News Kakao buys Radish Fiction & Tapas, multiple Korean web novels now licensed on Radish

From Variety dot com/2021/digital/news/user-fiction-app-radish-1234969807/
«“Tapas and Radish are two amazingly powerful storytelling platforms, and we welcome them into the Kakao Entertainment family with open arms as we rapidly ramp up our global operations,” Jinsoo Lee, CEO of Kakao Entertainment, said Tuesday in a statement Tuesday announcing the deals. “The partnership with Tapas and our webtoon IPs has already borne fruit and given us even more confidence in the North American marketplace. Radish gives us the platform to publish our web novels for the first time there, and we see endless potential.”

Korean web novels from Kakao that are now available on the Radish Fiction app (RadishFiction dot com):

1. Everyone Else is a Returnee licensed as Last On Earth
2. Touch Your Heart (no NU page?)
3. The Villainess is a Marionette licensed as same title
4. Ebony licensed as Lady Evony
5. To Help You Understand licensed as What It Means to Be You
6. Swordmaster's Youngest Son licensed as The Swordmaster's Son
7. A Business Proposal (no NU page?)
8. A Returner's Magic Should Be Special licensed as same title
9. What's Wrong With Secretary Kim? (no NU page?)

 

wow!!

but kinda no point for them to buy these platforms...

 

I'm the original(?) translator of Everyone Else is a Returnee, and naturally, Radish reached out to me as well.

My opinion of them... is not that positive, to say the least.

 

To be fair idk wtf is radish but then again it must just be due to my ignorance. Kakao has a shit ton of capital nowadays and I think are also trying to widen their audience range so ig it's pretty interesting that they're taking the risk.

Still they have a really big competitor which is naver the one who made the webtoon line franchise thing which is really big thing in and out of korea. They're pretty fair to the viewers too and no u aren't forced to pass through a paywall unless u want more content than what's outed weekly so I'm just lmao thinking of what they're gonna do to counter that.

 

Did they try to buy your translation? Although I haven't checked out their translation of Everyone Else is a Returnee, the quality of most of their other Korean novels seemed fine. Just annoyed that they chose two series that had completed fan translations.

 

Lezhin seems to have a pretty solid standing in the western market rn, and they directly compete with Line Webtoon too... And well, most of Lezhin's webtoons are behind a paywall, only a handful are available for free.

I think that things will probably work out alright for as long as they deliver quality content.

 

They did indeed try to. However after conversing with them a little, I was convinced that they DID NOT KNOW what they were stepping into. They have zero idea on what the translation scene is like, they asked ME (the TRANSLATOR) about what the book is like (one of the questions asked: What ethnicity are your characters?) (Heck, they should have contact with the original publisher and hence, indirect contact with author).

After that, I was like... oookay, I don't think I'm willing to work with you

 

I think you're confusing Tapas with TapRead? Tapas has some original novels, sure, but I've never seen a translated novel from them. They're primarily a webtoon publisher (and original English-language webcomic publisher) now, and from what I've seen of their webtoon translations, they're pretty good, quality-control wise at least.

Tapas has actually been around for a long time (they rebranded like... three times, from what I remember), and they generally have a pretty solid audience in their specific niche. They've had a good long-time relationship with a lot of Korean webtoon companies, since they were one of the first licensed publishers (back when they were still known as Tapastic), so it's not surprising that Kakao moved to acquire them.

Never heard of Radish, though, so not sure what Kakao is thinking there.

 

Wow... I can see how that doesn't really inspire confidence. @Lois. is right that this is a pretty risky move from Kakao. Radish is over-specialized in the adult romance market and have apparently tried to diversify the genres on their app for years but have kept failing.

Although I'm hoping they succeed because I want more korean novels (especially murim novels), I wonder what kind of effect it'll have on WuxiaWorld. For example trying to reach deals with korean publishers but they choose a big corporate player instead. I also saw that Life, Once Again! and other Breathe-licensed novels were posted to Tapas, though this was a while before the news of them being bought by Kakao came out.

 

Looks like Kakao already added a new translated series, a BL story titled "Blackmail" by Winterbaum. No NU page that I can see.

At the moment the easiest way to see all the translated novel series posted by Kakao is to look on the "kakaoenter" user page.

radishfiction dot com/users/kakaoenter

Before this buyout, the English version of the Radish fiction app was mostly focused on serialized romance/young adult fiction, in which you could wait to read unlocked chapters for free or pay to read ahead. So far the Korean translated novels are also using that freemium model. Maybe Kakao will translate more romance-type novels to appeal to the existing Radish user audience, or maybe Kakao will try to expand Radish content past romance to draw in a wider audience. Who knows.

 

they're just spamming everyone they can find to increase the count of novels on their site

my original at wattpad received "invitations" from both tapas and radish last year as

even WN send me several which is kinda funny because my novel was originally on WN as well

 

Quite a weird market to try and tap into (not complaining tho, i need my fix).

From what I see from their mention of specifically "North America", I assume they're going to try and attract an audience from the US? However, from my experience, people don't really like to read here??

Maybe it's just the people I talk to, but it's usually seen as something you only do if you have an assignment for school or want to seem pretentious. Plus, if you do want to read just for fun, you could just go to your local library and grab something considered a modern classic for free. Or maybe go to a bookstore, take something off the shelf, and read in there for free. Anyways, fingers crossed that they keep the freemium model and don't try and emulate a certain Chinese company.

But it just seems like a really niche audience, there's a reason why the market is so much more open than their webtoon equivalent.

Anyways, the stuff Chamber was saying about their weird questions about Everyone Else is a Returnee is kinda yikes. Hopefully they go light on the localization, if at all.

 

Why does that even matter?

 

They said they wanted to make a new cover art for it

 

i just checked tapas, tappytoon and radish as they are all affiliated with kakao page and i think i understand their line of thinking? the Korean novels in tapas are what you would say is shonen-focused such as dungeon, murim, rebirth novels. tappytoon should have been catered to shoujo-focused to some fantasy such as villainess reverses the hourglass.

im so confused about radish tho because it has everyone else is a returnee, returner's magic should be special but also im ready for divorce and what's wrong with secretary kim? is it that their sales in tapas isn't good? (also radish doesn't have good or intuitive ui, it mainly recommends the typical adult romances availble on webnovel while you have to search for their translated korean novels.

what i am sad about this is that they don't have good advertisement on these affiliate companies. kakaopage really has you try their recommended novels because you can get free passes.

oh well