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Text / Wu Xianzhi
Source: Photon Planet (ID: TMTweb)
Reading is undoubtedly the number one player in the online literature arena.
The current China Reading Group, through years of continuous capital injection and acquisition, has established a complex empire in the online literature arena, starting from the Chinese website, Genesis Chinese website, Xiaoxiang Academy, Red Sleeve Tianxiang and other well-known online articles. The platforms are all under its command.
In addition to the power of capital, the reason why the city-states can be united comes from the monetization logic of Reading and its IP incubation ability.
However, with the continuous development of the online article track, the challengers of the empire have begun to emerge, and under the stirring of the challengers, the online article ecology is also changing. In the new competitive context, even though Yuewen has built up barriers by relying on many high-quality IPs, the city walls of Yuewen are shaking as the film and television, game and other industries enter the cold winter one after another.
The struggling web empire
In the early days of the Chinese Internet, the heart disease of the realization of online texts was a major logic for the rise of China Literature.
On the one hand, the domestic online literature industry was not established at that time, and most of the authors just “generated electricity with love”, and did not regard it as a profession-even the author who is the absolute head of the present, was inevitably trapped in the problem of food and clothing in his early years.
Because of this, in that barren era, the VIP paid reading system became the author’s savior once it was launched; and the later launch of the fan reward function made the author bid farewell to the struggle on the line of food and clothing.
However, in terms of willingness to pay, the Chinese Internet at that time was not yet “civilized”. Whether it is film and television, music, games, or reading, users seem to be inclined to be free, and the problem of rampant piracy is superimposed. Even if a monetization path is found, the way forward for the online text platform is still difficult. To this day, there are still small platform authors who have been interrupted due to piracy issues, and scattered pirated works or PDF collections are scattered in various communities and online disks from time to time.
Therefore, even if the online text platform can find a way out by simply copying the monetization path, if it lacks anti-piracy capabilities, the so-called way out will soon be blocked. In other words, the online text platforms under Yuewen are actually “big brothers” and regard the more powerful Yuewen as a “protective umbrella”.
And Yuewen has not lived up to the expectations of the “little brothers”. Facing the ever-evolving “book thieves”, from the combination of various resources to remove pirated websites and links, to the establishment of a “genuine alliance”, to the construction of an anti-theft system, Reading The text’s anti-piracy measures are also constantly escalating. Even though this war without gunpowder smoke is far from over, compared to the past situation where pirated resources are flying all over the sky, the current Internet is much cleaner.
However, even if reading can slow down the pace of “book thieves”, it cannot stop users’ demand for “free” itself. Just as China Literature has finally collected various platforms and is about to enjoy the fruits of victory, another group of people has secretly raised an army.
This is exactly the free online text represented by Midu, Tomato Novel, and Seven Cats Novel. It is different from the profit logic of reading for free trial + paid unlocking. The profit point of free online text lies in advertisements, that is, users can read the whole book for free. The novel, of course, must also be read during the entrained advertisements.
Compared with paid reading that emphasizes user stickiness and fan economy, free reading is undoubtedly more able to catch light web readers. In other words, even if the individual value of users is low under the free logic, they can quickly accumulate scale advantages and “exchange price with volume”.
Looking at the monthly active lists of various reading apps, free reading products are firmly in the forefront, while the platforms under China Reading are not only ranked at the bottom, but users are also gradually losing. According to China Literature’s 2022 semi-annual report, it has lost more than one million paying users in one year, and its online reading business has declined by nearly 10% year-on-year.
In other words, Reading has always focused on the paid path and anti-piracy areas that can condense the empire, but has ignored the elephant in the room of free reading.
Perhaps it is aware of the potential crisis, and in line with the logic of joining if you can’t beat it, since 2021, China Literature has gradually tested the free reading mode on its platform, focusing on user growth. Players who talk about free reading, facing the pressure of the advertising business, have also introduced paid VIPs one after another. The news of Mi Reading, which is declining in the west, even spreads the news that it will be passed on to reading texts – the two logics of paid and free, inevitably move towards fusion.
The evolution of the web ecology
Content has always been the core of the field of online literature.
For paying players, high-quality content can increase the willingness of users to pay, and a small amount of high-quality IP has great room for monetization; and free players also need a steady stream of content to increase the scale of traffic. The aforementioned Mi Du, who carried the banner of free reading, went into decline after a series of rectifications and the author defected.
And in the succession of online literature arena, the author, as a content producer, also bid farewell to the so-called golden age.
As we all know, online literature is different from serious literature. One of the main logics is to provide “sweet food” to delight readers. Therefore, online writing generally does not have high requirements for writing and does not have to follow strict literary dogmas. As long as the work can attract readers and make it continue to read, it can be called a success.
In addition, as an open industry, web articles have relatively low requirements for authors. It is understood that a considerable number of web writers only regard it as a part-time job, wandering around the world with a passion and novel settings in their minds. Of course, most of the part-time writers are just “cannon fodder”, and the platform’s requirement for daily change of words and the meager income will quickly wake them up.
And this, to some extent, determines the production mode of web articles. Yuan Hao, a former Internet writer, told Photon Planet that the current web industry chain is full of various studios, and some studios even set up so-called web writer training courses, and submit students’ homework to make money on both sides. .
“Now the streets are full of online literature studios. These studios have a clear division of labor. Some people are responsible for picking up the outline and imitating the plot, some people are responsible for blending the stalks, and some people are responsible for writing the beginning. On average, a studio can basically produce output every month. More than ten million words.”
And Yuan Hao, who was in charge of the “Introduction” before, at his peak, his monthly income could easily exceed 10,000 even though he was a part-timer. According to Yuan Hao, for online articles that are mixed in the traffic field, a good beginning is no less important than a good story-limited by sunk costs, even if the quality of subsequent content is unstable, it is attracted by the beginning. readers will not rashly abandon the text. Based on this, the “opening article” has always been a sweet pastry in the online literature industry.
Of course, such “formulated cool essays” and “little white essays”, which are copied in batches and routinely produced, are difficult to get into the eyes of senior readers, and the studio did not cater to the experienced senior players, but invested in the market for mild Readers – Compared with senior readers who often speak on the Internet and have a high quality of content, more people just want to get spiritual pleasure from brainless cool texts after work.
And this will undoubtedly push the already fragile web ecology into a corner.
For a long time, the network writer circle has been in a situation where the head eats meat and the tail eats soup. The head author can not only get high subscription and copyright income, but also get a share of the IP adaptation, while the tail author can only mechanically. The code word eats “minimum living allowance”. As everyone knows, the current online text studio has penetrated into various platforms through countless vests, and the author at the end can’t even drink soup.
In this context, the ecology of online literature is inevitably changing. Authors who are burdened with the pressure of daily change are either assimilated by it and inject water into their works, or defect to those platforms that do not pursue daily change.
And this is a particularly obvious blow to the leading players in Reading – platforms that mainly promote the free model pay more attention to traffic, and do not exclude studios that can attract accurate users; and the logic of reading is to drive payment by premium content. Once the quality of the content is dragged down, the only cards that can be played are the treasure IP left by those platforms.
IP is not a panacea
The logic of incubating IP with web articles and then monetizing the IP has always been the “combination punch” of Reading.
The logic behind it is that web articles are after all a type of modern entertainment media. Even if a large number of light readers can be pulled through free logic, there is still a theoretical ceiling for the number of users – just like not everyone listens to music. , not everyone reads the web.
Based on this, in order to seek greater monetization space, China Literature has never stopped the pace of IP monetization. Compared with other players, reading texts backed by Tencent’s mutual entertainment empire can more easily extend IP monetization tentacles to derivative fields such as comics, animation, film and television dramas, and games.
According to China Literature’s 2022 semi-annual report, “Fighting Break Sphere” became the most popular work in Tencent’s video animation category as soon as it was broadcast. The running water has exceeded 10 billion yuan. In addition, hot search regulars such as “Celebrating More Than Years” and “Lao-in-law” are also written by Reading.
However, IP is not a panacea, especially in the context of film and television and game tracks under pressure, although the “combination punch” of Reading has not failed, its strength will inevitably weaken.
Taking the film and television industry as an example, in the cold winter, losses have become the norm. According to the data of Maoyan Professional Edition, in the first half of 2022, a total of 142 series will be launched in China, including 88 online series, a decrease of 22% compared with the same period in 2021; and the national movie box office, number of moviegoers, and theater operating rates are also higher than last year. decreased over the same period.
Even though it has also launched so-called “explosive models” such as “The World” and “This Killer Is Not So Calm”, but for reading articles that gather a large number of IPs, how to monetize the IPs in their hands on a large scale is the top priority. The track is inevitably cold.
This dilemma is even worse on the game track. The distribution of IP-adapted games has always been an important part of reading revenue. However, game products always have a life cycle, and the number and activity of players will gradually decline over time. That is to say, in order to weaken the negative impact of game aging, Reading must maintain the rhythm of IP authorization.
Right now, although the protracted version number winter is over, the game version number is still tense. Even though there is still surplus food for reading, but there are no grains in the crops. Because of this, even though its revenue from TV dramas, online dramas, movies, animations, etc. achieved steady growth in the first half of the year, the aforementioned growth was offset by the decrease in revenue from self-operated online games, resulting in a year-on-year decrease of 1.2% in its copyright operation and other revenue. .
In any case, the current reading moat is still there, and it has not reached the point where it needs self-help. However, on the one hand, the ecology of online literature has gradually deteriorated, and on the other hand, the strength of the once proud “combination boxing” has dropped sharply, and cracks will inevitably appear in the city wall of reading. In addition, although the paid-free factions are merging on the surface, the differences in business logic and user groups determine that there will be a battle between the two. In the face of this battle, China Literature is obviously not fully prepared.
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