The Business: Arkhaven Launches Webtoons Mobile App

Arkhaven Comics announced today via Bounding Into Comics that they've launched a competitor to the popular Webtoons comic publishing mobile application: Arktoons.

Vox Day and Arkhaven Comics announced a brand new initiative, Arktoons, that will be an alternative and competitor to the wildly popular Webtoons platform.

Arktoons is described as a “digital comics site featuring vertically-displayed comics panels in the Webtoons style that is particularly well-suited for reading on smartphones and tablets.”

The user will not be required to pay to access it. Subscriptions will be available to support specific creators, using a model heretofore put into place--successfully--with Unauthorized, the video streaming site that Vox Day put together; benefits are not specified at this time, but I would not be surprised if this also would allow access to Social Galactic (his social media site) the same way that Unauthorized subscribers do.

Okay, that's nice and all, but I have to ask: why would Webtoons readers leave that?

There is a massive amount of comics content on Webtoons, far more than could be exhausted. Arktoons is swimming against the Network Effect here, and exclusivity is insufficient a draw for people; much like Gab, Bitchute, et. al. merely being a rival network-dependent technology competing against the dominant player is a massive black mark against it. It does not help at all that it is aligned with politics that are openly attacked and suppressed by the dominant players across the West. (In the East, merely not being either the top dog or not state-sponsored is detrimental enough.)

This is not where the action is. The value of Webtoons is in the massive size of its user traffic. That's why they can get away with being not at top-end graphical fidelity; they're aiming at young normies with phones that get replaced every year or two, and normies never go out of their way for a damned thing. Making a rival app means telling normies about it, and if they don't balk at not being on Webtoons at all, they usually balk at who's behind it. In short, this is a massively hard sell and Vox isn't making it any easier by being out front.

Network Effect businesses are not nearly as open to competition as people would want there to be. We'll soon see if Arkhaven has the savvy to surmount the big challenge before it.

Follow Up: Jon del Arroz on Kindle Vella

I mentioned this the other day. Jon del Arroz addresses Amazon's new Kindle Vella initiative below, nice and simple.

I am interested in this, but I am also cautious enough to let someone else take the first wave to the beach. Over in Jon's Discord server we have folks digging into this, as Derek Murphy did, and that's how we're getting the details that Amazon's PR isn't talking about.

So far it is looking like it's worth trying, so I and several others are looking at backlog material that would work in this serial format. Once we see it in action, we'll be able to report back on actual viability.

The Business: Amazon Reinvents The Serial Magazine

Amazon announces a new aspect of its ebook publishing arm.

Quoting the video:

Kindle Direct Publishing is introducing a new storytelling option: Kindle Vella. With Kindle Vella, you can self-publish serialized stories, one short episode at a time. Episodes can range from 600 – 5,000 words. In the next few months, readers will be able to access all Kindle Vella stories in the Kindle iOS app and on Amazon.com.

This is Amazon attempting to replicate something aimed at mobile users that succeeded such as Webtoons and other serial publishing sites that are mobile-oriented, but with a different target audience of normie readers that are already invested in Amazon's walled garden. The PulpRev Discord is discussing this, as we've been looking for some way to put out a Pulp Magazine model, and this is geared for those who otherwise might hit up webnovel sites or something like them to publish serial fiction.

Right now, this is a US-only thing and confined to Apple's walled garden mobile infrastructure, but you can safely assume that there will be an Android app soon enough and some way to participate on your desktop.

For a longer video, by another working author with his own take on it, Derek Murphy's video is below; it's long, so you may want to bump playback speed to 1.5x so you can squeeze it out over a coffee break. The article version of Derek's take is here if you read faster than you watch.

This is a developing publishing situation, and there will be follow-ups as details emerge.