net fiction

Net fiction, and the business behind the Wuxia World

March 24th, 2017 by biyan_gu | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on Net fiction, and the business behind the Wuxia World
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Since my last blog about net fiction, it has been 3 months and I have kept eyes on this. In China, people are so used to net fictions. Some successful authors became millionaires overnight as their work become popular and the adapted rights for games and films were sold out. More and more young people try to start their own net fictions both for the high income and popularity.

But we Chinese are still are pleased surprised that our net fictions were so popular overseas (especially when some big social media reported this phenomenon and made this news so reliable).

And during my trip in London Book Fair, I was so surprised to find the China Reading Limited, an authorized digital reading platform and literature IP incubator. China Reading has a renowned collection of content brands of digital reading APPs and websites. This company has published over 10 million digital works, hosted 4 million authors. With over 600 million users in China, this company showed their ambition for the nationwide market.

When communicating with the CEO of China Reading, it was clear that the news about the Wuxia World popularity had made him more confident about the overseas trade of Chinese net fictions.

However, this company is too cautious to expand a market which it is not familiar with, at present, they just want to sell translation rights of their works. For example, Wuxia World is supported by volunteers who are net fiction buffs. They translate Chinese net fictions into English, Thai, and other languages. The readers could donate to their voluntary work as well. And this will result in a cycle: more updates => more viewers  => more donations => more updates. It is clear and obvious that the authors are not involved in this cycle, and the authors’ interest and right are ignored and damaged.

The thing China Reading wants to do is to sell the translated rights to these websites, so readers can read these fictions legally via the website. And China Reading is also looking for collaborations, it authorizes the website to use these net fictions which it owned, and China Reading can publish these translated editions of net fictions and sell them through Amazon.

Till now, for Chinese publishers, the national publishing business is under-developed, they still try and try to find a way to collaborate and win-win trade. Net fiction trade can be seen as an attempt by Chinese publishers.

But during the further communication, we all think that translation rights are the first stage for China Reading business actives. In future, Chinese publishers might keep on trying.

More and more Americans like to see the net fiction from China?

December 14th, 2016 by biyan_gu | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on More and more Americans like to see the net fiction from China?
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Recently in China, the growth of a new net fiction website is catching people’s attention – Wuxiaworld, a overseas website which was founded in December 22, 2014, and the current average monthly page views is over 70 million within less two years. It is indeed a remarkable achievement as the monthly page views of the original website – Qidian is only 580,000.

From Alexa, we can see that the traffic ranks has dramatically increased. The majority of the audience are from the U.S.A. The audience totals 100 million. As a simple fiction site, this should be a very good achievement. For the growing trends, it can be seen as explosion.

But it is quite hard to compartmentalize this kind of fiction, writers write the novels down chapter by chapter and publish them through the fic-website. If their works are really popular, some publishers will also help them to publish the real books for both the writers and readers. It is a kind like light novels from Japan, but most of them are seen as Pulp fiction. A great numbers of Chinese are wondering why these fictions are becoming so popular in the western countries.

Or in the other word, why Europe and the America do not have this kind of net fictions? Or do they have this kind of commercialization of the system?

Before the development of the network, Europe and the United States have established a mature mechanism for best-selling book. Formed readers, a well-developed publishing mechanism, and stable author groups & agencies.

This is the most advanced printing system, from the 18th century it bumped all the way to come over. When the network comes, this system seems not work well with the network.

However, compared with the network publishing system, this traditional production system is obviously slow and not flexible enough. A best-selling book can raise the profile of authors for a few years, but it would be eliminated if the text need to update in more than a week. Moreover, the best-selling author is very difficult to face the competition as the author of the net fiction, facing the reader – this work is often done by the editor. This relationship is not enough “flat”, the innovation is not fast enough, the grasp of the market is not precise enough.

This system has been defeated, in fact, as Fifty Shades of Grey was the fanfiction of Twilight originally, written and published on the Internet. At first some publishers do not want to make it real and it also have some problems about the IP right. However, the final market proved that this is actually the reader wants to see.

It seems that the net fiction has strong life: the users product the content, the authors tried to form the perfect rules and settings again and again, and the following group of authors will share, inherit and develop these routines, styles and settings. And this process is very fast and flexible response.

Therefore, Chinese net fictions are becoming popular for foreign readers. This is the victory for the new media, new mode of production, against with the old media, the old mode of production. And for some national conditions and the accumulation of pressure and power, making this process particularly fierce.

Europe and the United States literature industry is well developed, but there is a gap between the authors and the readers. The author needs help from press to meet with the reader, the reader can only passively wait for works from the press. Harry Potter, Twilight, and so forth are liked by the masses, but because of their poor literary style they were rejected by many publishing houses.

The net fiction can avoid the disrupt from the publishers, authors can release their works on the internet, a simple truth, less risks for publishers but represent the masses needs.