"Translation Alone Isn't Enough for Export": Hive Mind's Aurorah Lowers the Barrier to Global Expansion for Web Novels

-Web novels suffer from translation costs that often eclipse their actual production costs. Hive Mind's AI platform, Aurorah, solves this by offering an all-in-one publishing solution that automates translation, editing, distribution, and settlement.
-Operating on a 50/50 revenue-share model with zero upfront costs for authors, the platform uses specialized K-content data to maintain story context and employs human experts for cultural refinement.
-Already supplying content to Tencent's Webnovel, Hive Mind plans to launch its SaaS platform and register as an official publisher on Amazon, Apple, and Google to capture global demand for original text-based IPs.


K-Content is seeing an explosive growth rate, enough to make a mark in the global market. Over the past decade, the domestic web novel market has grown nearly 100-fold, from 10 billion KRW to 1 trillion KRW. However, despite the growing power of content, only a handful of web novel works have successfully made it overseas. Unlike video content, text-based content faces a structure where translation costs are significantly higher than production costs. Furthermore, the process of exporting content beyond simple translation is by no means an easy task for small and medium-sized publishers.

Kim Dong-Uk, CEO of Hive Mind/ source=IT DongA

Hive Mind, the developer of the global content publishing platform Aurorah, is a startup that has set out to solve this problem using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. Aurorah focuses on publishing domestic content, primarily web novels, overseas. A notable point is that it supports the entire pre-publishing process, including not just translation, but also proofreading, editing, distribution, and settlement. Hive Mind has set a goal to make Aurorah a global story Intellectual Property (IP) hub and to present a new global distribution standard for K-Content.

Aurorah, One-Stop Support for 5 Stages of Publishing

Kim Dong-Uk, CEO of Hive Mind, is an industry expert who spent nearly 10 years before founding the company working as an accelerator, investing in content startups such as animation, metaverse, and webtoons. Witnessing the difficulties countless publishers faced in global expansion was the trigger for his startup. CEO Kim Dong-Uk pointed out, "For webtoons, dramas, and movies, production costs are in the tens of billions of won, so the proportion of translation costs is relatively minor. In contrast, web novels have very low production costs, while translation costs are around 70 to 80 won per character, leading to losses of tens of millions of won per work."

However, he confirmed that publishers who finish the translation actually face even greater confusion in the distribution and settlement processes. In reality, there are over 40 domestic platforms alone, each with different settlement document formats, and once they go overseas, variables such as exchange rates and whether or not to establish local subsidiaries are added. In response, Hive Mind has built a platform that integrates the five stages of publishing, going beyond the translation services of the early business days. CEO Kim Dong-Uk stated, "Translation is ultimately a tool to meet overseas readers and generate revenue," adding, "It is useless unless content proofreading, conversion to platform-specific formats, and distribution and settlement are carried out."

Hive Mind acts as an overseas publisher, allowing domestic publishers to easily showcase their works in overseas markets just as they would sell books to domestic readers. The business model is also designed to minimize the burden on suppliers. Publishers or authors do not bear separate translation and localization costs, and they split the resulting IP revenue 50/50. It is, in effect, opening up overseas sales channels without the burden of initial investment. This structure also plays a role in improving existing opaque overseas settlement practices.

Differentiation through Specialized Data and Human Proofreaders

Aurorah Website / source=Hive Mind

CEO Kim Dong-Uk determined that as AI technology becomes commoditized, it is difficult to differentiate based on translation technology alone. Therefore, he emphasized the collaboration method between learning data specialized for K-Content and human proofreaders as a key differentiator.

Hive Mind secured and utilized various web novel and webtoon data through the network of over 430 publishers of the web novel distributor Storinlab. Through this, it maintains the unique character personalities (persona) and consistently preserves the context of long-form narratives to improve translation quality. Furthermore, it ensures reliability through a system where a human translation expert conducts the final review after the AI completes the first draft. In particular, Hive Mind treats translators as authors who create localized content. This is because the ability to convey cultural sentiment—in other words, transcreation—is the core of content localization.

Official Publisher Registration Within the Year... Aiming to Verify Demand for Localized Content
Founded in 2023, Hive Mind is full-scale launching its roadmap for global expansion within the year. Currently, the Aurorah platform provides translation and file editing functions, and the distribution automation and settlement system are under development with a goal of completion within the year. In July, it plans to release Aurorah in a Software as a Service (SaaS) format. Along with technological advancement, it will lay the groundwork for entering the global market in the second half of the year. In line with the recent trend of major platforms such as Amazon strengthening regulations to block low-quality books that abuse AI, Hive Mindplans to register as an official publisher on major global platforms including Amazon, Google, and Apple.

Hive Mind has already begun supplying content to five locations, including Webnovel, a global web novel platform operated by China Literature under Tencent. This is a venue where popular works like 'Solo Leveling' are serialized in English with official licenses. Hive Mind plans to verify the demand for the localization of domestic content this year and accumulate overseas export cases, while concentrating on the Japanese market, which is the largest consumer of K-Content and a powerhouse of content, to build a global story IP hub.

Kim Dong-Uk, CEO of Hive Mind / source=IT DongA

CEO Kim Dong-Uk said, "We plan to prioritize publishing original web novels that have not been translated yet, even though they have been successful overseas after being adapted into webtoons or videos." He explained that there is demand from overseas readers looking for the original work after watching webtoons or dramas, but often the original work is not translated.

Hive Mind received support necessary for early growth through a startup incubation program by global accelerator SparkLabs as part of the Busan ICT Innovation Square expansion project (Southeast region). CEO Kim Dong-Uk said, "We plan to receive practical help, including corporate diagnosis and mentoring, as well as investment consulting, public relations, and networking (Alumni Insight Meetup) this year," adding, "We will have our business feasibility verified by domestic and foreign investors and create opportunities for global market entry."

Finally, he emphasized, "The vision of Hive Mind is to create a place where 'all stories gather and scatter to the world'," and "Our goal is to overcome the barriers of translation and distribution with AI, and to make Aurorah the new global standard platform for K-Content overseas distribution."

By Ye-ji Kim (yj@itdonga.com)