Well.. for a publishing industry to thrive healthy and sustainably, it needs these 3 things:
1. Publisher that pays
2. Creators who create
3. Readers who bought the products
Webtoon only check 2 out of 3,
but the quick exposure they have tapped into creators deepest desire to be acknowledged, (otherwise why creating to begin with)
But that will only goes so far, since the creator lives in the real world, where cost of goods to enjoy life is not free. That's why usually they abandon these passion projects as they grow up outside the online world.
@scythe
If all webtoon managed to do is gathering millions of likeminded people who would never pay for things anyway, then the industry will live and die off advertising.
Out of the social media giants, only facebook/instagram managed to turn profit, 5 years after its inception.
Twitter and youtube has not turn profit after a decade, youtube still lose money despite 1 billion users.
For all the creators sake, I hope webtoon goes in the direction of facebook instead of youtube.
Unlike prints, digital has its own challenge to convince customers to actually pay for these non tangible things.
But the music, tv and film industry has overcome that recently, maybe the online publishing industry is still in the process of doing that.
