Online authors open new chapter in IP battle

[Picture by Song Chen/ China Daily]

China's "cyberspace writers" are banding together to urge media companies to improve their pay and working conditions, and to ensure that they retain legal ownership of their work.

"Do you have any stories to tell? My brain needs recharging," Jiang Xiaodong said to his roommate, his eyes bloodshot, as he squashed a cigarette butt into an overflowing ashtray next to his stained keyboard.

Since he graduated in 2010, Jiang, who has a postgraduate degree in journalism from the Communication University of China in Beijing, has worked as a "cyberspace author", living in a rented room close to the school in the capital's eastern suburbs.

He often logs on to chat rooms and online forums to "hunt" for plots for the novel he is writing about the ups and downs of a fictional wealthy business family. His contract with a literature website means he must produce at least 5,000 words a day to feed his 600 subscribers, each of whom pays about 6 cents for every 10,000 words they read. If all goes well, Jiang makes $36 every two days.

"I am confident that my literary talent means I will become a successful online writer, just like Zhang Wei," Jiang said, referring to his literary hero. "I have read all his works. What I need is the luck to be discovered by a movie director or investor."

Zhang is China's 10th wealthiest online author, and for the past four years the 33-year-old has occupied first place in the annual rankings of online writer royalty revenues published by the Western China Metropolis Daily.

Since 2012, Zhang is estimated to have earned more than 150 million yuan ($22.8 million) in royalties. To put that into perspective, Mo Yan, the novelist who was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature, has only made about half that sum in royalties over the same period.

Last year, Zhang's royalties surged to more than $12 million from about $4 million in 2012.

Since 2004, Zhang has published dozens of fantasy novels and written hundreds of online novels under the pen name Tangjia Sanshao, "Third Son of the Tang Family", a reference to the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

"With millions of readers anxious to read my stories, I have written about 8,000 words a day, every day of the year for more than 11 years," Zhang recently told Chongqing Commercial News.

He finishes a novel every 11 days on average, and with the exception of his published books and some online content, his stories are adapted into TV series, cartoons, films and online games that yield most of his income.