Radish has over 30 original series that together have delivered over 6,500 episodes, bringing in revenue in 2020 of over $20 million from over 1 million users who have chalked up 4 million downloads.
The deal has yet to be finalized, but South Korea’s Kakao Entertainment is looking to acquire the online reading app Radish, rated as one of the top five US reading apps by revenue. $354 million is the price.
The move comes less than a year after Radish secured $63.2 million in funding from Softbank Ventures Asia and Kakao Page Corp.
Radish had at that time (August 2020) just opened a US office in Los Angeles (it now has an office in New York – it’s not clear if the LA office is still operating as well), and was optimistically looking to adapt its original content into multimedia markets.
At the time Radish CEO Seungyoon Lee said:
We feel we can lead the market by providing hyper-serialized fiction that updates multiple times a day, unlike other serialized storytelling verticals such as online video streaming or podcasts which takes several months or even years to produce a season.
Radish follows the traditional eastern online publishing model offering serialized fiction to eager readers who make micro-payments (c. US $0.20-$0.30) based on their consumption, but which for Radish and the authors can soon add up to respectable sums.
In 2020 SoftBank Ventures Asia JP Lee, said:
Radish has proven that its serialized novel platform can change the way people consume online content, and we are excited to support the company’s continued disruption in the mobile fiction space. Leveraging our global SoftBank ecosystem, we hope to support and accelerate Radish’s expansion across different regions worldwide.
Kakao Entertainment was the minority investor at that time, acquiring just 12% of the company, but is believed to have increased its stake in February of this year.
Radish had previously pulled in $3 million in seed funding in 2017.
Radish has over 30 original series that together have delivered over 6,500 episodes, bringing in revenue in 2020 of over $20 million from over 1 million users who have chalked up 4 million downloads.
But the professional Originals is just part of the service. Radish also acts a curated self-publishing platform with over 2,000 authors loading over 10,000 stories that have been read 500 million times.
Online reading apps are contentious in the western writing world because of perceived low payments, but successful authors can, according to Radish, pull in $1,000 per month, while top authors (presumably referring to the writers commissioned to write the Originals) can earn up to $40,000 per quarter (over $13,000 per month).
If the acquisition concludes successfully it will put Kakao Entertainment head to head with rival Korean digitech operation Naver, which famously acquired Wattpad for $600 million earlier this year.
The major publishers have absolutely dropped the ball on web fiction, and it might be too late at this point. Between Wattpad, Radish, and the soon coming Amazon Vella, major new media conglomerates are already starting to consolidate control over this very young medium. I’ve been an author on sites like Tapas and Royal Road for years now and I’ve really loved seeing them grow, but even when they already have a foothold, it’s unclear whether they have the ability to compete with the major conglomerates. Traditional publishers probably are too late to benefit.