Chapter 317: The Expansion of Zhoushan Literature and the Rise of Chinese Comics
After returning to the capital, Liu Zhou rested for two days and then went back to work.

First of all, regarding Zhoushan literature, there are two main things that Liu Zhou needs to decide.

The most important thing is that Zhoushan Literature’s president Qu He proposed to acquire Shanda Literature.

Shanda's Chen Tianqiao suffered the same setbacks as in the past with the Shanda Box. The Shanda Box, which cost over 1 billion yuan to develop, only sold a few hundred units in the end.

Among these hundreds of units sold, many were purchased by people who were related to Chen Tianqiao or who bought them for his sake.

There aren't many actual sales.

This failure dealt a heavy blow to Shanda. Not only did the Shanda Box project fail, but Shanda’s core gaming business also gradually declined.

Up to now, the only game Shanda can produce is Legend.

This game was released seven years ago. Although there have been multiple versions, people are getting tired of it no matter how many times it has been revised.

Shanda's gaming business, which it was proud of before, has already been overtaken by Penguin and NetEase, and even Sina Legu and Sohu Changyou are catching up.

Chen Tianqiao has also fallen into anxiety due to the company's development and often has headaches. Now he no longer manages the company's business.

Liu Zhou and Chen Tianqiao were also friends, so they visited him several times.

Compared to the confident and high-spirited look he showed when I first met him, when I went to see him recently, he looked obviously less energetic.

I don't know if it's because of a change in each other's mentality, or because of the passage of time, but when they met again, they had fewer topics to talk about and couldn't chat and laugh like before.

Liu Zhou felt a little regretful about this. When Liu Zhou was facing the pressure from Liu Chuanchuan and other people from the Taishan Society, Chen Tianqiao stood firmly behind him.

Since then, Liu Zhou has always treated him as a friend.

Now that the two of them are in this state, Liu Zhou knows that only when Chen Tianqiao regains his strength can their relationship be restored to normal.

As for Shanda Group, its development seems to be struggling because of Chen Tianqiao's gradual letting go and the current general formation of the Internet landscape.

Especially because of the emergence of Liu Zhou, Sina's collective rise not only made it compete with Shanda in games, but even Shanda Literature, which was booming at this time in history, became half-dead.

This has also led to Shanda Group having a more difficult time now than at any time in history.

Therefore, Shanda’s top management also decided to cut some non-key businesses to save costs.

Due to the failure of Shanda Box, Shanda Literature immediately became a non-key business, and the development of Shanda Literature has not met the company's expectations.

Therefore, Shanda’s top management is also preparing to cut off Shanda Literature.

Qu He wanted to acquire Shanda Literature because he saw that Shanda Group had the intention to sell it.

In fact, although Shanda Literature seems to be half-dead, that is only relative to Zhoushan Literature.

When Shanda Literature was first established, Chen Tianqiao invested huge amounts of money and spent a lot of time and effort. So far, it is the second-ranked online literature website in the field of online literature, second only to Zhoushan Literature.

Although Digital Station has been established for two years, it is still not as good as Shanda Literature. As for Hengda, the main challenger of Singularity in the future, it was only established this year.

Therefore, if Zhoushan Literature can acquire Shanda Literature, then Zhoushan Literature will become the absolute overlord in the field of online literature, occupying more than 95% of the market share.

As long as Zhoushan Literature does not run into any problems in its operations and does not drive away some top writers like Shanda Literature did in history, coupled with Zhoushan Literature's unique ability to develop derivative copyrights.

Perhaps Zhoushan Literature can really achieve a monopoly in the field of online literature.

Even if it cannot monopolize, a certain Heng cannot develop to the scale of the original time and space.

So since it was Shanda Group that took the initiative to sell Shanda Literature, Liu Zhou considered Qu He's proposal and agreed to it.

Zhoushan's acquisition of Shanda Literature now is just like Yuewen's acquisition of a certain Heng in the future. It can not only expand market share, but also greatly increase the valuation of Zhoushan Literature.

If that's the case, why don't you agree?

Otherwise, if Shanda Literature falls into the hands of Penguin, Zhoushan Literature may face a more powerful opponent.

Currently, Shanda Literature’s valuation is approximately RMB 300 million, but Shanda’s external offer is 500 million.

Liu Zhou originally thought that the acquisition of Zhoushan Wenxue would require some financial support from him, but he did not expect Qu He to be so tough and directly stated that Zhoushan Wenxue could bear the cost on his own.

From the establishment of Zhoushan Literature to the present, Liu Zhou has always invested money in it and has never received any share of money from Zhoushan Literature.

But in fact, Zhoushan Literature started to make profits from the second year.

Now, taking advantage of the last afterglow of youth literature magazines, the sales of "Under the Banyan Tree" magazine have reached its peak, with each issue selling about 500,000 copies.

Now "Under the Banyan Tree" has become a youth magazine as famous as "Mengya", "Yilin" and "Reader".

In addition, all other websites are profitable, so after several years of accumulation, Zhou Shan Wenxue has more than 200 million yuan in his account.

The only relatively large expense for Zhoushan Literature recently is the establishment of an animation department and a comics platform.

But the animation division has also started to make a profit.

During this summer vacation, Zhoushan Animation’s first online-novel-adapted animation "Zhu Xian" was officially launched.

Later online anime are usually updated with one episode per week, but video websites have not yet become the main viewing platform for people, so the main broadcasting platform for anime is on TV. The famous Qin's Moon was broadcast on TV last year.

If it is broadcast on TV, it cannot be one episode per week. Domestic audiences are not used to watching weekly broadcasts. If it is one episode per week, the plot will be complete by then.

Therefore, "Zhu Xian" is not broadcast weekly, but is divided into several seasons. One season of the animation is produced at one time and follows the normal broadcast process. If the effect is good, the second season will be produced.

Since weekly broadcasting is not realistic, it would cost too much to produce the entire book in one go, and if it doesn't become popular, the losses would be huge, so dividing it into several seasons is the safest and most reliable.

In order to promote the reputation of Zhoushan Animation, the first season of "Zhu Xian" produced more than 40 episodes, each episode is about 20 minutes long, and the plot ends with the death of Bi Yao, which is full of sincerity.

However, because it is broadcast on TV, the plots in the animation must be positive.

Even a work like "The Legend of the Seven Heroes of Rainbow Cat and Blue Rabbit" could be reported, let alone online novels, where having multiple female protagonists is standard.

Therefore, it is inevitable that some modifications need to be made to some plots of the novel "Zhu Xian".

Anyone who has read online novels knows that many of the plots that make people feel happy are actually unlikely to appear on TV.

Especially in this period, the supervision of online literature is not very strict, and many online articles are written as pornographic as pornographic literature.

For example, the famous online novels such as "Skyspeed Star Trace" and "Crazy God" have such weird plots.

On the contrary, "Zhu Xian" is better and does not require too many modifications.

The animation "Zhu Xian" was carefully created by Zhoushan Animation. The quality is not bad. Coupled with a large fan base, the results are very good. The most important thing is that it is widely discussed on the Internet.

From last year's "The Legend of Qin" to this year's "Zhu Xian", two popular domestic animations have appeared one after another, making many animation fans shout "the rise of domestic animation".

However, although "Zhu Xian" is popular, it cannot be compared with children's animations such as "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf", but at least it has recovered its costs and even made a profit.

Although it’s not much, at least it’s profitable.

At the same time, this is also the second thing Qu He wants to report to Liu Zhou, that is, whether to continue to concentrate on producing the second season of "Zhu Xian" or to produce another animation at the same time.

Since Qu He reported this matter, his attitude was very clear. He was definitely inclined to start the production of another animation.

Liu Zhou also understood Qu He’s idea. If the animation of "Zhu Xian" could be successful, it would prove that the path of adapting online literature into comics was feasible.

There are several online novels in Zhoushan Literature that have become popular. Although they may not be as popular as "Zhu Xian", they also have many fans.

If Zhoushan Animation has enough time, it will of course continue its efforts and start another comic adaptation of a web novel.

Liu Zhou also agreed with Qu He's opinion on this and even helped him finalize the novel to be adapted from the comic.

"Holy grave"!
Dong Ge’s famous work.

"Shenmu" can be said to be the most popular online novel after "Zhu Xian" and it is very popular on the Internet.

The reason why Liu Zhou chose "Shenmu" was not only because it was popular, but also because the novel was full of positive energy, and it wouldn't feel too weird to adapt the heroine into one.

Historically, because Dong Ge had his own channels, he sold some other copyrights of "Shenmu".

This made Shanda’s top management at the time very unhappy.

This also led to the fact that "The Realm of Immortality", which people later called Dong Ge's most profound work and which he carefully polished, received very few recommendations, or even almost no recommendations.

Therefore, the book "The World of Immortality" has never been very popular.

However, in this life, Zhoushan Literature had detailed standards and requirements for the copyright of works from the very beginning, so it did not let "God's Tomb" slip away.

But Zhoushan Literature did not let others make less money. In addition to the development of animation, Liu Zhou also plans to push Sina Legu to develop the online game "Shenmu".

Combined with the development of other copyrights, Zhoushan Literature allows authors to earn much more money than if they sold their works themselves.

Therefore, as the new project is confirmed, it is still necessary to invest more money in Zhoushan Animation.

In addition to Zhoushan Animation, comic platforms also need financial support from the group company.

However, the comic platform relies on the traffic from novels, and its losses are getting smaller and smaller, so it does not need to invest too much money.

After deducting the expenses of these two departments, Zhou Shanwenxue still has about 200 million yuan in his hands.

Although Shanda Literature offered a price of 500 million yuan, it was still negotiable, and in the end the deal was probably around 400 million yuan.

Zhou Shanwenxue still has a half gap, but Qu He decided to fill the gap of 200 million through loans.

Zhou Shan Wenxue’s current valuation is over 1 billion yuan, so there is no problem in getting a loan of 200 million yuan.

Zhoushan Literature is not just a website, it also has physical assets, so banks are very happy to lend money.

Seeing that Qu He already had an idea, Liu Zhou let him do it according to his own ideas after expressing his opinions and suggestions.

Sina is developing steadily now and there is nothing to worry about. After finishing Zhou Shan's literary work, Liu Zhou finally came to Golden Harvest Group.

Jiahe’s affairs are what Liu Zhou really needs to worry about.

(End of this chapter)