With an eye on Netflix, the serialization platform Radish has lured a bevy of soap opera talent to create the company’s own Originals, with screen development on the horizon
As Hot Sheet subscribers may remember, Radish is a startup publisher capitalizing on the short-read serialization trend that has included contenders such as Tapas, Serial Box, Rooster, Plympton, and Amazon Originals. Radish may have gotten off to a more stable start than some because it’s the creation of Seung-yoon Lee, an entrepreneur based in South Korea, where “online writing” is a long-running phenomenon with millions of loyal readers in Asia.
Two years in, Lee has taken an interesting turn with the development of Radish, departing from the typical self-publishing focus of the platform—not that the basis hasn’t worked. Radish has drawn, Lee tells us, 700,000 readers who make small payments for stories, adding up to almost $800,000 in the case of one writer. The success of the operation has led Lee to move to his long-term strategy for Radish, which focuses on:
- professional writers
- limited and full “seasons” of stories, led by pilots, with the option for multiple seasons
- A/B testing of story lines
Lee says to think of the new development as a move from the kind of work Wattpad provides—“YouTube for serial fiction,” as he calls it—to what he calls a Netflix response.
Radish Originals match the tone of the platform’s norm: soap operas. Lee and his team have hired Sue Johnson, who was vice president of programming and talent development with ABC Daytime Television for almost 20 years, most closely associated with All My Children. After a stint with the game company Pocket Gems, she has joined Radish, bringing not only her own experience in daytime romance but also a writers’ room television approach, with a hand-picked stable of TV-veteran writers.
Serial Box is also built around teams of writers on stories, but Lee goes back to Netflix for his own description of what he’s doing, attracted to how the streaming network is able to develop third-party content. “Like Netflix,” he says, “we want to be home to great serials, from New York Times bestselling authors to fantastic writers from all sorts of digital platforms such as Wattpad and Kindle Direct Publishing.” To supplement the in-app currency micropayment and subscription model used so far for the platform’s serials, Lee says they’ll also be looking at IP licensing and multimedia development opportunities.
Johnson tells Hot Sheet that writers interested in working with her and the team on Radish Originals can reach out to the company via jan@radishfiction.com. “We hire a number of contract writers in creating our Originals,” she says. “Some help with coming up with concepts, some help with layout for the 20-episode storylines” of a season, “and some write the actual prose for the episodes,” adding that this is where she has the greatest need at the moment.
Bottom line: We see one potential qualm for existing writers at Radish: once Originals promotion begins, how will the regular platform writers fare alongside the A-team that Johnson has hired—with 11 Emmy wins and 15 Writers Guild Awards between them? Johnson says, “Our longtime writers and any new writers should absolutely not feel overshadowed by the Originals. We have room for all on our platform. Originals are only one piece of the Radish content puzzle.” Taylor Carlson, head of content strategy, says the existing writer corps has shown little pushback to the arrival of the Originals group. “Radish is only as successful as the stories on the app,” he says, “so we’ll always prioritize great content, even if that means less traffic to Originals.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
