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Sword Art Online is a Japanese light novel series, first written as a web novel series, by Kawahara Reki and illustrated by abec. The light novels began publication on ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Bunko imprint from April 10, 2009, with a spin-off series, titled Sword Art Online: Progressive, launching in October 2012. The series has spawned multiple manga adaptations, as well as an anime adaptation and multiple game adaptations. Both the original novel series and the Progressive series have been licensed for an English release by Yen Press in North America and Eastern Asian languages release by numerous local publishers, while the original novel series was also licensed in France by Ofelbe Éditions and in Germany by Tokyopop.

History
The first volume of the series was first written in 2002 as a competition entry for ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Game Novel Prize (now Dengeki Novel Prize), but the author refrained from submitting it as he had exceeded the page limit and did not want to shrink the size of the story. The unsubmitted work was instead published as a web novel under the author’s pseudonym, Kunori Fumio. The author continued writing new arcs and stories for his series until he finished writing the 4th main arc, Alicization in 2008. After Kawahara Reki’s second series, Accel World, was successfully entered in another Dengeki competition and won the grand prize, Kawahara Reki was requested to get his previous series, Sword Art Online, published by ASCII Media Works as well.

Trivia

 * Numerous changes occurred when the original web novel was adapted into paperback format. The changes can be read from Adaption Note section in articles for every novel volume and side story.

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