nline writers who work hard to write books are about to usher in the highlight era of online literature.

Recently, China Literature Group held the 2024 China Literature Creation Conference in Anhui Province. On-site data shows that in 2023, the average income of active writers of China Literature will increase by 32%, creating the largest increase in the past five years. Among them, the median writers' income has increased by 135%, which has doubled, and the number of post-00 writers who have booked more than 10,000 works has increased by 230% year-on-year. The overall growth has been impressive.

At the same time, Hou Xiaonan, CEO and President of China Literature, also announced that China Literature will establish a "1 billion ecological support fund" to increase investment in community co-creation, IP development and platform experience, and accompany the growth of the works from the early stage of creation.

From an in-depth perspective, China Literature's move is to "throw bricks and lead the way", and its core is to do a good job as an IP amplifier.

The online text IP market staged a "great leap forward"

According to the "2023 Research Report on the Development of China's Online Literature" released by the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, by the end of 2023, the scale of China's online literature reading market will be nearly 300 billion yuan, with nearly 540 million readers, more than 36 million works, and more than 24 million authors.

The scale of the industry exceeded 300 billion yuan, which released an important signal, indicating that the online literature industry is broad enough and inclusive enough. Among them, the online literature IP market has also risen rapidly, and its market size will jump significantly to 260.5 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of nearly 10 billion.

Specifically, the integration of the digital reading industry and the film and television entertainment industry has accelerated, and the barriers between various cultural carriers have gradually faded. In terms of derivative forms, online literature has been further subdivided from the initial publication, adaptation of film and television dramas, comics, etc.

Source: Gamma Data (CNG)

From the perspective of the source of entertainment IP income, this trend can be seen more intuitively. Gamma data shows that although games and film and television are still the main force of IP revenue, toys, live events, theme exhibitions and others have also begun to have their own "place".

For example, the recently popular "Celebrating More Than Years 2" and "The Story of Rose" are all adapted from the hit novels of the same name, one by the platinum writer of China Literature, and the other by the contemporary writer Yi Shu. The reason why the two major works are so popular is inseparable from good stories, powerful adaptations, good actors, and strong texture shooting.

What's more worth mentioning is that the original headache of interstitial advertising, due to the platform's innovation in advertising placement around IP characteristics, has also achieved a balance between content and commercialization, and consumers and brands are happy to see it.

At the same time, popular IPs and popular dramas have also given birth to more derivative products, such as IP toys, fan games and peripheral products. For example, another well-known work of the post-90s generation of China Literature, Tang Jiasanshao's "Douluo Continent", from film and television series to animation production, to hand-made toys, mobile games, and theme exhibitions, derivative products cover many fields.

It can be seen that the IP of the network is showing its stronger extensibility and influence.

At this time, with the deep-rooted trend of mobile Internet, young readers are more and more fond of fragmented reading, and they enjoy the refreshing feeling of reading in a short time, which has also given birth to short dramas that will be popular in 2023.

According to the 2022 Blue Book of Chinese Online Literature, more than 300 new IP authorizations will be added to the micro-short dramas adapted from online literature in 2022. According to relevant industry insiders, this number has at least doubled compared with the previous year, and it continues to grow.

In addition, the online text IP has the characteristics of convenient adaptation efficiency, short and concise video content, etc., which makes micro-short dramas an important player in the market, and behind the continuous and stable output of short dramas, the demand for online text IP is also becoming more and more huge.

At the same time, game companies have gradually become more and more important buyers of online IP. Gamma data shows that in terms of entertainment IP revenue, game revenue accounts for 37.2% of the total revenue of the entertainment IP market.

Moreover, not only is the proportion high, but the launch of new games is also at a super high speed. According to GameLook statistics, in 2023, the General Administration of Press and Publication of the People's Republic of China will issue a total of 1,075 new game versions, a year-on-year increase of 109.96%, which has doubled compared with 2022.

Especially this year, Tencent's blockbuster IP works "Civilization" series, "Dawn of the Stars", and "Black Myth: Wukong" will also meet players one after another.

In this way, if major producers want to have enough content to continue and revitalize the entire entertainment market, they need a rich content library to back it up. As a result, expanding the content pool and creating more influential IP works has become a critical first step.

Next, imagine the future of web IP

Nowadays, as one of the cores of the entire content derivation industry chain, online text IP has become an important direction for major giants.

Recently, China Literature has continued to make excellent works, and at the same time, the short drama "I Was a Stepmother in the 80s", which came out of the circle at the beginning of the year, also made Tomato popular. According to official data, as of November 2023, 75 novel copyrights have been sold for Tomato Novel IP derivatives, and 18 works are under animation development. It is expected that more than 10 "tomato" film and television works will be launched in 2024.

Tomato's intention to accelerate the process of the IP industry is "on paper".

The source of the picture comes from Shentong Commerce

Also, the seven cats, which are the same "free series" as the tomato, also have actions. In May 2023, for the first time, iQIYI was invited as a partner in the 4th Realistic Essay Contest of Seven Cats to participate in the evaluation of the IP value of the entries, which shows that Seven Cats attaches great importance to IP development and co-creation.

Aside from mainstream reading platforms, community-based platforms such as Douban and Zhihu are also transforming to incubate story-based IP. Among them, Douban has achieved a double harvest of word-of-mouth popularity with works such as "Good Things Come in Pairs", "Nine Righteous People", and "Apocalypse".

Under this trend, for content practitioners, how to continue to produce high-quality products while ensuring quantity has become the biggest challenge. It's just that the "explosive formula" is always a "metaphysics".

Fundamentally, this is due to the changes in the market. Nowadays, online literary writers are gradually getting younger, and the overall style and story themes have also begun to change from the past.

According to the 2022 Research Report on the Development of Online Literature in China, 60% of the newly registered writers in China Literature Group in 2022 are post-00s. Among the new faces in the TOP500 of the 2022 Writers Index, the proportion of post-00s will increase by 10%. Moreover, nearly half of the new platinum god writers in 2024 are under the age of 30.

Younger readers, on the other hand, are more inclined to think backwards than before. Avoiding the routines and labels that were popular in the past, the narrative perspective of anti-PUA, anti-love brain, and anti-stereotype has become more popular.

It can be seen that the changes in the group of readers and authors have been promoting the quality and efficiency of online content.

At this time, the first step to improve quality is to grasp the demand, accept the new ideas and changes of the young people, and deepen the polishing of the depth, innovation and uniqueness of the work. In terms of creative themes, driven by works such as "The Wandering Earth" and "The Three-Body Problem", science fiction themes have become one of the categories with the fastest growth momentum in online literature in recent years.

In view of the fact that science fiction themes usually integrate elements such as future technology and space exploration, this requires creators to have a deeper understanding and research on emerging technologies and hard technology products, and the story line contains the future, which also requires creators to have stronger narrative logic. Therefore, this kind of theme raises the difficulty of writing in the creation process, and increases the innovation and interest of the plot.

In addition, works with realistic themes are also becoming a new engine to promote the transformation and upgrading of online literature. This kind of work generally focuses on the changes of the times, social hotspots and people's livelihood issues, and the storyline can better reflect the living conditions and social phenomena of ordinary people.

The core of this kind of work is inseparable from the tempering of life and thinking about growth, and it is also more in line with the current readers' demand for works with deep thinking.

The change of emerging and popular themes has completed a new round of screening of the market, and higher writing difficulties and more difficult story themes will also give birth to a group of different authors and works.

On the road to efficiency improvement, the application and development of AIGC technology is undoubtedly an important part. With the advent of the AI era, new technologies, including artificial intelligence, are rapidly changing the way and path of content creation, distribution, and consumption.

Previously, Hou Xiaonan, CEO and President of China Literature, had proposed the concepts of "AI is the assisted driving of creation" and "AIP" (AI and IP are deeply integrated, and 'I' can be reused) at the event.

For example, Sora, a video generation model that became popular at the beginning of the year, generates videos of up to 60 seconds by receiving text commands, which can have complex scenes such as multiple characters, specific types of movements, precise themes and background details, and contain highly detailed backgrounds, complex multi-angle shots, and multiple characters full of emotion.

Zhang Shule, an analyst in the entertainment industry, believes that Sora has achieved high-quality conversion of text, pictures, and video content, which may indeed work quickly in short videos or short dramas, and provide help in creative generation, script adaptation, and intelligent editing.

In addition, under the current boom of online texts going overseas, this is an opportunity, and the decline in translation costs is one of the opportunities.

According to Tong Ye, founder and CEO of Dongxi Entertainment and Tweet Technology, the translation cost of a 3 million-word online article was as high as 60 to 800,000 yuan, and few people dared to try it. However, by using its self-developed AI translation production and distribution system, the original human translation time per 1,000 words has been shortened from 1 hour to 1 second, the industry efficiency has been increased by 3,600 times, and the industry cost has also been reduced to 1%.

In short, AI is not a substitute for creators, but advanced AI technology can certainly become an efficiency tool for writers, screenwriters, cartoonists, and even the entire industry.

epilogue

Recently, film and television dramas and games adapted from online IP have become popular one after another, ranging from short dramas to long dramas, from animation to games, across many fields, which shows that the importance of online IP is increasing day by day.

At the same time, with the change of reading habits and preferences of mainstream groups, the cool points of routines are no longer eye-catching, and the intensively cultivated content has begun to be highly respected.

Based on this, China Literature Group chose to start from the source and invest heavily in content creation, accelerate the expansion of the content library, and improve the quality and efficiency of works. This not only brings more creative motivation to platform authors, but also brings more choices and possibilities to downstream industries.

In the long run, the online literature industry will enter a new era.

Author: Jing Song

Source: Songuo Finance

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