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Web novels, which were almost nonexistent, are now being actively published. Is this not evidence that interest in web novels has skyrocketed throughout society, not just in their own league?
I, too, wanted to write a web novel, so I read famous works posted on platforms like Munpia and Joara, conducted my own analysis, and read various related books. Kim Hwi-bin's , a current romance web novel writer, Iida Ichishi's , and San-Gyeong author's , who has accumulated over 50 million paid views, are some examples. However, I felt that these books were somewhat insufficient in quenching the thirst I felt while actually creating a few web novels.
 
This time, presents a slightly different perspective. The unfamiliar term "Palimpseste" helped me string together the knowledge about web novels that I had been collecting like beads into a necklace. "Palimpseste" is a term that refers to the early method of record-keeping in which writing was superimposed on parchment, creating a new work. This word best reflects the characteristics of web novels of this time, where the intertextuality of fabricated works based on a single source is enjoyed.

First, let's take a look at the chapter "The Boundary Between Author and Reader Disappears." It is self-evident that current web novel writers are also readers in some work, discovering something that stimulates their own enjoyment and responding to that enjoyment with comments, views, and purchases. Furthermore, since monetary rewards come with putting out enjoyable works, they have no choice but to engage in activities as readers to keep up with web novel trends. Readers' tastes are becoming even more segmented, and they have no choice but to read other works in order to create dishes that suit those tastes.

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Readers and writers who enjoy web novels are people who are full of what is known as "otaku" qualities, and there is a perspective that these qualities are not universal. However, there are more of them than you think, and they are also proactive in consuming their tastes. This is very similar to the fandom culture of fanatically consuming idol groups' albums and related products. Popular works receive countless messages and comments, and even derivative products are being created, including fan art (illustrations of scenes from the novel by fans with drawing skills).
 
Readers form a kind of fandom for each work, enjoying live serialization, responding as the work unfolds to suit their tastes, and actually opening their wallets and becoming patrons of the works they want. Writers who receive such patronage then purchase and read other works, drawing inspiration from them to create other similar worlds. Like the snake of legend, Ouroboros, endlessly circling to bite its own tail.

That is what the author of is talking about in the chapter "The Laws and Variations of Genre." The author explains Palimpseste in detail here. If there is a source story that someone has painstakingly created, playing lightly with the fabricated secondary works using it, and creating a story that is similar but different by varying the laws of the source, is the point that web novels are meant to be explored. In particular, it was much easier to understand when the author used examples of the famous game Witcher and the famous novel Moonlight Sculptor.

I've met some web novel writers, and I've felt a sense of confusion about how to understand the phenomenon when I see the unimaginable profits they're making at the age of twenty. But approaching this book with the idea of Palimpseste, an evolved form of fan fiction, made me feel like my understanding of web novels had increased. In other words, the fandom phenomenon has infiltrated novels, going beyond idol groups. They are building virtual worlds in a more dynamic way by reading and writing in real time, enjoying it as a play culture, and becoming a new means of communication. This book thankfully reminded me of those points.