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Solicited by Webnovel
Mar. 8th, 2023 11:44 amYesterday I got a solicitation today from Webnovel, an Chinese-based publisher of stories online. I knew them a bit by reputation, which wasn’t great. I think I remember seeing Facebook ads of theirs that contained entire first chapters of books that were not just incompetently written, but not even really copyedited, usually some overwrought heterosexual romance featuring a distasteful level of coercion by the male lead.
A little more research confirmed what I suspected, which is that business model is fairly predatory. While they do pay in money, they demand a high percentage of any revenue made through reads, plus “operating fees,” the cost of which they obscure. I’ve even heard they sometimes offer folks exclusive contracts, which means they not only own the work you’re publishing with them, but they also demand the rights to anything the author creates in the future. So… not a great deal, even if you do make a little money off of it.
The thing that particularly amused me is that they were interested in Texts from Avengers Tower. It is far and away the most quantifiably popular thing I’ve ever made, with about 40,000 unique reads on Archive of Our Own. But it’s a fan fic, so I don’t know how they think they can get away with publishing it for monetary profit. I know these days a lot of fan fics have “the serial numbers filed off”— changing the identifying details of the referenced property in order to publish it as something original. But Texts from Avengers Tower would make ZERO SENSE out of context, so I don’t know why anybody would want to read it except for the wit of how it’s iterating on the MCU.
Interestingly they say they found it on Fanfiction.Net, which does not have public stats, so I’m not sure what drew them to it. And the solicitation email was sent to the Mrs. Hawking email address, which is not obviously connected to my Fanfiction.Net profile, so I wonder what digging they did to use that as the contact.
I’m thinking of writing back just to see what they have in mind. I’m curious what they are imagining, given all that. I obviously don’t intend to sign away everything I ever wrote to a Chinese internet pulp pusher, but I’d be amused to hear what they are planning on offering.
A shame this is the most anyone’s ever been interested in my work. ;-)
A little more research confirmed what I suspected, which is that business model is fairly predatory. While they do pay in money, they demand a high percentage of any revenue made through reads, plus “operating fees,” the cost of which they obscure. I’ve even heard they sometimes offer folks exclusive contracts, which means they not only own the work you’re publishing with them, but they also demand the rights to anything the author creates in the future. So… not a great deal, even if you do make a little money off of it.
The thing that particularly amused me is that they were interested in Texts from Avengers Tower. It is far and away the most quantifiably popular thing I’ve ever made, with about 40,000 unique reads on Archive of Our Own. But it’s a fan fic, so I don’t know how they think they can get away with publishing it for monetary profit. I know these days a lot of fan fics have “the serial numbers filed off”— changing the identifying details of the referenced property in order to publish it as something original. But Texts from Avengers Tower would make ZERO SENSE out of context, so I don’t know why anybody would want to read it except for the wit of how it’s iterating on the MCU.
Interestingly they say they found it on Fanfiction.Net, which does not have public stats, so I’m not sure what drew them to it. And the solicitation email was sent to the Mrs. Hawking email address, which is not obviously connected to my Fanfiction.Net profile, so I wonder what digging they did to use that as the contact.
I’m thinking of writing back just to see what they have in mind. I’m curious what they are imagining, given all that. I obviously don’t intend to sign away everything I ever wrote to a Chinese internet pulp pusher, but I’d be amused to hear what they are planning on offering.
A shame this is the most anyone’s ever been interested in my work. ;-)
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