Blockbuster online adaptations and mobile games are staging a rollover incident one after another.
Once known as one of the "Four Famous Works in the Online Literary Circle", "Knife Line in the Snow", its TV series was broadcast, the Douban score was 5.8 points; the explosive IP "Jia Nan Biography", which won many honors on the starting point website, scored 3.7 points after adapting the TV series; and the 9.6-point novel "The Princess of the World", which was rated 2.8 points after adaptation. The blockbuster novel IP "Qing Yu Nian" mobile game production for four years, only lived for four days, should have become "Qing Yu Nian 1.5" for the second season of the TV series to create momentum, helplessly did not set off a little splash.
In the 2021 financial report, Yuwen proudly demonstrated the achievements of the "Big Reading" strategy. Several IP adaptations such as "Son-in-law", "Qing Yu Nian" and "The World of Man" have gained extremely high popularity, which has led many newcomers to rush into the online text market.
In 2021, 700,000 new online authors and 1.2 million new works were added to the umbrella. Hou Xiaonan, president of Yuwen Group, said at the 2021 financial report meeting, "The company's biggest concern is good content. "But as the number of works increases, the phenomenon of homogenization is also becoming more and more serious.
"The old high-scoring novels are in the cliché, and the new popular novels still follow the old road, changing the soup without changing the medicine."
Comparing the "big reading" to a tree, then the novel IP is the root system, if the root system begins to lose its vitality, the explosive model is copied in batches, can the foundation still be stable?
1 Who's copying a blockbuster novel?
As an online author, Ding Yu is also helpless, "It's not that you don't want to write your own story, but you really can't afford this risk." ”
Writing full-time for two years, Ding Yu's income can be satisfied, if her story is not recognized by the editor, then she will lose the source of income, the platform editor responsible for signing the contract once told her that the plot dog blood is old-fashioned, readers love to watch it.
Ding Yu still remembers his first submission in college, "I wrote the beginning of about 50,000 words, and the outline was thrown out, found a network editor to submit, and within a few minutes of sending it, she gave a buyout price of 15 thousand words." "And the price of the average newcomer is basically 10 yuan in a thousand words."
This is the method taught to her by a writer friend, "Look at what the novels on the hot list are, and it is best for newcomers to start with imitation." "If the writer is for the purpose of signing a contract, writing the main theme of the website in the near future is undoubtedly the best choice." On platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douban, there are even senior writers and online text studios to sort out the common characters and plot settings of novels for newcomer writers to imitate and learn from.
Ding Yu believes that such a fast food creation model is becoming the only way for many newcomers, but it is actually a disaster for the author's personal career.
Nowadays, Ding Yu is very comfortable writing explosive novels, "the hottest theme, plus the hottest stem, rubbing the plot of several novels into it, replacing their own characters and world view settings, is a new work." ”
"We, the unknown full-time writers, don't have any dreams anymore." Ding Yu laughed at himself, "Our poems and distant places are the moon list, and the road under our feet is a copy of the explosive model." Ding Yu told "New Knowledge in the Circle" that he had also thought of creating unique works, but the Matthew effect of the industry was becoming more and more obvious, and the small and medium-sized authors with the most creative vitality now needed to consider how to get the favor of editors, rather than how to become "gods".
"The first chapter must erupt in a conflict event, and within thirty thousand words a small climax must be set to resolve the first conflict event." Online writing trainer Xiao Qiqi said that the online writing skills are even more head-headed, the male frequency is more love to waste firewood to turn over the wife more, the female frequency is more in love with the perfect male protagonist brainless sweet, the plot setting only needs to set the plot of the gods. Jiu Yuexi, a big household of "melting terriers", was prosecuted, and Xiao Qiqi, while lamenting the rampant plagiarists, also had to admit, "Aren't they all copying each other now?" ”
Xiao Qiqi told "New Knowledge in the Circle" that when writers choose platforms, they still have to choose large platforms as much as possible, "especially in the Department of Reading, the large platform system is more perfect, the editors are more professional, and they are willing to help newcomers." ”
The starting point Chinese network single-handedly "opened" the domestic online text payment market, so that online text writing became a serious job, and then reading "accepted" many novel reading platforms represented by the starting point, with more than ten novel platforms such as QQ reading, starting point, red sleeves, etc. The veteran women to the novel platform Jinjiang Literature Network also has 50% of the equity in the hands of reading, it is no exaggeration to say that reading has already included half of the online text market under its command.
According to public data, the number of new words added by Yuwen's novel platform exceeded 36 billion yuan throughout the year, but while the enthusiasm for online text market creation is increasing, the problem of homogenization of online text is becoming more and more obvious.
"Especially the studio problem." XiaoQi believes that "many online text studios have formed a standardized assembly line model." ”
2 How is the division of labor in the online text explosion?
When online writing has become an industry, the outline of the work and the person who wrote it may not be the same.
Feng Di, editor of the online text studio, also told the "new knowledge in the circle" that many studios will choose to collect the outline of the work at a high price, and then recruit cheaper writers to write, "The literary requirements of the online text are not high, as long as you follow the outline to write, basically you can write when you can talk." ”
"We also have a special outline writer, from the god's draft to sort out the outline, we will arrange you to write according to this outline, it is easy to sign the contract." Feng Di's studio division of labor is very detailed, from the refinement of the outline of the work to the outline of each chapter, and then to the actual start of writing, each step has a different writer responsible, "so that the division of labor writing efficiency will be higher, the cost is actually lower." ”
What Feng Di needs to do is to select the outline of "potential" among the countless submissions, and then arrange people to refine it into the outline of each chapter by colleagues. "An outline similar to the one on the leaderboard will make it easier to sign." Feng Di said, "After all, readers love to watch, and platform editors will also like it more." "The account that successfully signed with the platform is also firmly in the hands of the studio, as long as it can guarantee the update, it can get the monthly attendance award, which will bring income to the studio while covering the cost of hiring."
The platform has "reconciled" with commercialization, while the middle and bottom authors are still at a loss, can only chase the explosive formula all the way, no one can always use love to generate electricity, the most interesting inspiration is always bursting out of the place where money can be made. The platform likes to recommend "explosive models", the author will write according to the routine, and readers can see the "explosive models" recommended by the platform, in a sense, the current online text platform is "depriving" readers of the right to choose.
In December 2021, the starting point Chinese network enabled the traffic distribution mechanism recommended by artificial + big data, which means that the quality of a novel is greatly affected by the previous follow-up rate. As early as 2018, The Genesis Chinese Network under Yuwen had tried to replace the model of editors' manual recommendation with big data recommendation, resulting in the authors of genesis Chinese network only need to write a sufficiently attractive beginning to ensure that they appear in front of the reader, and the more in-depth story is abandoned by big data, and naturally cannot come to the reader.
In the fourth year of adopting big data recommendations, Genesis has become unnamed, and the top nine works on its list are all works of the starting author. Now the starting point also introduces a big data recommendation model, the future may also be the same as the result of the creation of the world, most of the explosive models are "small white text", and it is easy to appear tigers and tails.
These stories with a lot of cool points and reversals are very pleasant to read, but if they are put on the screen, their logical hard wounds will be infinitely magnified, and naturally they will not be recognized by the audience. The so-called blockbusters only stop at the blockbusters, short-lived, and cannot become a classic that is often seen and renewed.
And in the network authors uniformly create a blockbuster B side, is the reading has found a profit model, the 2021 annual report shows that the reading group profit of 1.23 billion yuan, a change in the previous years of losses.
In April 2020, Cheng Wu, CEO of Yuwen Group, China's largest online IP company, wrote in an internal letter: "Online literature has begun to show value and possibility beyond words. "As the source of IP, animation and film and television are commercial value amplifiers.
But at present, there are very few IP in the hands of the reader who can get out of the time cycle, from online texts to film and television dramas, the newborn "explosive model" has the appearance of the "older generation", pulling out the coat, and the bones are a mold.
Literary and artistic creation requires slow contemplation, which pursues not only refreshing tremors, but also the afterthought of human taste, which is exactly the opposite of the mechanical replication of industrialization and the rapid profit of commercialization. Reading now seems to be the "explosive" password in hand, but in the long run, it is undoubtedly a drink to quench thirst.
3 Readers, how long can you "lie and earn"?
The absolute advantage of Reading in the online text market has made the entire market once have a "monopoly" risk, and now, the chassis has begun to loosen.
According to the "2021 China Internet Literature Development Research Report" data, the size of the mainland online literature market is close to 30 billion, and the network text has become an important source of IP, and various Internet manufacturers are eager to move the network text market, in fact, they are also preparing for IP military preparations.
Perhaps when Cheng Wu proposed the concept of "IP", he had already thought about how to carry out the industrial production of IP adaptation. In 2021, Reading Group announced the "Great Reading" strategy, "based on Tencent's new cultural and creative ecology, with online literature as the cornerstone and IP development as the driving force, openly building an IP ecological business matrix with partners in the whole industry." According to the financial report data, the current direction of the commercial value of reading and developing IP is mainly focused on film and television, and the operating income of games and animation copyrights is less.
The continuous impact of the free reading mode has also made the reading text begin to be vigilant.
Since its official launch in 2019, Tomato Novel has completed its start and sprint within a year, successfully becoming the boss of the free novel reading industry. According to third-party platform statistics, in the second quarter of 2021, tomato free novels, seven cats free novel quarterly active users surpassed the traditional paid platform, ranking first and second, especially tomato free novels, since 2020 its active users have maintained rapid growth, 2021 Q2 compared with Q1 growth is as high as 20.4%, in the mobile reading market that is already in the stage of stock competition.
Reading also clearly felt the charm of "white prostitute", and urgently launched free reading platforms such as Fly Reading and Kunlun Chinese Network. According to the 2021 financial report data, the monthly paid users of reading articles have dropped by nearly 15% compared with last year, while the overall monthly active users have risen by nearly 9%. In this regard, The reading article explained that it is mainly free reading that attracts a large number of users.
In addition to the squeeze brought about by free reading, short videos have dealt a dimensionality reduction blow to the online text market, in fact, addictive short videos have threatened the music, audiobooks, novels and other content creation industries. QuestMobile's 2021 China Mobile Internet Annual Report shows that by the end of 2021, short video has surpassed instant messaging and become the industry with the largest proportion of Internet time.
The threat brought by short videos is not only reflected in the battle for user time, the short drama based on the novel IP has found a new commercialization path on the short video platform, and the mid-waist novel authors can also see the hope of commercialization, while in the traditional paid online text platform, almost all the head authors who can have commercialization opportunities are the head authors.
The former overlord of the online literary industry is still in the IP adaptation business and does not look back, in June 2021, Cheng Wu announced the new mission of reading articles, "to make good stories live forever". But now that the pace of reading is getting faster and faster, do you really have the patience and confidence to create really good content, or do you continue to let the author produce more and more homogeneous works based on the "market reaction"? After all, the most profitable thing is the business of the masses.
If the platform continues to blindly pursue the maximization of benefits without creating an environment suitable for creation, then it may be the vitality of the entire industry that is sacrificed.
This article comes from: Circle New Knowledge, Author: Lemon, Editor: Moonmi