Writers on China’s largest online publishing platforms stopped updating their stories on Tuesday in a protest against Tencent-owned China Literature. Writers referred to the one-day strike as “May-5-No-Updating-Day,” which was organized in opposition to contract clauses that writers claim diminish author rights.
The biggest complaint among those shared on social media is that China Literature’s contracts force authors to hand over copyrights to their work, local media reported. In a statement published Sunday, the company denied many of the authors’ claims, but it admitted that it “made mistakes and detours.” The China Literature Group recently went through a management reshuffle with CEO Wu Wenhui being replaced by Cheng Wu. The company also said that a meeting will be held with writers on Wednesday. Abacus reached out to the company for comment and will update if we receive a response.
China Literature is China's largest online publisher with several different platforms. It has previously expressed an ambition to become “China’s Marvel” by adapting the stories published to its sites. It has also been working on plans to expand outside the country with its English platform Webnovel. The company reportedly has 7.8 million writers, many of whom push out serialized web novels for online consumption. Some contracts even require writers to publish a certain number of words each month.