The representative of South Korea’s state creative content agency (KOSSA), Kim Si-woo, made a statement about MStoryLink’s immediate plans in the Russian market. The content owner of the Asian comics platform “My Comics” is looking for a partner in the Russian Federation to develop and promote the service, as well as to fight illegal copying of Korean comics on long-standing competing portals such as MangaLib, ReadManga and ReManga.
MStoryLink is confident that the presence of a joint venture (JV) in Russia with a well-known publisher or digital book service will solve the problem of piracy, which the company cannot yet address from Korea.
“This will allow us to communicate directly with the copyright holders, who are the creators of My Comics,” a source in the publishing market told Kommersant.
Official requests to remove MStoryLink content, to which the portals have no rights, were completed in 2022 only by some services. And ReManga, for example, refused to engage in communication with Korean copyright holders.
Anonymous sources from the media market informed Kommersant that Eksmo-AST, Bookmate and Stroki are interested in a possible partnership with the Korean MStoryLink (part of Mstoryhub).
South Korean digital comics fans may be familiar with the webtoon Leveling Up Alone, produced by D&C, which together with MStoryLink is part of Mstoryhub and officially distributes its stories through My Comic.
Currently, MangaLib, ReadManga and ReManga, which have been around for several years, stream Mstoryhub content without the necessary licenses. And the official representative, the My Comics portal, is significantly inferior to them in terms of the number of users and coverage.
To expand the audience and promote licensed products, MStoryLink intends to create a joint venture. Russian publishers should be interested in the possibility of monetizing the project without a subscription, using “coins” (electronic money within the system).
Experts believe that the time has been chosen quite well to look for new formats for the works of Korean authors in the Russian market: resources such as the aforementioned “Strok” and “Bookmate” are just beginning to develop the segment with Asian comics, but, Of course, they are still much inferior to MangaLib itself, whose audience some business representatives estimate at 5 million users.
Author:
Ekaterina Alipova
Source: RB
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