China News Agency, Beijing, May 10 (Reporter Ying Ni) entered May, and the Reading Group frequently fell into the whirlpool of public opinion. From the accused of "overlord contract", some online authors initiated the "five-and-five breaks", to the reading of six consecutive rumors, the new management and representatives of online authors held a round-table conference, a series of events set off a storm in online literature.
To clarify this key point, perhaps you have to jump out of the play where the two are in love to be able to see more clearly.
The development of online literature for more than 20 years, from forum codewords that were not recognized by the mainstream, to now have 430 million readers, more than 20 million works, a market size of more than 10 billion yuan (Note: 2018 data), and even Chinese writers The association has also established an online literature center, and its explosive energy and influence have no doubt.
On the other hand, online literature has a large base but lacks classics. It is easy to fall into model writing and repeatedly fall into the "plagiarism" controversy. At the same time, it has also faced the impact of new formats such as short video and live broadcast in recent years. This can also be seen from the reading of the annual report: from 2017 to 2019, the proportion of its online business revenue fell from 83.4% to 76.0%, and then to 44.4%; at the same time, the proportion of copyright operating income of reading From 9% to 19.8%, and then to 52.9%.
In the view of Huang Bin, a researcher at Peking University, the core reason why reading can hold the head of online literature is the paid reading system that continues from the beginning of literature to the present. This model has not only achieved the industry, but also the author, and was born a super-god who is not a teenager. However, the disadvantages of the payment system are also obvious. Network literary works with tens of millions of words are often flooded with water. From the user feedback mechanism of online literature, most waist works are of high quality.
Lu Jinbo, a well-known publisher, claims to be an absolute marketist. He believes that free is a general trend. In the past two years, many other online literary platforms have implemented a free reading mode. "Free traffic brings traffic, and traffic is the user's choice. Unstoppable."
Returning to this incident, the rumored reading mode will be implemented among more than 8.1 million authors, which caused the dissatisfaction of most people. It is the core of this storm. After the round-table conference, Hou Xiaonan, President of Reading Group, said that paid reading must continue to be consolidated and enlarged. At the same time, Reading Group will plan different content libraries for paid and free products to match different product channels and corresponding revenue systems. He also mentioned that the mechanism for free reading is still under discussion. In the future, writers can choose whether to use the paid or free model.
The change of business model is "whatever comes is always coming." The reading storm is just a microcosm of this change. Huang Bin believes that the key to the future development of online literature is not free or paid, but online literature itself. Becoming an important part of the digital cultural ecology, it is even less likely to be independent of the ecology.
Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the Cultural Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is more willing to view the incident as an upgrade of the reading group in Tencent's entire ecosystem, "it is version 2.0 of Tencent's new cultural and creative strategy."
He pointed out that Tencent has a billion-level social network and a diversified business format of new culture and creation. This time, the strong content platform of the reading group and the entire ecological network are connected to develop more film and television products based on high-quality story content. , Game products and animation products, this is in line with the logic of industrial development.
In fact, Tencent's vice president Cheng Wuzou immediately took over as the CEO of Reading Group, which is the embodiment of this industry logic. In Tencent's career map, Cheng Wu is fully responsible for the business of film industry, animation, e-sports, etc., and put forward the concepts of "pan-entertainment" and "new cultural creation". He pointed out in his open letter at the beginning of his tenure that he should promote reading Ecologically upgrade to stronger literary content. The success of previous film and television dramas such as "Qing Yu Nian", "Hua Qian Gu" and "Chang An Twelve Hours" has further confirmed the importance of reading the web ecology for Tencent's IP strategy.
Analysts believe that this turmoil is not only a pain for the new and old management reading, but also a revolution in the online literature market. The writer and the platform are fish and water relations, and support each other's achievements along the way. Whether it is free or free is just an appearance. In the future, the focus will be on how to better moisturize the author ’s ecology and keep the source water from being exhausted and more active. This is the core issue facing the new management. (Finish)