Digital reading in China:
Internet literatures
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Miranssa Guo
University of Iowa
Abstract:
People's reading habits are
affected by modern technology, while people get use to read on their electronic
devices, printed books and magazines are facing great financial problems. This
research is focusing on a reading that almost killed paper book publisher in
China which is Chinses internet novels. This survey set six questions to
people, collecting data about their reading habits and preferences, so by
analyzing the data, the features of Chinese internet novels will be clear to
see. By doing the survey, people can know that Chinese internet novels highly
developed through novel websites, and people love to read and spend money on it
ignore the gender and age. Internet novel has already become a part of people’s
life in China.
Introduction
Reading habits change a
lot around the world recently. More and more people start to use cellphone
reading books instead of holding actual books. Even for people older than
forty-five who cannot adapt modern technology as easy as young people, they
still learn and get use to reading books on smart phone. This habit changing
affect many groups of people because since almost everyone has smartphones now,
they don’t like to read paper books anymore. Many researchers investigated
people’s reading behavior’s changing, “Reading behavior in the digital
environment” (2005) and “Beyond print: reading digitally” (2001) both suggests
that people spent more time on reading digital text. People like to quick
scanning the passages showing on the screen instead of reading words one by
one. It means magazines, newspapers and especially publishing novels are facing
a severe financial problem. While modern people have more and more pressure in
their daily life, they do not like reading literatures anymore because most of
the great pieces are tragedy. People intend to read some online novels to relaxing
themselves. And because online novels are cheaper, easier to find, having more
amount of storage and more convenience to read anywhere on smartphones. Writers
don’t want to publish their books after they finish the whole book, either. As
far as I know, only China has such a big change in recent years. By
investigation how people usually reading books can let other countries’ people
know another possibility to develop their reading and writing ecosystem in the
future.
Before starting doing
the research, it is important to define “online novels”. Online novels are
novels that have been uploaded to the website. Writers who write online novels
must upload new chapters every day until they finish the whole book. By
uploading new chapters, they can earn moneys every day because readers have to
pay for each chapter after free trail readings (a dollar can buy seventy
chapters). There are many famous websites in China, running over twenty years.
Categories in those websites are clear and various. In research “Gender
differences in the online reading environment” written by Ziming Liu and
Xiaobin Huang (2008), male readers and female readers have different
preferences when they choose books (616). And because different genders also
have different taste in story type, novel websites designed gender categories
as well.
There are not many
Western scholars tried to study how the internet novel system working in China.
The few reports on newspaper were not able to show the importance of internet
literature to their readers. In the book “Internet Literature in China”, Michel
Hockx (2015) mentioned that Western media tend to underestimate or choose to
ignore some important features in Chines internet literature. Michel evaluated
the internet literature as “perfect the evaluation systems and encouragement
mechanisms for cultural products.” Internet novel takes an important role in
modern Chinese literature development. Writing internet novel becomes many
people’s dreaming job. By knowing people’s reading habits can help writers
narrow down the types of stories they can write. Therefore, this research not
only can give people from Western countries understanding the big picture of
Chinese internet novel current status, but also can help writers knowing how to
earn the most of readers among general public.
Methods
Participants: People how will do
this survey are random people through a wide age range in both genders. The
online survey is open to anyone and share to the social-media so more people
can see and help to do the research. This survey was plan to collect no more
than a hundred people’s responses, but a hundred and twenty seven people
participated in this research.
Procedure: This survey is totally
anonymous. Through the survey, they have six questions to answer. First, they
need to say their gender and age (two questions). Then, they are going to
answer, “Do you prefer digital or printed books?” There are three choices
provided: digital, printed and both. The next question is an open question: How
much do you spend on reading online every month? They can write down the
average costs and I will category the numbers in different sections based on
the result. The fifth question is “where you usually find books”. Novel
websites, Wechat, Kindle and others would be four options they have. The final
question is “what genres you are prefer to read”. People can choose more than
one answers in this question and no more than five. Ten different popular
genres will be listed and people can write down the genre I did not list in
survey.
Data Analysis: After receiving all the responses, the importance rank of six
questions in this research became clearer. Only four questions can directly
show the results, the rest two questions could only emphasize the result that already
have. Three Pie charts and three bar graphs will show the options’ percentages
in different questions, giving the visual results that help the analysis making
more sense.
Results
The results from this survey will show in
five sections. Different sections will show different aspects and features of
internet novel in China. There will be a data conclusion and comparison after
these five sections.
The way people reading:
Figure 1.1: This figure based on the response of
people’s reading preference.
People who answer this question based on
their personal experience in daily reading. The question is that do you prefer
reading digital books or printed books. Clearly, there are over nighty two
percent of people chose e-book, and only near eight percent of people who still
like to read printed books.
Age and gender:
Figure
1.2: This figure shows the age percentage of people who did this survey.
Figure 1.3: This one shows
the gender percentage of people who did this survey.
Figure 1.2 and 1.3 cannot suggest
anything by their own, but they can provide a useful data related with other
questions’ results and have a further conclusion. Based on the figure 1.2, the
biggest group of people did this survey through nineteen to twenty-five. Base
on the figure 1.3, over fifty-five percent of people did this survey are male.
But the difference between gender is not very large.
How much people spend on reading:
Figure 1.4: This figure was
concluded by the researcher.
The question for this graph is how much
you spend on reading (online) every month. This is not a multiple-choice
question but a short answer question. People typed their answers under the
question. After collecting all the answers, I gave those data a rough range,
then made this graph. Based on this graph, over forty people who did this
survey spend twenty to forty Yuan (Chinese money) each month, about thirty
people spend less than ten Yuan every month. Starting from fifty, the price is
more expensive, the people are less willing to spend on reading every month.
Less than ten people who would like to spend over a hundred Yuan on reading for
each month.
Methods that people reading internet novels:
Figure 1.5: This figure
based on the response that where people would read internet novels.
This graph shows that more than a hundred
and twenty people who did this survey would like to read internet novels on
novel websites. Websites are the most common place that people would like to
choose. Though Apps like Wechat and Lofter could provide many original works
that people love to read, based on the data, these two are not very famous like
websites. About forty people also use kindle to read. Because people are able
to choose more than one options in this question, we can suggest that many
people use more than one methods to read novels.
Genres:
Figure 1.6: This figure
based on the result that what kind of novel people like to read.
This question is about what genres of
story people like to read, and this question again could choose more than one
answer and there is no maximum limitation. The first three popular genres are
Xuanhuan, Wangyou and Danmei (Xuanhuan is one type of Eastern Fantasy, Wangyou
is Video game and Danmei means love story between men). Except Danmei is a
genre under female’s preferred category, other two genres are both from male’s
preferred category. Xuanhuan is clearly a genre that both male and female
reader’s favorite.
Discussion
Summary:
Based on the data has been collected, young
people whose age between nineteen to thirty-five are major readers for internet
novels. These people are willing to spend money on reading. Normally, about
thirty Yuan is enough for people reading a whole month. Spend less than thirty
may not have enough reading or may read the stealing free version online, spend
more than thirty may read too much. For people who spend more than a hundred on
reading online must have addict on reading. Young people like to read novels on
websites because websites have a large number of writers. Wechat and Lofter are
free reading apps that people writing on in only for fun. Most of the
fun-novels are coming from those two apps. The preference of stories, it is
interesting that female readers usually like to read male’s categories, but
male readers are not really interested to tries female’s preference list.
That’s why Xuanhuan genre has so many readers.
Limitation:
Questions in this survey are too simple
and only stay on surface. The date has been collected are not easy to
understand and may not make any sense to people who do not know Chinese
internet literature. Data can be analyzed together, but there was not direct
clue show the connection between different graphs. The biggest limitation of
this survey is that questions do not have enough logical connections in
between.
Implication:
This survey can imply the popularity of
internet novel in China now. Because many people who are elder than thirty even
forty years old know and read it on their phone. Even this part of readers
still not familiar with apps’ using and may not accept paying online to read
books have better quality, but they already started to learn to adapt the new
reading environment. And people’s favorite genre can also suggest that female
readers always have a wider acceptable to the stories than male readers. Based
on the methods questions, people can know that websites control the modern
internet literature produce, it may not easy to change in the rest few years.
Future Research:
This survey has a lot of insufficiencies
need to be fixed, and there are a lot of future research can do based on this.
Researches like “how many TV series come from internet novels”, “how many
smartphone games come from internet novels” and “how Xuanhuan novels’ pattern
change in recent years” can all become the next research.
Reference
Brown, G. J. (2001). Beyond print: reading digitally. Library & Information Science Abstracts
(LISA), 19(4), 390-399.
Liu, Z. (2005). Reading behavior in the digital
environment: Changes in reading behavior over the past ten years. Journal of Documentation, 61(6), 700-712.
Hockx, M. (2015). Internet Literature in China. Columbia University Press.
Liu, Z., & Huang, X. (2008). Gender differences in
the online reading environment. Journal
of Documentation, 64(4), 616-626.
