Junepurr’s story is an example of the new paradigm coming from webtoon platforms, in which a creator builds an audience and then gets a boost from the platform itself. She started uploading SubZero to Webtoon Canvas in 2017, and a year later, Webtoon invited her to make it a featured comic, known on the site as a Webtoon Original. Now Subzero has 3.1 million subscribers and almost 400 million views on the Webtoon platform. Oni Press will publish a print edition in September 2024 (see "Oni Gets Webtoon Title with Three Million Subscribers"), and Junepurr will be part of Oni’s slate of creators appearing at the American Library Association in late June.
In this interview, Junepurr talked to ICv2 about finding success on the Webtoon platform and the impact of moving from digital to print.
What is SubZero about?
It's an enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance with dragons. It's about a princess who's forced into a political marriage with an enemy prince, so there’s a lot of politics. I love fantasy, so I included a lot of dragons. And I love romance and hot, attractive characters, so I decided to put it all into a story. I've always loved Chinese and Korean palace dramas, so I was inspired by that.
How did you get started on Webtoon?
I found Webtoon when I was in college. I just stumbled upon it, and I remembered how much I loved making and reading comics. I had attempted to do comics before, but it never really worked out. But, with the Webtoon platform, everything was so integrated, and they handle your marketing, they handle everything for you. Also, there were a lot of readers on the site. There were already 50 million people who were actively seeking comics, so I got a lot of encouragement.
How did you make money on it?
When you uploaded your comic to [Webtoon] Canvas, there was a little monetary incentive: You would publish, and then if you met a view criteria, you would get money for it. That really pushed me to keep making updates. I stayed on there for exactly a year, and I amassed 360,000 followers.
What happened when Webtoon invited you to make SubZero a Featured series?
I got assigned an editor, and he helped me to streamline my process a little bit. He persuaded me to get assistants, and he gave me resources. He also really drilled me on chapter one, because that’s the most important chapter.
So you had to redraw the first chapter?
I had about 20 chapters, and I redrew all of them and started anew. Basically, Webtoon deletes your old version and then it moves into a different server of theirs, so they're handling it now, rather than you handling it. In October 2018 it officially relaunched as a feature.
When the webcomic launches again, it starts from zero, but at the time there wasn’t as much competition, and people would flock to a new series. When the series would publish, it would get a ton of views, since it was up there on the banner [of the Webtoon platform] for a week. I'm sure Webtoon put a lot of money into marketing the comic, which I'm very thankful for.
Does Webtoon pay you to make the comic?
Webtoon pays me a pretty good base amount for the episodes I submit, and then there is a revenue split for the Fast Pass [which allows readers early access for a price]. I think Fast Pass makes up the majority of my pay.
What about other ways of making money?
I have a Patreon, which I advertise at the bottom of my comic. Patreon has been very lucrative for me, like a lot of other artists, and the same with Ko-Fi. It’s a lot of different revenue streams. You have to basically be your own business. You have to pay for your own insurance and all these things. But I would rather be doing that than working in accounting.
How long do you think SubZero will go on?
SubZero is on its third season right now, so it’s probably going to end next year.
How many volumes will that be in print?
The first season is three volumes, and there are three seasons, so I’m hoping there will be nine.
What did you have to do to convert your vertical-scroll webtoon into a graphic novel format?
With the long scroll format, I find that you can really use it to your advantage in the sense of a camera panning down. I think it looks great, but it doesn't translate well into print, so I had to do a lot of redrawing. My layout artist also did a lot of work, because I don't really know much about layout. I think that's the beauty of Webtoon: It's just rectangles, and I don't have to think about the length, I don't have to think about how to lay it out on a page, I just make it. But when you put it in a book, it's like, oh, all that stuff that you didn't think about? You have to think about it now.
How does having your comic in book form change things?
I think for a lot of webtoon artists, or a lot of comic artists in general, having a physical version of your book and having something you can hold is the ultimate achievement, in a sense, because it's in bookstores and people can hold it. It's not just in the digital space. It's like, now it's real.
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