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Internet fiction becomes popular domain
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THE End of World is coming. Ye Qing, once strong, goes back before the end and miraculously finds a Confucius bible. He practices his magic, meets various elves, breaks into the dragon’s palace, and fights with various forces. Ultimately, he steps over thousands of other gods, opens the world, and becomes top leader of all three worlds — gods, humans and monsters.
This is the plot summary of a top-clicked fictional work published on Tencent’s literature channel, one of the biggest sites to write and read novels on the Internet. Writers update their novels on the site, first for free, and if the stories get a lot of clicks from readers, they can choose to put the novels into a VIP channel, where only paid readers can read them.
The ultimate purpose is not necessarily to get published in paperback. On average, writers get paid a few cents per thousand words per reader, so income is largely based on clicks. The story mentioned above, still being updated, has already earned nearly 4 million clicks.
“We have tens of thousands of writers who have signed different kinds of contracts with us,” says Chen Min, director of the site, who was once also an Internet writer. “The majority of our readers are students, and more guys than girls.”
He says mobile reading is growing, and that about 15 million people read with Tencent’s mobile app every day. Some young writers are said to make as much as 100,000 yuan (US$16,130) a month, although most are still in the process of surviving.
If a writer first published his work online and got paid through online channels, he is commonly considered an Internet writer.
According to a report from the China Internet Network Information Center at end of 2013, about 227 million people — 47 percent of all Internet users in China — read Internet fiction. About 20 million people have published some form of work on the Internet, and about 2 million of them are registered writers on various sites.
In recent years, Internet writers also climbed quickly on the annual writers’ income ranking. Jiang Nan, an Internet writer specializing in fantasy novels, topped the ranking last year, followed by Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan. Jiang’s most recent best-seller, both online and in paperback, is a Harry Potter-like fantasy story.
The number of writers and readers of this genre and its widespread influence have been increasing so rapidly that the China Writers’ Association, an official organization of professional writers, started to accept Internet writers as members.
In China, the writers’ association, with a national center and branches at different provincial and municipal levels, is an official organization that receives government funding. For years, it has been considered an honor to become a member. Mo, who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature, is deputy chair of the national association.
The association started accepting Internet writers, previously considered non-professional, three to four years ago.
A different group
Since last year, various cities have also established associations of Internet writers to differentiate them from traditional writers.
Early in the month, the Shanghai Writers’ Association also founded one and 75 Shanghai-based Internet writers, recommended by various sites, became the first members. The association is headed by Chen Cun, member of the writers’ association and a traditional writer.
“We want to help them rather than regulating them,” Chen says. “We held a meeting just a few days ago to discuss how to help this very different group.
First of all, we want to help with their identity as writers. Many Internet writers are freelancers, or self-employed, which makes it difficult (if they are not from Shanghai) to register for permanent residency in Shanghai.
“We also plan to organize serious literature critique for Internet literature, which has rarely been done before,” Chen adds.
Writing on the Internet also means posting unfinished work, which will be commented on by readers in real time. In order to get more clicks, and thus more income, many writers will change plots according to what readers like, similar to the process of making serial dramas.
A lot of writers are creating explicit sex stories to draw clicks, a practice encouraged by some website editors. But the practice has drawn the attention of authorities, who have in some cases arrested writers and editors on pornography charges.
“Websites have developed this entire pay system that helps writers to make a living through writing online, but at the same time, to some extent, it has influenced the contents available on the Internet in a degrading way,” Chen says.
“When people first started publishing online, there was no payment, but there were many different kinds of writing, including short stories, drama, essays and poems, among other forms. Today, there are only a handful of different types of novels that always get top clicks. There is a formula, and the writers are very good at keeping with this formula.”
The most popular types of novels include fights and wars among humans, gods and monsters — a combination of fantasy and martial arts.
Also widely read are stories based on popular online games, which attract many game players.
Among girls, romance stories are the most clicked, and a lot of such stories are about how a clever and good-hearted girl wins the heart of the emperor.
“Writing is a lonely process,” Chen says. “And it is especially so for these Internet writers, who have pressure from updating everyday in order to keep their readers. So we plan to organize some fun events for them to make friends with each other.”
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