Shanda Literature
A Catalyst for Change
Once upon a time, all stories were told face-to-face. By the light of the campfire, storytellers would watch the faces of those listening and adjust the tales based on their reactions.
The printed word changed all that. As ink dried on paper, stories became permanent and unchanging and centuries later, the burgeoning Chinese entertainment industry was turning to the printed word for inspiration.
There were many golden nuggets to be found, but much digging was needed to unearth them.
The Catalyst for Change
We had a vision of how to mine these riches and remove unpredictability from the content origination process.
Online serialization was emerging from the grassroots, but with little or no revenue, these communities were struggling to survive. Shanda saw an opportunity to step in and offer this fledgling fraternity a guiding hand, to turn a pastime into an industry.
And so the first chapter was written
Shanda Literature nurtured and grew popular literary genres, giving them an online home plus the functionality and business structure we’d developed building China’s most successful online games platform.
We’d set the story free again, turning readers into writers,
making every member of the community
a part of the creative process.
User generated content
published chapter by chapter
Community interaction
amongst readers and authors
Generating
Masses of Data
that could be mined
By mining this big data we created valuable entertainment
industry insights that we were able to monetize
Subscription
- PC
- Mobile
Content export
- Mobile operators
- Reading apps
- Audio books
IP licensing
- TV drama
- Movies
- Games
Online advertising
- Target verticals
Offline publishing
- Novels
- Comic books
We created revenue, rewards, incentives and income, and the community
started to grow, and grow, and grow.
Proven Original Content Backed by Big Data
The real-time interactions between readers and authors meant that content flourished. By analyzing the data behind these interactions, we were to take the guesswork out of content production.
The golden nuggets simply rose to the top.
For the first time in history...
Film, TV and game producers could invest in intellectual property that would yield proven and predictable fortunes.
The world’s largest ecosystem
of original Chinese language content
200m+
users reading
7.6m+
titles
written by
2.5m+
authors
The paradigm shift from PC to mobile had started.
Cloudary Net Revenues 2008-2014 (RMB million)
As China’s appetite for entertainment continued to grow, the next chapter of success beckoned.
Securing the right channel for distribution became vital.
It was time for us to take Cloudary to the next level so Shanda merged Cloudary with Tencent’s powerful mobile distribution and created…
King Maker
A force to be reckoned with.
In November 2017, China Literature (772:HK) leapt onto the world stage
becoming Hong Kong’s hottest IPO, with a retail subscription of HK$520 billion,
the second highest in the market’s history.
Another chapter in Shanda’s story but by no means the last.