Webtoons and Weekly Publishing

Buckle up folks, this is a long one.

The standard webtoon weekly publishing schedule is one that most folks are familiar with. And whether you’re for it or against, I thought I’d take a minute out of my day to explain why it works the way it does (and why it works).

Weekly Publishing

The webtoon publishing schedule started essentially as a copy-paste of the physical manga publishing schedule which saw new “chapters” release every week. Writers and artists were set on grueling schedules that saw them complete 20 pages in a week (roughly 4 pages a day) before submitting them to their editor/publisher.

The webtoon format, of course, takes this one step further by adding the extra work of having full-color panels. In the beginning, webtoon publishing was primarily monotone (black & white) with early titles like Midnight Partner (link) using occasional flats or basic colors to set the mood and vibe.

A panel from “Midnight Partner” (2016)

A Slight (Monumental) Shift

But, as audience tastes have changed, so has the resources required to produce them. Where as early-webtoon titles were produced by a lone artist-writer, titles are now a full-production of line artists, colorists, designers, typesetters and (often) multiple writers and editors.

A panel from “Solo Leveling: Ragnarok” (2024)

As such, it actually isn’t out of the norm to see titles publishing outside of the standard weekly update format. For a while, multiple titles published 3 times a month, or on a 10-day schedule. It never quite caught on due to the changing nature of the publishing schedule. Whereas most titles updated on specific weekdays (e.g. “Mondays”), 10-day titles would update on ever Nth day of the month (e.g. "3rd”, “13th”, “23rd”).

More recently, one schedule popularized on Bomtoon and Lezhin is the “4/5” schedule. In this case, webtoons update 4 weeks and take a hiatus on the 5th. This is often the case for smaller studios or independent titles and while the schedule isn’t as predictable as a weekly one, it has the advantage of offering readers a semi-consistent schedule on which to expect new updates.

While 10-day titles still appear from time to time, it’s much more common to see creators use the “4/5” schedule or just take hiatuses to create a backlog of titles while publishing under a weekly banner.

It’s All About Business

Regardless of the reasons or origins for a weekly publishing schedule, the webtoon publishing standard is much maligned, especially in the west where less of a structure exists to help independent creators meet publisher and platform expectations.

That being said, the weekly publishing format is one of the largest factors in the webtoon medium finding international success. It’s long been the standard format of television shows, animes, newspaper comics, and many other serialized forms of entertainment. But, due to the constraints of translation and the reality of print, it was unachievable for comics and manga.

From the platform side of the business, the pattern of increasing viewership and sales for weekly publishing titles is replicated over and over with popular titles on most platforms. And in order to increase retention, each platform has separate strategies to keep readers returning and continue the conversion of free users to paid users.

While there are multiple differences in culture, storytelling style, and popular tropes between Korea and the western world, have a new episode of content to consume every week isn’t one of them.

What’s in a Day? (Hint: A lot)

One aspect of platform operations that many industry insiders and fans of the medium are aware of is the ranking given to titles each day of the week. In Korea, it’s not uncommon to refer to titles as 월1순위 or 수1순위 which roughly translate to #1 on Monday or #1 on Wednesdays.

As most webtoons have an ONGOING, DAILY or Today’s Top Series page where titles are arranged by their weekly publishing schedule, the titles underneath are usually arranged by popularity (sales or view count).

Less obvious, however, is the number of titles publishing on each day of the week.

The image above shows the bottom of the same page and it’s easy to see that certain days have fewer publishing titles than others. Depending on the platform, publisher, and publishing requirements, this can be in an effort to match the translated title to the original’s schedule, set to the creator’s wishes, or… set to increase viewership on certain days of the week.

Several strategies can be employed when setting publication days. One is to set popular new titles to days when fewer users are visiting the platform. This would hopefully result in a consistent number of viewers each day of the week.

Another would be to separate out popular titles in each genre, thereby brining in speciic audiences multiple times per week. For example, if an ongoing popular action title publishes on Tuesdays, you might set new popular action titles to Wednesdays or Thursdays in a bid to have target user groups visit the platform day after day.

Adapting to a New Reality

With the rise of the webtoon industry, no set of companies has had to adapt more to this new world than webtoon studios. While many readers might point to the large number of isekai-formula titles as a sign of content glut, the advancement of project management that is required to allow for these titles to be produced in these numbers is, at the very least, incredibly impressive.

Korean studios have had to streamline the production process and squeeze every bit of efficiency out of the production process to keep up with webtoon platforms while Japan studios have also begun to produce content that tops the charts of Line Manga and Piccoma in their homecourt.

And, as one might expect with the rise of AI tools, the application of image gen seems like a foregone conclusion. Soosung Webtoon which owns and operates Toomics, touted their own success with webtoons developed using AI last year (link). Two of their in-house developed titles, “Draco-Knight Commander” and “Someone Stop Her!” were both developed with AI and hit #1 in their respective genre rankings in the US.

In the months that have followed, there have been several AI companies that have stepped forward and launched their own webtoon titles, but no mainstream studios have joined the charge.

That being said, more and more overseas studios from North America and Europe have started publishing webtoons. “Crazy in Love with Yao-i” (link) launched on Canvas back in March by Slap Studio while “Lock Me Up, Duke!” (link) was produced by Indonesian studio, Kisai Entertainment, back in January.

Outside of the Korean platforms, Marvel and DC have continued their own push into vertical comic storytelling. DC GO! recently unveiled six new titles which’ll be launching in June which isn’t an impressive number, but should give them a chance to stand on their own two feet outside of their current partnership with WEBTOON.

While artists, writers, and studios still question the viability of a weekly publishing schedule, the entire webtoon industry is essentially built on it. And the longer traditional publishers take to get on the board, the longer it’ll be before they stand a chance of catching up.