"When I traveled in Tibet, I hiked during the day, and when it was getting dark, I chose quiet places to camp and cook, and after dinner, I wrote in my tent." I believe that the "free" writing experience of post-90s online writers "granting Tianqi" will make many young people yearn for it.
In recent years, more and more young people have taken the career path of online writers to increase their experience and income by writing novels part-time. As early as 2021, the "2021 Online Literary Writers' Portrait" released by China Literature Group showed that post-95 writers accounted for 36% of the total number of writers on the platform that year, and the proportion of post-95 writers among new writers was as high as 80%.
In 2022, the proportion of young online writers is still rising. According to the "2022 Original Annual Report" released by Tomato Novel, 65% of the original creators who settled on the platform that year were post-90s; The "2022 Seven Cats Original Inventory" also shows that as of December 2022, the new generation of writers on the platform accounts for 49%, and the post-95s and post-00s have become the main force of originality.
"Love online novels", "Longing for freelancing", "Saving spare time", "Achieving financial freedom"... Young people enter the world of online literature with different original intentions, working hard in front of the computer alone, and building their same "dream factory".
Crossover! Let them "kill all sides"
With the continuous influx of post-95 writers, web writers have become one of the hottest side hustles in 2022. According to data from China Literature Group, part-time writers account for the majority of the more than 20 million online writers on its platform. At the same time, "crossover" and "side business" were listed in the "2022 Top Ten Keywords of Online Literature" released by Reading.
The young people who "enter" the ranks of online writers are not only professional writers such as screenwriters and script killers, but also many talents from thousands of industries.
Some industry insiders shared with "Slow Down": "There are many 'cross-border' online writers who create part-time, and the proportion of non-professional writers is not low, they come from students, workers, doctors, police, computer engineers, scientific researchers, forensic doctors, lawyers, retired soldiers, public officials and other walks of life. ”
Cross-border writing not only allows young writers to choose to accumulate wealth and then switch to full-time, but also allows them to combine their own knowledge system and professional experience to add points to their creation.
For example, a series of works by the online writer "Holding the Inch in Hand" are mostly about the story of doctors, and it is interesting that he himself is a real doctor, and he once said that "every case in my book comes from real life, and every operation is written according to guidelines and papers, which is justified."
And "Qingshirt Drunk", who is good at writing game genre novels, is himself a game planner who graduated from 985 colleges, relying on his strong "professional plugin" to write a series of popular online literary works. His previous work "Becoming the richest man starts with the game", with a total subscription of 20 million on the platform, a book directly broke the game channel record.
The post-95 web literary god "The Wolf of the History Department" is more interesting. Since he graduated from Northwest University for Nationalities majoring in history, he is very good at creating online novels on historical themes, and when creating the work "Picking Up a Book of the Three Kingdoms", he simply wrote in classical Chinese in a large volume, allowing readers to call out "reading while translating". The sentence he wrote in the foreword of his work, "History is a bridge, this side is us, and the other side is the glory of our ancestors", which unconsciously exudes a sense of pride in history students.
The profession of cross-border web writer for young people does have outstanding value from the perspective of literary development.
Some media commented that when the post-95 generation became the main force of creation, they were also bringing the special behavior, value orientation and spiritual characteristics of the younger generation into online literature, profoundly affecting the content composition and value cultivation of online literature, making the online literary world present a different style and spiritual realm than before.
The aforementioned industry insiders also believe that "post-95 creators have an innate digital survival experience, and as a 'netizen' generation, they have a more flexible, keen and cutting-edge network sense, and it is easier to form good interactions with readers of the same age group." ”
Especially in online novel themes such as short stories, light novels, and science fiction, young writers have more outstanding achievements. The post-95 writer "Tianrui Saying Fu" won the highest award of Chinese science fiction - Galaxy Award twice with "Dead on Mars" and "We Live in Nanjing".
"Nuggets" in the hot land of web novel creation
At a time when the side profession of online writers is becoming increasingly popular, some people classify this profession as "the gospel of social terrorists". There are also some media who believe that online writers are young people in order to escape workplace socialization, in order to gain a sense of security in the market environment of salary cuts and unemployment, so as to "climb to the new continent".
And "slow down" believes that this statement is quite one-sided. In 1998, the online novel "First Close Contact" created by "Riffraff Cai" was all the rage, and the heroine "Dancing and Flying" became an indelible mark in the hearts of the post-80s generation. In 2009, "Breaking the Sky" created by "Silkworm Potato" still occupies a place in the youth memories of the post-90s generation. Each generation of web writers is creating unique experiences for readers, and writers are also seeking both material and spiritual wealth in this professional field.
It is undeniable that there are many young people who write online articles part-time in order to realize their dreams.
"Teaching and Tianqi" created such a story on the Internet Chinese the starting point - the protagonist begins with an education system through which the talents of students can be seen. So he became a volunteer teacher, looking for those geniuses and guiding these children to the right path... He also once said that the original intention of the creation of "I'm Just a Volunteer Teacher" was because he had a dream of being a teacher.
"My family lives in the mountains of Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, and when I was a child, my family was very poor and could not afford to study. I remember that I couldn't afford to pay the tuition fees in junior high school, so I had to drop out of school and leave home to work. Because of my regrets, I have had a dream of becoming a teacher since I was a child, especially seeing the deeds of many outstanding people such as Principal Zhang Guimei, which made me particularly moved, so I wrote this work. ”
Writers engaged in overseas marketing and promotion "need emotional stability in the world", but also out of their own experience and understanding, opened the road to the creation of online literature. At the beginning of her novel "Age of Breaking Waves", the character says the following sentence - "We want to build our own national brand and sell our own brand products!" ”
For more than ten years, she has traveled to many countries because of her work and seen the unusual expansion process of China's own brands overseas. Out of pride in the national brand, she decided to create this novel in which "the protagonist goes south to Shenzhen and struggles to start a business in the technology industry".
In the view of "the world needs emotional stability", the people in the story are great and do not know it, "Maybe they seem ordinary, but they have consciously or unintentionally met a wave, turned into a tide, and entered the global stage without powder." But behind them are intertwined with family affection, love, and friendship, and they can only be cold and warm in front of the stage, and they can only taste it alone. ”
On the "hot land" of online literature, some young people have achieved wealth accumulation and changed their career destiny.
The writer "Song of Thorns" in 93 is a typical case of a counterattack from a working girl to an online writer. Once graduated from high school, she used to work in electronics factories, beauty salons and other places, and later doubled her income tenfold through part-time writing online novels, not only bought a house for her parents and herself in Xinyang, Henan, but now her income from full-time writing is enough to meet her living expenses.
Before becoming a web writer, "Tianqi", who dropped out of junior high school, also worked part-time at the construction site and installed central air conditioning, which was very hard. It wasn't until his first book hit the shelves and received more than 10,000 manuscript fees that he went home to write full-time, completely changing the work environment.
"Dream Factory" is also a "touchstone"
Exporting ideas and getting money for writing forms part of young people's desire to become web writers. The greater attraction still comes from the "industry myth" of earning tens of millions by writing articles, monetizing IP and realizing wealth freedom.
Last year's popular "Canglan Recipe" is adapted from the novel of the same name by Jinjiang's contracted author Jiu Lu Feixiang. A few years forward, "Langya List", "The Legend of Zhen Huan", "Qing Yu Nian", "Zheng Son-in-law", "Do You Know If It Should Be Green Fat, Red and Thin" and other classic works that set off a frenzy of broadcast fever, there are also online literary IP figures behind them. For a time, the adaptation of online literary IP showed a blowout trend, which made the profession of online writer envied by everyone.
However, "dream factory" is also a "touchstone", and the text that can become an IP or obtain high income is still a small number of "one", and the "pounce street" text in the industry population is still "nine".
"The income of our line strictly adheres to the law of 19. It is true that some people achieve wealth freedom by writing online articles, but there are really very few, and more are barely making ends meet or even making ends meet. Even if they write online articles full-time, many people's income will not be much more than that of normal work, and they still need to pay their own five insurances and one housing fund. In a post by Zhihu, the online writer who goes by the pseudonym Lu Xing confessed when talking about income.
According to public data, the April 2022 manuscript fee income of its contracted writers counted by Tomato Novels, of which 1,953 original writers had a monthly income of more than 5,000 yuan, 1,056 original writers had a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan, and 284 original writers had a monthly income of more than 30,000 yuan. Obviously, compared with the data of nearly 100,000 resident writers and tens of thousands of contracted writers on major platforms, writers who have achieved the above income levels are still "minorities".
▲Image source: Tomato Novel Weibo
Not making money so easily is one thing, and the "hardships" of creation cannot be ignored either. After 95, the online literary god "Yan ZK" once shared that he started working part-time from his sophomore year, and until he graduated and wrote his third work, he wrote 4 million words to get a boutique badge and achieve 3,000 bookings.
"I wrote 1 million words for the first book and gnawed on it for ten months before I made a few thousand dollars. At that time, I went to live in a place with a rent of 600 in order to save money, and my family was willing to give me a year to try, and the family did not have much pressure to live, so I persevered all the way. ”
At the same time, the web novel industry is also quietly shrinking. According to the financial report of Palmyue Technology for the first half of 2022, the platform's operating income was 1.185 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.31%; The net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 39.7161 million yuan, down 70.32% from the same period last year.
The Group's financial report for the first half of 2022 also shows that its revenue in the first half of 2022 was 4.09 billion yuan, down 5.9% year-on-year, with 8.1 million monthly paying users and 14 million free reading users.
In the view of "slow down", under the premise of increasingly fierce competition among online literary platforms, it is understandable that major platforms implement free mechanisms to attract users. However, for young people who want to engage in the profession of web writers, they must see that the online literary world dominated by subscription and reward mechanisms is not full of gold, and they should not blindly plunge into the full trust.
Epilogue:
As Sohu self-media Adongji said: "As a popular way of writing, online literature allows authors to let their minds fly and have free space for speech." There, without hierarchy or academic authority, everyone can create the life he wants, releasing his own suppressed inner feelings. ”
"Slow Release" also hopes that on the road to becoming online writers, young people will release themselves through creation, find their ideal country, and then earn "a pot of gold" with rationality and ease. END
Resources:
Netease-Upstream News丨2022 Top Ten Keywords of Online Literature Released: The sci-fi theme ushered in a big outbreak
Cover news丨The Wolf of the History Department of Internet Writers after 95 In order to reproduce the Han Dynasty, readers shouted: Please use vernacular text!
Southern Metropolis Daily depicts the arduous rise of Made in China, and she witnesses the "Breaking Wave Era" with extraordinary words
Popular Daily丨How to continuously release the value of online literary IP
Zhihu - stay up for the night | Web writer: Right! I earn 100,000 a month by writing online articles, but don't learn from me
Baijia number-Baixiaosheng can help you 丨Write novels can also make money? 1,056 tomato authors earned more than 10,000 per month, and 284 authors earned more than 30,000 per month
Sohu-Adongji | Web writer: Can the emerging cultural profession promote modern literature to a new height?
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