@mapokl (and others) thanks for mentioning all that. I agree It's not ideal, and it's unfortunate that the way the products are being sold means less people will get to read these stories we love. I understand, and it's a relative experience for what we are/have been exposed to.
When you come across new platforms that sell the product for cheaper, the other ones do seem more expensive (like Lezhin to tappy). The one that annoys me is...Spottoon? There is one where you buy the chapters...but that is access for A YEAR. It's not a year subscription. You could pay 100 dollars to read a series, only to lose access to it after a year. Idk about you but if i like something enough to buy it, i wanna reread it. To me THAT is absurd to revoke access to something you paid good money for. I stopped supporting Spot because of that, even though there were some titles i liked.
Relative standpoint for what I have experienced: i'm not saying it's cheap. I think, all things truly considered, it is reasonable, and not too expensive for what you get in exchange. And i have no doubts that it is inflated for some profit. I'm probably just amongst those who are more willing to spend money on certain hobbies (can't pay for all of my hobbies, but I reallllly love reading so i do tend to spend a lot of my misc cash on books and webtoons). Aaand I'm also amongst the suckers when it comes to paying for stuff.
I wouldn't say no to a months/yearly subscription based service, like a webtoon version of netflix or spotify. I mean then i could have seasonal hobbies and binge read during winter 😂 And heck, Webtoons is amazing for being free and I sure as heck read what i can from there. If the other paid services could be cheaper, great.
The costs also seem more reasonable to me because I used to buy physical graphic novels when I was younger, so from a pure cost perspective of what i get for 12 bucks it seems reasonable. It's not quite the same since it's paper versus pure data, but in principle it's the same to me. It's a hobby - some hobbies costs money (and hobbies are privileges). And someone spent time to think of a story, create dialogue, plan out the panels, draw, ink it. They're providing an entertainment service. (That all said, i always wonder if the artists and authers truly get their fair share of the cost. I know a lot don't, statistically).
I remember saving up my allowance, doing odd jobs for coin, then being really excited to visit Chapters (gods i love that place). And I could sit and read a bit before deciding to buy something.
However, because of that, i do think that these services should offer more of the beggining chapters for free (at least for webtoons over, say, 60 chapters). Scale the free beginning based on the length of the series (up to a point - 15 chapters max?).
And like I said, it does suck if you don't have a credit card or a job to pay for it. Especially if you really love reading. Shoutout to all the students (i'm still one) who are suckers for their hobbies.
Uh..where was i going with this? Oh right.
Tl;dr it's all relative and what's relative to me is my exposure to webtoon services. It's also my personal beliefs that lead me to think that tappy's prices seem pretty fair