Online literature is big business in China, but the path to success for aspiring novelists has become increasingly bumpy. In addition to the quality of their works, cash-burning marketing strategies come into play. Luo Weiteng reports from Hong Kong.

Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series on online literature.

When Bi Fang uploaded her first book’s first three chapters— each of which tended to be 3,000 to 4,000 words — without payment, and tested the waters before essentially embarking on the online literature adventure 10 months ago, the industry itself seemed to be even more in the spotlight than ever before.

With more than 900 million internet users in China, online literature is certainly big business. It has minted a couple of top-earning novelists such as Zhang Wei, better known by his pen name, Tang Jia San Shao, whose earnings put him on par with best-selling authors like Stephen King and George R.R. Martin.

Much of Zhang’s fortune came from selling his so-called IPs — a buzzword in China that refers to intellectual properties or original content that’s often adapted into movies, television shows and games.

Online literature, by nature, is a big show that cannot go without the presence of readers and editors. Ambitious writers always make good efforts in reaching out to readers and marketing their works

Bi Fang, online novelist

As rags-to-riches stories of ordinary people, whose destiny has changed for the better after penning a breakout novel, never fail to make headlines, millions of grassroots, would-be authors are losing no time joining the digital gold rush.

But only the fortunate few will eventually win the numbers game.

For Bi, a 20-something accountant who kick-started a fresh part-time career as an online novelist, the past 10 months have indeed been a struggle, of which writing itself is just one part.

She took a good hard road to playing by the unwritten rules of the game and living with a sophisticated, paywall-based ecosystem that has virtually shaped the online literature industry for years.

“It’s a rather cruel system under the law of the jungle. Originality and writing skills are merely one ingredient of the success,” Bi said.

The business timed its takeoff with the nation’s fast-growing internet community, where instant digital metrics tell everything. Page views, ratings and the number of subscribers, as well as likes, shares and recommendations, are all crucial. Only novels with the best metrics can appear prominently on the homepage and have traffic directed to their titles.

Like it or not, the good old days when internet access was a privilege to well-educated users and authors who posted online and regarded their craft as another form of “serious literature” are gone. The ever-changing information technology has lowered the threshold and made online writing a real mass market. Anyone can try their hand as a writer and stand a chance of having their works noticed and popularized.

But the sheer quantity and speed of online literature also means innovative editors nowadays must trawl through a sea of works to find the next big thing. Competition begins from the moment of birth.

“Writers could hardly be offered a contract if the first few chapters failed to interest readers and editors,” said Bi, pointing out a brutal fact of the business.

Once with a contract at hand, however, crafting a well-told story doesn’t necessarily lead to success if writers run a one-man show.

“Online literature, by nature, is a big show that cannot go without the presence of readers and editors. Ambitious writers always make good efforts in reaching out to readers and marketing their works. The old tale of ‘good wine needs no bush’ simply doesn’t work here,” Bi said.

Cheating offers a shortcut

Unlike many fellow writers who place high hopes on their next novels after failed attempts, Bi, whose maiden work unfolds on Jinjiang Literature City — a platform known for its female-targeted novels — managed to make a name for herself.

She offers digital “red packets” to readers in her quest for more readership and comments. She took the advice of several veteran readers to abandon obscure literary words and revise the title in a more straightforward manner. She also paid an illustrator to design the cover of her novel, as suggested by some avid readers.

Generally, the more “recommendation tickets” or votes a novel receives from readers, the higher it will move up the rankings and the more exposure it will get on the website. Having studies on the platform’s written rules, Bi found out that authors themselves are actually not prohibited from voting for their works. In an open and aboveboard way, Bi, under her author’s account, gave the bulk of recommendation tickets to her novel and helped it enjoy a strategic place on the homepage. 

“As long as the rules of the game are respected, I’ll try to play it smart,” Bi said frankly. However, according to her and every other writer interviewed for this article, digital metrics can be easily fabricated, and opportunists can be tempted to cheat. There’s no shortage of authors who simply bought accounts in online marketplaces to vote for their novels or even hired social media experts to market their works with a carpet-bombing approach.

“Basically, with no solid evidence, you could barely expect the platform to step in and punish such behavior. After all, every purchase of a recommendation ticket or any digital reward stands as a source of income for the website,” said Qing Ci (not his real name), a seasoned online author who has been writing as a sideline for nearly 12 years.

“As more novice writers join the fray, upfront investments of this kind seem necessary to attract eyeballs. We cannot shy away from the fact that if such a cash-burning strategy becomes a must-have, authors who cannot afford it may be knocked out of the game, and online literature may utterly deviate from the spirit of fair play,” he said.

Qing believes platforms’ low threshold to entry and an industrywide ecosystem that measures the success of novels with instant digital metrics have induced some authors to desperately hunt for shortcuts and lure potential readers with a man-made illusion of popularity.

Likewise, plagiarism offers such a shortcut. “Plagiarism has been a hard nut to crack from the very first day when online literature came on the scene. While almost every famous novelist has fallen victim to knock-off derivations, some promising novice writers cannot really escape this fate,” Qing said.

In 2011, The Legend of Zhen Huan was adapted into a hit TV series that swept across all of Asia and then to the other side of the Pacific, to be aired on the HBO cable network. But its novelist, Liu Lianzi, was accused by another novelist of plagiarism.

Today, Qing said, copycats who simply copy whole paragraphs without modifying one single word and even leave in typos from the original works are not a common sight. Instead, a copyright may be infringed by “non-literal” copying, where the words are not copied exactly, but elements of a novel such as its structure, plot and characters are copied in a more detailed way. This kind of plagiarism is hard to define by law. It comes as a cost-effective and economically efficient method to emulate the success of previous best-sellers. Platforms are reluctant to take it seriously, nor do production companies deem it a big issue when acquiring adaptation rights.

“Ironically, many hit TV series and award-winning films in recent years, be it Better Days, The Journey of Flower, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms or The Princess Weiyoung, have been adapted from novels embroiled in plagiarism controversies. As plagiarism goes unpunished and plagiarizers even make big money with the sale of adaptation rights, other writers are encouraged to follow suit,” Bi said.

Fabricated digital metrics and rampant plagiarism are both vivid examples that amplify the commercial element of online literature. “If best-sellers can be imitated and popular IPs can be replicated, then what role do online writers play? We are nothing but assembly-line workers churning out cliched words and deemed easily replaceable,” Qing said. “It seems not so long ago that people were still looking at online literature with disdain.”

In May, Tencent-backed China Literature rolled out a new contract that forms an employer-employee relationship between the platform and writers. Though the revised contract uses the term “partnership” to appease outraged authors, the dispute can speak for itself.

To be better appreciated

“For years, online novelists have taken a good hard road to being identified as creators of literary works by the Chinese Writers Association, publishing houses and society. Yet, platforms and investors still regard them as insignificant operators of the whole industry chain of online literature,” said Li Linrong, a professor at Beijing International Studies University. “The value of online writers should be fully respected. This ought to be an industrywide consensus.”

Qing highlighted a growing tendency in which the whole industry chain of online literature today switched its focus to marketing. “The sheer power of marketing means that popularity can be inflated and readers’ interest can be ‘nurtured’. For well-known writers who have amassed quite a fan base of their own, this may make no difference. But for a newer breed of upstarts, it’s no easy task coming to the fore,” he said.

Bi accepts marketing simply as part of the process. Still, she pointed out, it’s the quality of works that matters most.

“As the coronavirus pandemic chills the entertainment industry in China and production companies tighten their belts, the days of sky-high prices for IPs and rags-to-riches stories of ordinary authors are behind us. But consumer demand for high-quality novels remains robust. Quality, originality and talent are also our weapon against rampant piracy,” Bi said.

Despite the divergence of interest between platforms and writers, both sides at least share a common enemy — piracy. 

Last year, piracy sites accounted for the losses in industrywide revenue of 5.64 billion yuan (US$808 million), according to data provider iResearch. Such losses at the mobile terminal alone amounted to 3.93 billion yuan.

To be sure, it takes years for Chinese internet users to develop the habit of paying for original cultural and creative works. China’s online reading industry has thrived on a subscription model similar to Netflix and Spotify, with as much as two-thirds of the readership (totaling 432 million in 2018) being willing payers, as data from the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association showed.

Such willingness will be once again tested with a newer trend in the sector that offers content for free, and relies on advertising income and sale of adaptation rights to blockbuster novels instead.

Well before leading platforms like China Literature launched its controversial new contract in response to the trend, the industry has seen insurgents join the free-to-read fray.

Bi questions the sustainability of a “freemium” model that may ultimately restrict a platform’s ability to procure engaging content and force talented writers to migrate elsewhere. Yet she cannot really deny the fact that talent and original ideas may make readers willing to pay, but that may be far from enough to make novice writers continue the adventure, as the industry appears to become too commercial.

Dismissing the idea that the literary worth of online literature is a world away from that of highbrow literature, Li believes a new look should be taken at the online author community.

“The community itself is crowded with opportunists lingering on the edge of rules to look for shortcuts, and mediocre writers churning out shoddy content to live off meager ‘full attendance’ bonuses offered by platforms as a reward for their daily updates,” Qing said. “But there’s no shortage of well-educated, talented authors who are passionately serious about their craft.” 

All of them have found their places in the ecosystem, with their own targeted audience. From the wilderness, new important voices will continue to emerge, Li added.

Such diversity may essentially make China’s online literature one of the “cultural wonders of the world” in a worldwide content war, alongside Hollywood movies, Japanese anime and South Korean dramas.

Contact the writer at sophia@chinadailyhk.com