A set of data not long ago showed that Chinese spent 38.93 billion yuan in the online novel market in 2022, which surprised many people that online literature is a hidden big business. In recent years, the post-00s have gradually become the main force of online novel creation, and a monthly income of 100,000 yuan for a good job is not a problem. Under such consumer demand, recommending online articles on Douyin has even become a way for some people to make money.
Write online articles after 01 and 00, and earn 100,000 yuan a month
Under the erosion of short videos, don't Chinese love to "read"? Statistically, no.
In April this year, the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released the "2022 Research Report on the Development of Online Literature in China", which shows that the development of online literature will grow significantly in 2022, with more than 3 million new works, a market size of 38.93 billion yuan, a cumulative number of online writers of more than 22.78 million, and nearly 492 million readers. In other words, one out of every three Chinese is the audience of the web article.
Behind the skyrocketing data, the post-00s have become the "backbone" of online writers.
Among the newly registered writers of China Literature Group in 2022, the post-00s account for as much as 60%. Among the new faces in the 2022 Writers Index TOP500, the proportion of post-00s increased by 10%, and the number of 10,000 works tripled compared with the same period last year. As of December 2022, the new generation of writers accounted for 49% of the free novel Seven Cat platform, and the post-95s and post-00s became the main original force.
The post-00s who entered the online literature were just because of love at first.
Post-00s author Tao Feng told "City Boundary" that he liked to read oriental fantasy novels since he was a child, so he slowly tried to write them himself. "If I don't write full-time, I might go home and help my dad."
At first, they will choose to haunt the traditional and established online literary platforms such as Jinjiang and Qianqi. This kind of traditional web novel platform with subscription as the main model has higher requirements for the author's pen power, in order to allow readers to continue to pay, it is necessary to carefully design the story rhythm of each chapter and leave a "hook" at the end. At the earliest, Tao Feng wrote 700,000 words on the starting point Chinese network, and with his "pen power", he also had an income of several thousand yuan a month.
In the third year of junior college, he found an internship to do customer service, went to make phone calls during the day, went back to work until one or two o'clock in the morning at night, and produced 6,000 words, because the income gradually stabilized, he simply quit the internship job.
Traditional web novel platforms advocate the cultivation of online writers, after 30 days of novice period, if there is no application for contracting, basically will not be exposed, the written web novel is not read, become "stand-alone operation". Therefore, most update authors will choose to sign a contract and "work" for the platform.
These signed authors had the dream of writing "great gods" at first. After all, the golden age of online literature has given birth to many head authors such as Tang Jia Sanshao, Xiao Ding, I Eat Tomatoes and other head authors, whose works were bought by copyright owners at a high price, and then adapted into popular film and television dramas by major video websites, making a lot of money. The 2017 online writer list once showed that the copyright fee of Tang Jiasanshao, who ranked first, was as high as 130 million yuan for just one "Douluo Continent".
This adaptation fever has also continued to the present, even in 2022, in the annual TOP10 popular dramas of the three major long-form video platforms of "Aiyuteng", online adapted film and television dramas still account for nearly 50%.
But as the stories of "making gods" have become fewer and fewer in recent years, traditional online literary platforms are rolled up, and the waist and new authors can hardly share the money. The new generation of creators has pinned their hopes for wealth creation on emerging platforms such as Zhihu, Tomato Novel, and Seven Cat Novel.
These platforms also have quite characteristics compared with traditional web novel platforms, one is that the threshold is low, the readers' age group is low, and they like to read "small white texts". The second is to be friendly to newcomers, and readers have a strong willingness to interact, "If you generate electricity for love for a long time, no one gives feedback, and the single machine is very painful." Tao Feng told "City Boundary" that this is also the reason why more and more young authors choose new platforms.
Moreover, the new platform has indeed made many post-00s authors make money.
Liang Yi defines herself as a girl with "moderate grades" since childhood. During the summer vacation of her 19-year-old senior year, she began to try to write in Zhihu, with more than 1,000 words a day, and when she wrote in her freshman year, she could have an average monthly income of 2-30,000 yuan, and gradually, the number climbed to six figures.
Wen Qi, who also started writing ancient Chinese at the age of 19, earned more than 10,000 a month after signing a contract with Zhihu, but she didn't let her relatives and friends know her ID in her life, "I feel too ashamed." ”
Indeed, today's online literature is not very literary, the key is cool.
Tao Feng concluded, most of the favorite story types of male readers are: small people counterattack, playing pigs and eating tigers (being bullied at the beginning, and later showing strength) and Tianjiao Liu (referring to crushing all the way), etc., in short, if you want to promote first and suppress, you have to be strong.
In the era when traffic is king, web writers also have to drift with the tide of the platform. For example, tomato novels that follow the platform traffic recommendation mechanism are not conducive to authors creating personal IPs. "Many times, readers may read several books in a row and will not know that it was written by one person." Tomato novel author @Darling said that many authors may be a hit on the last one, and the next one will hit the street. His first book brought a small income of 200,000 yuan, but immediately after the second and third books, the data was far from meeting expectations.
In the long run, emerging platforms such as Pomodoro are not as good as traditional web novel platforms. According to Darling's understanding, some of Jinjiang's royalties (royalties) can reach 10%, and tens of thousands of copies are printed for the first time. The publication of tomato authors, the royalty is basically only 7%-8%, the first printing of thousands of copies, "the money that can finally reach the author's hands is basically 10,000 or 20,000 yuan, the gap is really quite large." Darling told the "city boundary".
The authors have the perception that tomatoes gradually become "want to catch both", and while doing a free market, they also want to take the charging model. At the same time, considering that million-word novels and film and television adaptation are difficult, 300,000-500,000 words of fine short stories from authors with creative experience are levied to pave the way for copyright adaptation.
02. Those who sell web novels are also making money
"The richest man came to the orphanage to donate money on the day, I pretended to be beaten, and when he came to the rescue, he showed a face similar to his eyebrows, he wanted to take me home, but I refused..." Nowadays, open the short video platform, there are many tweet videos that are quickly generated and voiced by AI. If you are attracted by such a story, click into the novel platform and complete the paid continued reading, such a conversion is worth 6-10 yuan.
If someone writes an online article, someone has to sell the web article before the business can really turn around. In recent years, the outbreak of emerging web novel platforms is not unrelated to the drainage and transformation of short video and other platforms.
The tranquility of deeply cultivating Douyin's short videos can clearly feel that the year before last, Douyin vigorously supported graphic content, and a large number of creators rushed to do graphic tweets. Since last year, with the help of intelligent editing tools, such large-scale tweet videos are occupying Douyin, a simple "cutting cake" picture, coupled with mechanical voice reading novels, can attract traffic.
Jing Jing specially posted a Douyin, popular science "novel tweet video how to do", has obtained nearly 10 million traffic, many people who want to make money come to discuss the methodology, mostly office workers, mothers and students who have free time.
"To do TikTok, in essence, is to do probability, is to vigorously produce miracles, when you have a certain quality, the more quantity, you have an absolute advantage." Jing said that he advised his trainees to "spread the amount" as much as possible, the more they issued, the greater the probability of hitting the explosive model, and the greater the possibility of pulling the order volume.
To make a tweet video, the three indispensable links are: taking the license, finding the novel, and editing the video.
Take authorization, generally through the mini program to reach an agreement with the intermediary company, each new user, give the corresponding commission. "Now I generally go to the compliance mini program to authorize, and the second passes on the day. Apply for a keyword, the background system recognizes that the new user is converted through this keyword, and will give a commission. ”
Jing introduced that there are currently first-generation and second-generation intermediaries on the market, some large institutions that directly connect with such platforms, and some qualifications that are not up to standard, which is the next link of the distribution system.
"For relatively large companies on the market, there is no problem with a turnover of hundreds of thousands a day." Serenity said. According to the number of orders opened by the team and the number of fans, the platform will give a fixed commission point, generally about 6-10 yuan. The smaller the scale of the platform and the volume of users, the higher the cost of pulling new products, and the higher the unit price of the commission given.
Looking for novels, the online novel platform will give fine data feedback, the type of novel that users have consumed the most in the past week or month. After doing it slowly for a long time, it will summarize which novels will be suitable for tweet drainage.
As for editing videos, there are a large number of "point-and-shoot" editing apps on the market that import with one click, and the production cycle of creating a tweet video is compressed to a few hours.
At the beginning, the video picture was very simple, just paste a few pictures, "just play it and there will be traffic". If you want to get platform traffic recommendations and improve originality in the homogeneous competition, you must carefully select the mixed and cut pictures - it is best to be a healing clip that can firmly catch the audience's attention, one of the classic cases is "cutting soap" and "cutting cake", even if it has nothing to do with the content of the novel, but it can visually give users satisfaction.
"This year, after the development of AI technology, everyone hopes to match it with original videos that are more original and more suitable for the content of the novel." Jing said that five AI-generated drawing companies have been approached to help promote and collaborate creators with AI technology.
In April this year, Douyin's official internal beta "Douyin Story" function raised the release threshold (more than 1,000 fans can be mounted), in order to shorten the conversion path of users and reduce the off-site search of users to drain users. Douyin, which has 700 million daily active activities, extends the tentacles of traffic conversion to the web novel track.
However, even if its tomato novels have achieved the TOP level of free reading apps, the road of IP-based is far inferior to its old rivals, and there is a lack of powerful works in the downstream of the IP industry chain such as games, film and television, animation, cultural creativity, and derivatives.
At present, the tweet circle is also getting more and more volumed, in addition to the regular AI voice reading novels, there are also various foreign language dubbing versions in Britain, France, Japan and South Korea, shouting Mai tweets, rap interpretation versions, and even more eye-catching, Morse code, and there is no lack of viewers who are happy to participate in the meme carnival in the comment area: "Mengxizhou (the first blogger to play terrier tweets), this prosperous era is as you wish." ”
03. The crisis of "fast food"
"Can provide a certain emotional value, watching sweet text will laugh, watching abuse text will cry, but laugh and cry, forget after reading, it is also quite decompressing." Liang Yi, the author of post-00s web articles, said that most online articles do not meet the standard of "spiritual food", "at most, fast food, fast-moving consumer goods." ”
Since it is a "consumer product", catering to market demand is more than self-expression.
Many web authors have recognized that a formable methodology is: pickpocket lists. Monthly ticket list, best-selling list, popularity list, hot evaluation list... Data can always be given a referenced, commercially proven "template".
The thinner the label, the more accurately it can be distributed to readers who love this genre. Darling said that some female web writers want to try to write more profitable male frequency articles, but the more articles they "pickpocket", the more discomfort they feel, "The values are completely different, the heroine is basically a mature tool person, and there are too many remarks and settings that do not respect women." ”
Wen Qi once wrote a novel about sons with a realistic theme, but the data is far less than the romance web novel of "White Moonlight Turning Back" that she is good at every day. "In Zhihu, sadistic writing is stronger than Shuangwen, and Shuangwen is stronger than sweet text." This is the conclusion of the authors' many experiments.
When the data is poor, all the authors can do is find a way to figure out what readers like. For example, cater to the reader's cultivation system preferences and pretend to be "little white". Darling has a friend of the author who writes in Jinjiang, and after realizing his recent poor data, he reopened the trumpet and was successfully "reborn". New readers will also encourage her under the article, "I hope you can become a great god step by step." ”
In the online literary world, the trend of popularity also changes from time to time.
Darling said that last year there was a period of popularity of "rough Chinese literature" and several books, but this year, the top of Jinjiang's "gold list" returned to the classic "marriage before love" series.
The theme of online articles is also popular "chasing hot spots". After a big god in the circle opened a new article, there were novices to follow suit. Darling recalled that the film and television adaptations of "Star Han Splendid" and "Do You Know" drove a period of "house fighting fever" in Jinjiang Literature City.
Everyone can almost perceive some tendencies in the online literary market: the student party likes sweet text, rebellious, suspenseful, and overbearing type, satisfies curiosity, and office workers prefer sadistic literature to release pressure.
Darling often sees a reader comment in the comment area: "I can't meet such a person in reality, can't I come to find happiness?" ”
But if you eat too much fast food, someone will slowly give up these "junk foods".
Reader Ah Zhi has not charged for the web article for a long time. This spring, he fell in love with Dostoevsky on the recommendation of his senior sister, and took two hours every day at noon to watch "Crime and Punishment", often without paying attention, looking up from the book, wiping his face, and his hands were stained with tears.
Two months later, he opened Jinjiang again, clicked into the familiar leaderboard, and found that he couldn't stand it, "This (written) is not a person." I don't see the complexity of people. He slipped a few pages, with no desire to pay again.
He has been in the pit since high school, and Ah Zhi has spent thousands of yuan for online literature in a year at most. He also shed tears for the true feelings of the web novel at a sentimental age - it was a celibate wandering plot before the two protagonists met, which took up the first thirty chapters of the novel. "There are very few such things now, they are too routine, either infinite flow, or fast-paced sweet and cool texts."
Fast food culture also makes online writers feel a complete crisis.
Even though he once earned 20,000 or 30,000 a month, Liang Yi was still very anxious, thinking that he could not afford the consequences of unemployment, "The online novel industry was quickly abandoned by (the market). ”
Liang Yi, a junior, is preparing to change majors and enter graduate school, and she wants to become a teacher in a college with a stable salary and time to write novels. She chose a choreographer major from an old 985 university, just considered, "The newly opened major should be better." ”
She studied art and saw the impact of AI on the industry, in addition to being afraid of the book she is writing on the street, she is more worried about, "If you can't pass the graduate school exam, will it be replaced by AI in the future." ”
Wen Qi is also preparing for the law postgraduate examination, she does not want to be in a state of "panic and can't write the next book" for a long time, "I will be a windfall, I will earn it when I earn it, and if it is gone, it will be gone." ”
Tao Feng, who is writing in a rental house in Guangzhou, also decided not long ago that after writing the book at hand, he would try to find a job, or go home to help his father, who opened a factory. After all, "this data is very good, then the next one may be the next." ”
(Tao Feng, Liang Yi, Wen Qi, and A Zhi are pseudonyms in the text)
(Author |.) Zhao Zikun, editor | Dong Yuqing)