ICv2 has a feature on Korean publisher Netcomics, which offers comics for web viewing (not download) and in printed form. The web version is the big money-maker in Korea, where print media sales in general took a nose dive after the government subsidized broadband connections. The manwha publishers seem to have turned it around by offering individual chapters very cheaply on the web. It’s sort of like iTunes for manwha. And here’s the man-bites-dog angle:
Netcomics’ Heewoon Chung told ICv2 that Web exposure helps sales of the printed volumes, rather than offering an alternative to purchasing books.
Maybe the scanlators were right all along!
About Brigid Alverson
Brigid Alverson has been reading comics since she was 4. After earning an MFA in printmaking, she headed to New York to become a famous artist but ended up working with words instead of pictures, first as a book editor and later as a newspaper reporter. She started
MangaBlog to keep track of her daughters’ reading habits and now covers manga, comics and graphic novels as a freelancer for
School Library Journal,
Publishers Weekly Comics Week,
Comic Book Resources, the
Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, and
Robot 6. She also edits the
Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. Now settled in the outskirts of Boston, Brigid is married to a physicist and has two daughters.
