On October 10, 2021, the 5th China "Internet Literature +" Conference Tomato Novel Sub-Forum was successfully held. At the meeting, Xie Sipeng, editor-in-chief of Tomato Novels, delivered a keynote speech on "How Tomato Novels Help Original Writers Grow", sharing the thinking and progress of Tomato Novels in the past year. According to the data, the Tomato Novel Network has 828 contracted writers with monthly incomes of more than 10,000 yuan, and there are 1606 people with a monthly income of more than 5,000 yuan, which is 3-4 times higher than last year.
He said that "free to benefit readers, real money to support writers" is the principle we have always adhered to. Tomato Novel will launch the "Xinghai Project", and will increase support and investment in original writers in the coming year.
The following is the original text of the speech:
Dear leaders, authors and friends, good afternoon!
I am Xie Sipeng of Tomato Novel, and I am very happy to meet you again at the Online Literature + Conference.
This year, Tomato Novel is two years old, and this is also the second time we have participated in the Online Article + Conference. One issue and one meeting, it can be said that the net text + conference has witnessed the growth of tomato novels, and also witnessed the changes brought by the free model to the industry. It's a pleasure and honor to be here to share with you some of the small advances that Tomato Fiction has made in the past year.
First of all, I would like to share with you a picture:
This is a writer friend named The Thief of Time sent it to me a few days ago, he came to Tomato last December to write a historical novel, everyone knows that history is a relatively niche subject of online articles, but unexpectedly, the book will soon be loved by a large number of readers, and now more than 400,000 people are reading at the same time.
It is our happiest thing to be able to help excellent authors like the Thief of Time, to make their works seen and loved by more people, to help more and more readers who are interested in online literature, so that they can read their favorite excellent works, and to make a modest effort to support "reading for all".
Thanks to the love of users and friends, the writers of Tomato have also gained a lot.
"Tomatoes are too friendly to newcomer writers" is what I've heard most from my writer friends over the past year. Indeed, Tomato has unearthed many cutting-edge writers, such as Yi Qingfeng, Blue Hand, Cong Yue and so on. Some of them chose tomatoes for their first book, and some of them frequently fell into a trough on other platforms because of their themes, income, etc., and even thought of giving up creation...
In fact, there are also a lot of strong writers who have achieved excellent results and achieved good results in tomato novels. For example, the Xiao Riding School, which was present today, has won many awards such as the Newcomer Award of the Second Mao Dun Literature Award and the Sixth Purple Mountain Literature Award, and its tomato signed work "Changle Li: Prosperous As I Wish" was recently selected into the "Internet Novel Influence List" of the China Writers Association China Internet Literature Influence List.
At present, Tomato original works have covered mainstream online genres such as realistic themes, romance, urban, fantasy, history, science fiction, suspense, etc., and have innovated in many new fields, and many new types of novels are widely liked by readers on the tomato platform. In the past September, Tomato Novels has 828 contracted writers with monthly incomes of more than 10,000 yuan, and 1606 people have a monthly income of more than 5,000 yuan. At last year's conference, the number of people with a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan was 261, and only 573 people had a monthly income of more than 5,000 yuan.
Here, we sincerely welcome more new and old writers to join Tomato and achieve more good stories.
Speaking of which, I would also like to thank the copyright partners who have cooperated with Tomato, who have firmly accompanied Tomato to grow in the past year, and believe that Tomato has not failed everyone.
In the eyes of the outside world, the tomato novel born on the basis of headlines and vibrato seems to be born without lack of traffic, and rapid growth should be the primary goal. In fact, tomato novels do not blindly pursue growth, but are wary of "negative growth".
What impressed me deeply was that in order to support non-popular but long-term value works, the original operation team proposed the "Kuixing Plan" to expand the coverage and investment amount of works on the basis of the original "Special Theme Award", but this initiative needs to bear more costs and risks internally. There were also many worries in the internal discussion, and finally everyone unanimously decided to implement the "Kuixing Plan", so that writers who create different types and different themes can get income returns, so that writers who want to write non-popular topics can also have platform support to create content that they really like. This is in line with the benign development of the platform ecology and the principle of long-term benefits, even if the investment is more!
Because we always believe that content and writers are the core competitiveness of tomato novels, and doing content is the most urgent thing, only by maintaining patience and confidence can we obtain long-term benefits.
We still firmly believe that only by insisting on providing good enough returns to writers and repaying writers with real money and silver for their hard work can tomato novels stand on a long-term basis.
Over the past year, we have optimized the writer's welfare system for Tomato Fiction Network. In addition to the original signing rewards and advertising shares, the platform has also launched exclusive welfare policies such as the Spark Program to help authors survive the novice period, and the Kuixing Program to help non-popular topics obtain initial investment.
In terms of IP development, we are also making some attempts one after another, such as adapting excellent works into micro-short dramas, which have been played more than 1.8 billion times on the whole network, and works such as "A Dance Full of Tingfang", "Li Shao, Madame Has Blocked You Again", "Demon Lord" and other works have been played over 100 million. In addition, Tomato actively creates a diversified development product matrix of online literature, and this year alone, 178 original works have produced audiobooks, expanding the influence of works and actively creating high-quality audio projects.
We have been wondering how tomato novels can help more people who are interested in creating, let more works get opportunities, and make online literary creation no longer a display stage for a few people. To this end, we will launch the "Xinghai Plan" to increase investment in the next year to support tomato contracted writers, including but not limited to signing fees, advertising shares, new work investment, newcomer investment, copyright IP development, writer influence building and other directions, hoping to support everyone's "love" with real money and silver, hoping to contribute to the benign development of the online literature ecology. "Free to benefit readers, real money to support writers" is the principle we always adhere to.
The two-year-old tomato novel is still very young, and there are still many places to work and improve, but we firmly believe that we can do much more than that, we can do better, and we will continue to explore more and more in the future to continue to help more and more online writers succeed. I also hope that leaders, writers, and industry colleagues can give More care, understanding and support to Tomato Novel and the free model.
Thank you.