chinese web novels
Consequently, more and more internet authors now prefer web to print publishing. To promote sales, publishing companies often require the author to keep a novel’s ending exclusive to its print version. In the past, this had resulted in the online organized demonstrations of angry readers who felt cheated into spending money on the print version. Now, according to Li, the web gives online authors enough confidence and financial support to refuse print-exclusive endings.
Within China’s communist dictatorship, this gradual slide of the publishing and entertainment industries toward the web clearly carries political implications. The internet offers a boundless space, relatively sheltered from the rigid control of government censors. The question is whether this degree of expressive freedom will penetrate into the real world.
For the moment, it seems not. Owing to the official ban on superstition, before Ghost Blows Out the Light could be sold in print, Zhang had to go back and erase every single appearance of a supernatural being in his novel.