Webtoon Romance Reading and New Ways to Look at Genre Reading

Romance, historically a popular fiction genre, has been recently introduced to its contemporary platform, Webtoon. As a born-digital, online visual narrative that enables accessible and convenient romance reading for younger generations, webtoon romance has been appreciated by many romance readers worldwide. Using semistructured interviews with sixteen romance genre readers who enjoyed both webtoon romance and traditional romance novels, the current study explores the appeals of webtoon romance that differentiate its reading experience from traditional romance reading. The findings highlight the immersive reading engagement enabled by multimedia devices, the accessibility of the platform, and the inclusion of diversity in romance narratives as significant appeal factors for webtoon romance. In addition, the article discusses the future of Readers' Advisory services that embrace more diversified formats and narratives of genres outside of libraries' physical collections.