Online literature spearheads China's cultural industry
- By staff reporter Verena Menzel
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail China Today, December 14, 2016
Writers' Rich List
Today, some of the more successful web authors earn millions of yuan. China's most commercially successful Internet author in 2015 was Tangjia Sanshao, as executive vice president of the Publishing Association of China Wu Shulin stated at the international conference "Story Drive," organized by the Frankfurt Book Fair in China's capital Beijing.
According to Wu, Tangjia Sanshao pocketed around RMB 110 million (US $16.5 million) last year from his online literature. Five other web writers received revenues of more than RMB 50 million, and more than 160 authors earned a yearly salary in excess of RMB one million.
But such success stories remain exceptions. "There are millions of authors on the web today," Wu said. "Only a few make the breakthrough." Among the reasons why is undoubtedly that characteristic features of the Internet, namely, its low threshold, prompt, non-bureaucratic distribution channels, potential to reach an immensely wide readership, and independence from traditional printed media boundaries, are both a blessing and a curse.
"There are still big discrepancies in quality," Wu said. Critics hold that there is a high level of commercialization, and even pieces which, upon taking a closer look, turn out to be nothing more than clever advertisements.
Moreover, some experts bewail the absence of an advanced system of literary criticism for the online genre. So far, the tastes of the masses set the tone. "Some of the contents glorify violence or are questionable in other ways," Wu said.
Another problem yet to be solved is that of intellectual property. "In the end, the function of traditional publishing houses as guarantors of quality remains indispensable," remarked Jürgen Boos, president of Frankfurt Book Fair, on the margins of the "Story Drive 2016." He added: "This also applies to the Chinese market."
However, it is an indisputable fact that, since appearing at the end of the 1990s, China's online literature has grown from a small niche genre not taken seriously for some considerable time into a promising and influential new sector of the country's cultural industry. One reason for the success of China's web literature is undoubtedly its potential for adaptation into movies and television series, or re-marketing in printed form.
Consequently, China's web literature has long since hit the mainstream of the country's Internet-centered readership. The future development of literary quality will finally depend on the qualitative demands of the targeted audience.
However, there seems little doubt that the online literature boom has created an exciting new field of experimentation, nurtured by ideas from those of China's authors and readers who were born in the 1970s and after. This artistic playing field will likely act as inspiration for China's cultural industry as a whole, and could also stimulate development of the cultural industry in the West.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)