Profiting from online content

With the growing number of internet users, digital content producers are looking for new ways to transform hit online novels into enduring franchises.

Wu Song, a fantasy epic - which made the writer Liu Wei, better known by his pseudonym Xue Hong, the first online writer to earn more than 1 million yuan ($147,000) annually - exemplifies this trend.

Wu Song which roughly translates as "Ode to Wu", refers to a clan of giants who possess supernatural powers and deem peacekeeping as their inherited duty in China's first dynasty Xia, which ruled the country for around four centuries nearly 4,000 years ago.