Webcomics, especially the vertical long-scrolling sagas popular on sites like Webtoon and Tapas, have emerged as industry game-changers. “A decade and a half ago, all the talk was print-to-digital,” says Alex R. Carr, executive director of publishing development at Tapas Entertainment. “Now it’s flipped.” But the rush to acquire the rights to publish online properties brings a new challenge: turning clicks and likes into book sales.
Publishers are banking on the idea that popular online comics come with built-in audiences. Information about readership and engagement is also readily available and access to readers is built into digital platforms.
“It’s this huge pool of content that’s very grassroots,” says Chiara Tognetti, an international foreign rights agent who specializes in representing East Asian publishers. “The publishing world can be quite slow in picking up on trends, so it’s useful for editors to see what has traction.”
Webcomics also appeal to a growing and diverse audience, notably at-
tracting female fans (who represent a significant majority of the format’s readership) and offering a rich selection of LGBTQ+ content. Because there’s less gatekeeping for new creators to publish on web platforms, webcomics are a place where fresh talents emerge. “I love the freedom the creators have to tell stories that they wouldn’t have been able to tell in print,” says Andrea Colvin, editorial director at Little, Brown Ink. “Not just that they’re more queer or more tropey, but that they’re not trying to fit a box.”
A peek in readers’ pockets
Competition to grab the top titles is intense. When Colvin first looked for webcomics to acquire, she says, “out of my top 10, eight of them already had book deals.”
“It’s become one of the most popular categories,” agrees Rich Young, the head of creative and business development at Ablaze. “There are more players in the market and it’s getting more competitive.” Ablaze focuses on finding the hidden gems, especially in the world of Korean web manhwa. Ablaze’s bestselling manhwa title to date is the print version of the martial arts webcomic The Breaker, by Jeon Geuk-Jin and Park Jin-Hwan, with total sales to date of about 50,000 copies. The sequel, The Breaker: New Waves, will release in February.
Rebecca Taylor, editorial director at Inklore, laser-targets the imprint’s audience: female-skewing, queer-friendly fans of romance and fantasy. She utilizes the transparency of webtoon platforms with a mathematical approach to acquisitions. “When I got this job,” explains Taylor, “the first thing I did was go on the fan fiction site Archive of Our Own, go through the entire webcomics tag, write down all the titles that had over a certain number of fanfics, and then I cross-referenced that with their actual readership numbers.” It’s a data-driven approach where signing a book depends on what Taylor calls “the fan density ratio: looking for titles that have both high visibility and very high fan engagement.”
At conventions, Taylor and her staff also talk to readers of Inklore’s existing titles about their other faves—and ask them to turn out their pockets. “We have them pull out their phones and show us what else they’re reading,” she says—and thus the editorial team gets a peek into potential new acquisitions.
Inklore believes its detailed demographic research will pay off. It’s printed more than 100,000 copies combined of the recently released light novel and graphic novel versions of Under the Oak Tree, a romantasy by Suji Kim with collaborators P and namu (who, like many webtoon creators, publish under pseudonyms) that runs online on Manta.
No borders
Publishers and editors bring up one challenge again and again: adapting webcomics’ online displays to the page. The vertical scrolling format popularized by Webtoon, in particular, is optimized for reading on a phone but doesn’t always translate to a navigable page layout.
“All of us went into this thinking, No problem, the hard work’s done, the artwork’s already been published. All we need to do is print it,” Carr says. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“The really fun thing about the long scroll is that you have no borders,” says Deanna McFadden, VP of IP publishing strategy at Webtoon. “But there are limitations to a page.” Like many comics publishers, Webtoon employs in-house designers to create a book map to solve this puzzle, laying out what the comic will look like translated to print.
Colvin stresses that editors must engage with the needs of each comic individually. She compares Míriam Bonastre Tur’s all-ages fantasy Hooky, converted to print with tight page layouts that push the action and humor, with Rachel Smythe’s romantasy Lore Olympus, which was designed with loose, open pages to let the steamy romance breathe.
Kaitlin Ketchum, editorial director at Ten Speed Graphic, notes that most cartoonists publishing on the web don’t start out with a plan for eventual print publication. “A lot of webcomics have seasons,” she says, “but those don’t line up with what will fit in a book.”
Webcomics also often run long, turning an initial acquisition into a potential longer-term commitment for a publisher. “On average, we’re seeing that 20–25 episodes of the web version will fit in a book,” Ketchum says. “And sometimes you take on a comic, and it’s already got 213 episodes and is ongoing.”
Colvin notes that the first volume of web-to-print title Blades of Furry (Little, Brown Ink, May 2025), a sports romance featuring competitive skaters who also happen to be a deer and a bat, will weigh in at 512 pages—with more hefty volumes to follow.
Selling on shelf appeal
In the early aughts, when webcomics were scooped up for print deals, publishers often worried that readers wouldn’t want to pay for a book when a free or cheaper version existed online. Sometimes cartoonists were asked to remove or stop updating stories online when it came time for print publication. Today, most publishers handling webcomics report that this duplication hasn’t been a hurdle. Instead, free content tends to create passionate fan communities—who are also collectors.
“Vertical scrolling has been great for webcomics, because you can read everything on your phone, on the subway, or wherever,” Colvin says. But avid readers also “want to have a memento,” she explains.
“Music has become predominantly streaming,” observes Kevin Ketner, editor at Ablaze, but fans who like a band are “going to buy the T-shirt or the record or go to the show. And having a cool book on your shelf is always a draw.”
Spike Trotman, publisher of Iron Circus, adds that the internet isn’t forever. Many popular webcomics from the 2000s and 2010s are no longer available online, for a variety of reasons. “The comic you really enjoyed and maybe comfort-read once or twice a year could go poof,” Trotman says. One such example is the now-removed early online installments of the forthcoming graphic novel The Girl Who Flew Away by Lee Dean (Iron Circus, Mar. 2025), a story about a young pregnant woman’s awakening in the 1970s that “immerses the reader in sun-drenched, claustrophobic beauty,” per PW’s starred review.
“At this point, I think enough people find a webcomic that really resonates with them that they can easily see their way to purchasing a hard copy,” Trotman says.
A proviso from Carr: “First you need to dazzle them.” Many publishers package bonus content into web-to-print titles, such as side stories, deleted material, and behind-the-scenes artwork. Preorders of the mermen romantasy Castle Swimmer (Ten Speed Graphic, out now) came with an exclusive print of the two leads. More than one publishing professional opined that when a webcomics collection is offered in both hardcover and paperback editions, established fans tend to prefer the hardcover; the paperback provides an entry point for new readers.
Lucas Wetzel, senior editor at Andrews McMeel, pushes for creativity in design to help titles stand out on the shelf. For the graphic novel Fangs by longtime webcomics artist Sarah Andersen, Wetzel says the author “wanted it to look like a Satanic bible, so we had a red cloth foil-stamped cover, and the edges of the pages were dyed black. We created a cool physical object that people would want to share with friends.” (For PW’s q&a with Andersen, see “That Big Moment,” p. 16.)
The promotional flywheel
Online engagement is crucial to sales, and often builds from global fans to U.S. distribution. Singapore-based publisher Difference Engine, for example, is building excitement for the print edition of its debut webcomic, Tiger Girls, due out in May 2025 in Singapore with an international rollout to follow, including a social media push that features behind-the-scenes sketches, background on the Asian myths that inspired the comic, and q&as with creators Felicia Low-Jimenez and Claire Low, both of whom are also staffers at Difference Engine.
At Tapas and Webtoon, subscribers to a comic get pinged when the print edition comes out. Carr says Tapas was able to announce the first print volume of Angel and Sunny Gloom’s Rainbow just as the first season of the online comic ended.
McFadden at Webtoon describes the process as a “flywheel” moving fans between webcomics, print collections, and other media adaptations. “Our books have really nice long tails,” she says, “because fans are always going back to the series.”
Inklore taps back into the same fan communities it uses to source talent when it comes time to market books. “You’re able to tell fans easily,” Taylor says, “because they’re on the same platforms. When they say they’re ready for the book, you can tell them, ‘Here it is.’ ”
Even as publishers look for original ways to market webcomics collections, they’ve become aware that the creators themselves are their most powerful marketing tool. And, Colvin says, when creators use their platforms to “guide their readers to the print books, that makes a huge difference.”
“You, as a creator, have way more influence over your fans than I have as a publisher,” Trotman says.
That influence is compounded among the community of passionate webcomics readers. “What’s really special about this audience is that they don’t just love a thing,” Taylor says. “They love a thing together.”
Shaenon K. Garrity is a Publishers Weekly comics reviewer and a writer, editor, and cartoonist best known for Narbonic and Skin Horse.
Read the rest of our webtoons feature.
That Big, Valuable Moment: PW Talks to Sarah Andersen
A Paris as Magical as Everyone Imagines: PW Talks with Janine Janssen
