Reading is supposed to be fun! Often times when people think of reading, they think of being forced to read boring books from a hundred years ago in school. Webnovels, break this mold.
What Is A Webnovel?
A webnovel is a novel published online, often over the course of a few months to years. They’re published on websites and are usually free. Occasionally, you’ll come across some that aren’t free, but are very economical at just a few dollars each. Plus, you get to feel good about directly supporting a writer rather than Amazon.com!
I love webnovels and think you will too. They offer a unique reading experience tailored to the modern reader, with fast-paced dopamine hits and stories that move at a pace fast enough to keep even the most ADHD reader hooked.
A Vast Library at Your Fingertips
Webnovels being free, online, and unhindered from traditional publishing institutions allow for almost anyone to write and get their work out into the world. This means there is a vast library of content at your fingertips. Webnovel.com has over 380 million visits per month, and its top webnovels have over 20 million views. This is a huge amount of author and readership.
Given the web-based nature of webfiction, it is very easy to read them right in your browser with your handy popup dictionary to tackle the unknown words. This makes sentence mining very easy!
Find Your Favorite Niche
Some readers, like me, have very niche interests. I love horror, in fact, I almost only read horror. Webnovels allow you to find content in your favorite niche, with the power of tagging! Sorting by tag allows you to see at a glance:
- If a story is comedy
- If a story has RPG leveling systems
- If a story has a male lead
- If a story has a character who travels to another world
- And so much more
Engaging and Evolving Stories
One of the problems with “real books” is that they’re set in stone! Once a book is published, that’s it… but what if the author wants to change things, fix a plot hole, or redirect the story? Due to the interactive nature of webnovels, the plot is like a living thing, the author and the readers can have conversation about the story in the chapter comments. This often influences how the author decides to write the story going forward. The author is able to cater to fans and knows in real-time what fans like or do not like their story.
Modern Language and Easily Digestible
Webnovels, being an internet phenomenon, tend to attract authors and readers who are young. Gone are the days of reading 200-year-old bone dry books. Younger authors tend to use more modern pop culture references, modern slang, and current events (like the recent worldwide pandemic) in their writing and stories.
Webnovels tend to be character-driven, rather than plot-driven. This means they’re often very dialog-heavy, allowing you to experience a lot of spoken language without some of the downsides of the winding and verbose plot-driven stories by published authors. This emphasis on dialog means that webnovels are closer to everyday speech than a “real book”.
Give It A Shot
Webnovels are easy to work into any immersion learning plan, and available in loads of languages. Below you can find a list of sites with webnovels in many languages.
- Primarily English
- Multilingual (you can only filter this on mobile), available in many languages.
- Multilingual, available in 56 languages! From English to Swahili to Indonesian.
- Multilingual, primarily English, available in many languages.
Drop a comment and let us know which one was your favorite!
