[Catch up on all of Deb’s travel diary here.]
There were a bunch of fascinating talks presented on the second day of the Rencontres Internationales du Webtoon in Monteux, including a survey that captures a snapshot of global webtoon creators’ feelings about their work, the money they make, and the toll it takes on their mental health, and organizer Sébastien Célimon’s report on the state of the K-comics in print market in France.
Four professional webtoon creators (AntiGA and Kotopopi of Slap Studio, Dazarhis of Studio Myrà, and SaKimieNolDeph) presented the results of the 2024 edition of their survey of webtoon creators with some interesting infographics.
Promoted with the help of The League of Professional Authors (La Ligue des auteurs professionnels), a French union “whose goal is to create an inclusive environment for webtoon creators within the established cultural systems in France,” the survey records responses from 138 webtoon creators from 16 countries, including France, USA, Mexico, Italy, and Malaysia. The vast majority of responses came from France-based creators, but there’s interesting insights throughout, including:
- 61.4% of webtoon creators report income from their work that is below the minimum wage in their country
- 60.9% report that being a webtoon creator is their full-time job
- US-based webtoon creators have higher average income from their work than their French and Italian counterparts
- 82.6% say that their first publishing contract was for a webtoon series
- Roughly half aren’t satisfied with their contracts, with 18.6% saying that they don’t want to work with their current publisher again.
- 34.1% of creators have been treated for mental health issues in the past year
- Naver/WEBTOON France is the top reported publisher of webtoons by the creators represented in the survey, followed by Naver/WEBTOON US and ONO (France)
You can see the rest of the survey results here, along with past years’ results for comparison, in both French and English.
This survey could produce fascinating results next year, if they can increase their dataset by getting more responses from webtoon creators worldwide. Given that webtoon platforms and publishers are actively recruiting and training global creators, this population of comics creators should continue to grow, and will be worth watching.
I presented my talk on the state of the webtoon / K-comics publishing biz in N. America, which mostly introduced the general state of the graphic novels / comics / manga publishing biz, and how K-comics/webtoons fit into the mix. (Spoiler: Solo Leveling is the top seller for K-comics series) but web novels in print are an emerging trend. In general, N. America leads in the K-comics publishing space compared to France, which is interesting, considering that the French market for Japanese manga in French has outpaced N. America for many years.
Closing off the 2-day conference was Sébastien Célimon’s deep dive into the state of webtoons in print in France. I’m hoping to get the slides he presented later to get more details, but here’s the top-level takeaways:
- 50 million Euros – Cumulative sales of webtoons in print since 2019
- 467 volumes of webtoons/K-comics were published in print in 2024 (as of January-October 2024)
- 134 series
- 19 publishers, of which 4 just started publishing K-comics this past year (KODA, Wavetoon, K-Dream, Urban)
- Of the top 20 webtoon series published in France, Omniscient Readers Viewpoint is the only one that has debuted in the past year.
- 43% of K-comics print sales in France are various volumes of Solo Leveling
This probably explains why the genre breakdown is 37% action-adventure, 20% contemporary romance, and 17% romantasy stories.
You can follow the Worldwide Webtoon Festival on LinkedIn for more details about the 2024 conference, plus find out first about the 2025 event, and other webtoons in France news and trends worth watching
Next on my France-Japan travel diary: An ill-fated journey from Carpentras to CDG Airport, a stop in Doha, Qatar and arriving in Tokyo.
