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Thursday, March 19, 2009

Halvsies Online in China


A booming literary market yielding about $15 million a year (half going to the writer) can be found online in China according to GalleyCat, there's a digital book website called Shanda, which has 25 million literary readers.   Can you imagine 25 million literary anything in the U.S.?  That's how many people watched American Idol last night.  Face it: we're a culture of junk and celebrity.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Totally. And Alexis Grace should so have made it into the top 10.

Writer, Rejected said...

Girls with pink hair never make it through. America hates pink-haired rocker chicks...and literary novels.

Anonymous said...

Idol at least has a better record of contestants finding success. Only one couple of all the Bachelor/Bachelorette seasons has ever gotten married or even stayed together. I know Idol is corny, but it's kind of cool to see talented people who come from nothing make it big :)

Anonymous said...

I could imagine 25 million literary americans if we had over 1 billion people.

Writer, Rejected said...

Don't be such a smarty pants. The point is that: 33 million people (me included) watch AI when we could be reading your novel instead.

Anonymous said...

does shanda take works in english?

NM said...

Shanda's "literary works" are generally reader-generated material. Shanda is most well-known as being a MMPORG company (think World of Warcraft, etc.)

"Literary works" doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. That is, there is plenty of "junk and celebrity" on Shanda as well.

Don't be a sucker for the word "literary", especially not when the word emerges out of a translation.

Anonymous said...

And shanda in Yiddish means shame.