Piccoma France has just celebrated its first candle. The opportunity for its president Hyung-Rae Kim to draw up an initial assessment.
Officially launched in France in March 2022, the Piccoma reading platform had great ambitions. Armed with a budget of 12 million euros, the Korean leader intended to establish himself in the kingdom of Molière both as a publisher and as a distributor and had built a very long-term vision. A year later, Hyung-Rae Kim, President of Piccoma Europe, takes stock for Linternaute.com
Let’s say it from the outset, the results are extremely positive and the publisher is looking to the future with serenity. “Since March 2022, the workforce of Piccoma France has doubled. Our internal teams are mainly involved in the publishing component, from the purchase of licenses to the publication of weekly chapters. Not to mention the many people who work for us as freelancers or via studios for translations, lettering and proofreading. We plan to continue to grow,” says Hyung-Rae Kim.
With an average of 30 to 45 new releases per month, not counting the sequels to current series, the editorial teams do a titanic job each week. Not to mention the publications made by Piccoma as a distributor. “When we launched in March 2022, we had a distribution agreement with Kurokawa editions, and a few independent houses such as Mahô or Nazca editions. Since then, many market leaders have joined us such as Pika, Ki-oon or Glénat. We are in discussion to welcome other houses on our portal”, confides Hyung-Rae Kim.
Encouraging and convincing figures
The publisher announces more than one million readers over the floating year, for a catalog currently of just over 30,000 chapters. A growing and very loyal readership. The President of Piccoma Europe specifies: “We have a slight predominance of female readership on the platform. And a majority of young people aged 18-25, followed by the age group of 26-35”, which does not seem surprising for a digital platform.
The large number of female readers allows the platform not to be a duplicate of the physical sales of manga or webtoon and to see its titles find their audience a little more easily, far from the limits and constraints of bookstore displays. For example, a manga like Rose Bertinwhich tells the story of Queen Marie-Antoinette’s favorite seamstress, has caused a real craze among readers: “beyond what this type of ‘niche’ title can claim to reach in bookstores” adds Hyung-Rae Kim.
According to him, digital allows titles like The real one is me! (more than 140,000 cumulative readings) or Lady Rabbit and the Big Bad Leopard (nearly 85,000 cumulative readings) to find their audience much more easily. “And this first digital life will ultimately benefit the entire ecosystem, I don’t doubt that for a minute,” concludes Hyung-Rae Kim.
For now, the porosity between readers of smartoon or webtoon and manga is not very strong. “Manga and smartoon readers are currently staying in their own worlds. This is probably why the most important manga readings reflect bookstore sales. One Piece and Fairy Tail have thus each attracted more than 100 000 readers” analyzes Hyung-Rae Kim.
The manager also notes that the launches of new series like The last days of Karina, are experiencing increasingly strong starts. “We are raising our launch expectations almost every month.you “.
A curious but still very “new” oriented readership
Digital makes it possible to know more precisely the readership beyond the simple statistics of the average time spent on a chapter (Piccoma users spend there between 15 and 20 minutes per day) such as the number of chapters read per day by a user or the words keys entered in the search bar of the platform.
“There is a very wide variety of keywords in user searches, there is not a pre-eminence of a small group of words. Our readers are looking for both series names like One Piece or Tokyo Revengers, as well as names of authors or authors, even very specific keywords on themes” explains Hyung-Rae Kim. This information makes it possible to support the editorial team in its catalog management.
In line with the current readership, and the success of webtoons or very “page turner” manga, the acquisition of new licenses focuses on this type of novelty.” For the moment, we have not noticed any appetite for legacy manga, but we are working to include more shoujo and josei in our catalog. We are listening to the readership and nothing is set in stone,” says Hyung-Rae Kim.
A potential that remains to be exploited in France
For the President of Piccoma, France is lagging behind in digital consumption habits, which is also a good thing. “It’s very exciting for an entrepreneur to be an actor in the creation or evolution of a market. We see the lines moving, a real ecosystem developing and legal consumption habits being put in place. We is still today in an embryonic market, but the indicators of its development are green”.
There is no secret, to make the platform and its plethoric offer known, you have to communicate constantly. With a substantial communication budget, the Piccoma teams have implemented numerous online advertising campaigns and presentations, such as on the platforms of line 14 in Châtelet, dressed in the colors of the flagship license. Solo Leveling for two weeks. They also wanted to go a little further. “We signed two important partnerships last year, one with the Accor Hotel Arena, the other with Japan Expo. These partnerships, based on events that are important markers of pop culture, have enabled us to make Piccoma known to a receptive public, but not necessarily aware of our arrival in France”. The successful experience is renewed in 2023. “This summer, we will be offering many surprises at Japan Expo” announces Hyung-Rae Kim.
Only one shadow on the board…
If it’s time for congratulations, there remains one negative factor that does not weaken: piracy. “As a 100% digital distributor, we are more affected by piracy than a publisher of books in paper format. It is also easy to see that today on the too many piracy sites we often find webtoons that are at the top of the sales charts. It is a real and major fight in all the countries where the digital economy has developed: Japan, Korea and the United States of America. In France, the procedures are particularly long; it is for the moment ineffective to seek to have a pirate site closed”, regrets the President of Piccoma.
And tomorrow ?
For the publisher, the manga and smartoon market seems quite resilient to the economic crisis. Even if the average basket is decreasing and sales are declining in volume, the number of points of sale that promote manga and webtoon continue to grow. He specifies: “We are still in the investment phase and we are planning organic growth for our teams and our service providers. Even if the digital market is still very small today, there is a strong margin for progress. We continue therefore to promote digital reading”.
Between new partnerships close to signature, the development of a synergy between digital pre-publication and paper publication, the evolution of distribution schemes and consumption habits that adapt to the digital age, the time is to the optimism of the Piccoma France teams when they project themselves on the horizon of their second candle.
Another positive sign. The reluctance to the arrival of the Korean leader in France, mainly because of his economic model (the use of coins, a virtual currency, very close to what is done in the world of video games) which had pushed the regulator of book prices to self-seize, now seem much less strong.
Hyung-Rae Kim concludes: “Beyond the certain pleasure of blowing out this first candle, I felt a lot of satisfaction in seeing communities spontaneously created around a title, a category or an author. maintain a very healthy climate as a whole. Above all, I observed a desire to recommend, without looking for conflict. It’s very pleasant”.