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Apple Launches Webtoon Comics Publisher For Apple Books App

Apple has signed a three-year deal with South Korean startup Kenaz to publish webtoons on its Apple Books app.


The Apple Books app has signed a three-year deal with South Korean startup Kenaz to publish webtoons, vertically scrolling comics made famous by fellow South Korean publisher Webtoon, formerly LINE Webtoon, the most-read comic book publisher in the world. Initially rolled out in Japan in April, this will now expand to the fifty other countries in which the Apple Books app is available and will launch in North America shortly. The deal, as it stands, is for three years.

Apple To Launch New Webtoons Publisher For Its Books App

Forbes quotes Woody Lee, the founder and chief executive of Kenaz, saying "North America doesn't really have a significant lead player in webtoons yet. Apple Books has a chance at becoming a competitive player in this field pretty quickly… There is just so much demand for original intellectual property content these days. The new hot topic in the content market is to identify a story IP with growth potential and create an entire value chain out of it."

However Tom Akel, CEO & Publisher of Rocketship Entertainment and former Head Of Content at Webtoon, Exec Producer at MTV Digital, and Head of Mobile Media at Comedy Central, tells Bleeding Cool something different. "I disagree that there is no leader in the space in North America seeing what Naver and Kako have done. That said, it's undeniable that Apple immediately becomes the most powerful player this industry has ever seen if they apply their resources. Apple's market cap is about $1 trillion larger than the entire GDP of South Korea, where all of the players in the space are based. There are more than 1.5 billion active iPhone users. And Apple understands the North American content market at scale with countless hits on Apple+ and partnerships with every television, film, and gaming studio you can name. There's always space for numerous platforms in the field, but if there's going to be a race to determine who will be #1 in the next few years I don't think anyone will call me a visionary for saying it's Apple's to lose."

Bleeding Cool has also been made aware of other players in the field looking to launch a Western-themed webtoon publisher, this seems to be a half-way house between the two. Forbes also reports that in September last year, Apple Books executives Kashif Zafar and Sasha Norkin flew to Seoul to discuss the Kenaz deal for three days before making the deal. And notes that the Apple Books app has not had the kind of attention or deals that the likes of Apple Music and Apple TV have had.

While Woody Lee believes that Apple likely chose Kenaz over bigger players like Naver and Kakao to ensure access to original content without any conflicts over distribution and that he expects roughly 30% of Kenaz's webtoons to be first published via Apple Books. Kenaz currently published webtoons from around 140 authors and is valued at $65 million, and plans to go public next year. This deal may well help that.

Upcoming projects from Kenaz and Apple Books will include a new version of the movie Gladiator written by its screenwriter David Franzoni as well as French novelist Bernard Werber to adapt his Ants trilogy of novels for Apple Books webtoons.


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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