after having devoured everything in its country of origin, attacked Japan, where the result was essentially the same. It currently claims four million daily users there.
For example, Naver Webtoon has in 2021 more than 72 million users worldwide, and also flirts with the United States. With nearly 500 million in turnover in 2019, the webtoon sector represented nearly 50% of the Korean comics market. That was 3 years ago. Since then, the offer has been widely exported beyond Asian borders.
If the app has been uploaded to Google Play, the official launch in France is scheduled for next May, with the aim of becoming number 1 in the sector. As for its economic model, it consists in offering the first chapters of a book. To unlock the following ones, you have to pay in classic currency, i.e. about 0.50 euro per chapter.
A market to regulate
Nevertheless, this model poses some problems, and not the least. Indeed, it is possible for users to pay for these chapters in “coins”, i.e. in digital currency. On France InterJean-Philippe Mochon, of the Mediator of the Book (authority responsible for the conciliation of disputes), expressed concern about this method of payment:
VYou start a chapter, and at some point, the others become paid. And instead of telling you, “it’s paid and it will cost you €1.99”, you are told that it costs a certain number of “coins”. And these “corners”, if you buy a lot of them, it costs you less. You can also earn some if you stay on the platform for a long time, or if you share content on a social network. So obviously, when you pay in “coins”, it’s much less stable, much less clear than when you pay in euros.“.
Thus, all this leads to a disruption of the book market, since if the law of 1981 on the single price of the Book, which prevails only any book must be sold for the same amount, in all points of sale in the country (the law was readjusted in 2011 to cover digital books identical to their paper medium), some webtoons only exist digitally. As a result, these versions escape the law of 1981. Especially since if the user waits a certain time, he can accumulate coins. A major problem for the book market, from small bookstores – already in bad shape – to supermarkets and even online sales platforms.
So, what to do to control the growing phenomenon? always according to France Interthe Mediator of the book plans to contact Piccoma, but also with certain publishers already established in France ” to issue an opinion in the coming months, and perhaps adapt the law to this revolution in publishing.“.
While webtoon seduces and seems to be the most optimized content for smartphones, the authorities will have to try to regulate this model.