News NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW: Tencent-backed China Literature posts massive loss

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by baka8roukanako, Aug 12, 2020.

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  1. asriu

    asriu fu~ fu~ fu~

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    so that the reason change of contract huh~ based on gossip when Qi inter pop up aka webnovel.com about mainland china author various type of contract then sure problem about copyright and share of revenue is accumulate thing, then covid 19 strike makes the problems just explode~

    for those who interested toward gossip about how screw up wn author contract on china go search Qidian mega thread, Gravity Tales mega thread and webnovel ToC for original author yourself~

    wut cha looking at?
    19656.png
     
  2. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    Wong, it is the company that fucked up and became too greedy. In the new contract, authors are no longer authors. They become employees but not entitled to the employee benefits such as pensions, health care insurance etc. The new contact says that they are paid by the company so all their works belong to the company. So if qidian doesn't like some authors, they can fire them, and then hire someone else to write the same book, and the previous author won't get anything, and authors won't get any penny from any Donghua, movie, audio book, drama sells because they were paid to write even if this pay means less than $50 a month.
     
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  3. LaDyViL

    LaDyViL New Member Staff Member

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    @Suijin If you don't like what the other has to say and don't want to see them, use the Ignore button. There's no need to label others.
     
  4. rwxwuxiaworld

    rwxwuxiaworld Well-Known Member

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    Holy shit. Now the massive QI cuts make sense, as well as the forced mass retirements of the previous Wu Wenhui management team.

    This is genuinely shocking to me though. I know the 'free reading' model has put a lot of pressure on the traditional companies, but at the same time my contacts China-side had actually mentioned that COVID caused significant increases in revenue during Q1/Q2 of 2020. Even China Literature notes that its revenue had increased by 10% in this period. What the hell did they spend all their money on?! This isn't a revenue problem, it's a spending problem.

    EDIT: This link has much more detailed breakdowns in what's going on. I'm reading through myself. So far, it looks like they only had a small operating loss (non-IFRS basis), the reason why it was so massive was due to their purchase of New Classics Media and stuff that fucked up related to it.

    https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...announces-2020-interim-results-301109785.html

    DOUBLE EDIT: Okay, I see what's going on here. Their own revenue (Qidian) actually doubled, while revenue from associated platforms sank a bit. Combined with a 30% increase in advertising spending, this resulted in a minor operating loss. In other words - Qidian (the site) is still making lots of money; the average revenue per user increased nearly 50%, which dovetails with what I said about my contacts saying COVID being great for webnovel companies in China. However. The valuation of the company was partially based on their acquisition of New Classics Media, and it got its ass kicked there.

    The movie theater shutdown cost some revenue, but more importantly, it looks like they overvalued the value of NCM's IP's and trademarks by over $400 million, which they calculated as a loss. Hence, a massive (but presumably one-time) loss was recorded. That being said, the company's gonna be under tremendous pressure and all expenditures are gonna be reviewed with a fine tooth comb for quite some time...
     
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2020
    spongy, DjB1, Tea Fragrance and 8 others like this.
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