Source: @Tencent Animation, Shilu World Wind Topic

In 2013, the 8th China Writers Rich List brand sub-list - "Comic Writers Rich List" was once again exclusively launched by West China Metropolis Daily.

Tianjin cartoonist Zhou Hongbin topped the list with an absolute advantage, and the royalty of 23 million yuan a year has been greatly improved compared with 18.15 million yuan last year. Guangdong cartoonist Zhu Bin once again occupied the top position with a royalty of 12 million yuan, and the third place was won by Shanghai cartoonist Mu Fengchun with a royalty of 7.7 million yuan.

On the surface, these figures seem so glamorous that it makes people feel that China's animation industry is now showing a thriving and booming appearance.

But behind these appearances, there are many things worth analyzing.

Side-by-side comparison: The comic industry is still too young

The Chinese Writers Rich List is an authoritative list that has been established since 06, and the rationality, fairness and accuracy of its data have been basically affirmed by all parties after years of development. Now, the release of the list every year is a domestic cultural event. It can not only attract the attention of thousands of viewers, but also attract key reports from authoritative media, including CCTV.

However, compared with the oldest qualified main list, the Chinese Writers Rich List, and the most topical online Writers Rich List, the Comic Writers Rich List is only a sub-list that has only been released since 11 years, and it has not yet reached their influence. Let's first compare the similarities and differences between these lists:

The pros and cons are obvious

First of all, just from the comic list itself, we can naturally see that China's comic industry is not as dead or completely unpromising as some commentaries say (often most of the people who hold this kind of view of the Chinese comic industry are precisely the so-called "high-end readers" who don't care about it at all, or rarely really understand domestic comics).

If you compare the three lists, it is not difficult to find the following characteristics:

One. The top spot income distance is not much different

It can be seen that Jiangnan is the top on the list of writers with 25.5 million, Tang Jiasanshao is the top on the list of online writers with 26.5 million, and Zhou Haibin is at the top of the comic book list with 23 million. The first place in the three groups of lists is more than 20 million, and there is no order of magnitude difference. This shows that these three groups of markets in China do not have major bottlenecks due to different attributes. That is, it verifies the old saying that the 36 lines are the champions - only if you have the strength, you can succeed in any line you do.

Two. There is a huge income gap between the rich and the poor on the comic list

The comic list has the lowest conditions for entering the list, and you can enter the list after one million. Even if the comic list only takes the top 15, it is already more difficult to enter the list than the other two lists, but in terms of the online list and the main list, this entry threshold can be regarded as 2 million and 4.5 million respectively. To put it another way, one-third of the works on the comic list will not be on the list if they are put on the online list.

This also makes the gap between the top and bottom of the comic list as much as 23 times, while the difference between the top and bottom of the main list is only more than 4 times. Even the list of rich online writers, which is a little more similar, is only about 15 times the difference.

So in a sense, we can regard Zhou Haibin, who topped the list with an income of 23 million, as a special case, and on the whole, there is still a big gap between China's comic industry and the text creation industry.

So can we conclude that China's comic industry has no future because of this? Not really.

Longitudinal comparison: the industry is young and progressing rapidly

Review the changes in the previous lists

The comic book writers rich list in the Chinese Writers Rich List is actually a young list. This list has only been established since 11 years, so it has only been released twice, and it can be fully listed for comparison.

2011 6th Chinese Writers Rich List "Comic Writers Rich List":

(Statistical period from 2000 to 2011)

Producer on the list: Wu Huaiyao

The comic book writer rich list was released

No. 1: Zhu Deyong 61.9 million

2nd place: 25 million meters

No. 3: Zhou Hongbin 18.3 million

No. 4: Mao Xiaole 17 million

No. 5: Ao Youxiang 13.5 million

No. 6: Zhu Bin 12 million

7th place: Hans 4.2 million

No. 8: Agui 4 million

No. 9: Yan Kai 3.1 million

No. 10: Chen Xiang 2.7 million

No. 11: Mu Fengchun 2.3 million

No. 12: Demon King S1.95 million

No. 13: Pig peach 1.7 million

No. 14: Ayew 1.5 million

No. 15: Xia Da 1 million

2012 The 7th Chinese Writers Rich List "Comic Writers Rich List":

No. 1: Zhou Hongbin 18.15 million

No. 2: Zhu Bin 13 million

No. 3: Zhu Deyong 7.1 million

No. 4: Ao Youxiang 7 million

No. 5: Mu Fengchun 6.8 million

No. 6: Mao Xiaole 4.8 million

No. 7: Demon King S3.15 million

No. 8: Agui 3 million

9th place: Jimmy 2.8 million

No. 10: Xia Da 1.8 million

No. 11: 1.7 million in 19 times

No. 12: Wang Peng 1.6 million

No. 13: Yan Kai 1.46 million

No. 14: Pocket chocolate 1.26 million

No. 15: 1.2 million in the quiet land

Note that the 11-year list is based on a total of 11 years from 2000 to 2011. On the one hand, the sales of more than 60 million sales led by Zhu Deyong, the first place, shows that there is indeed a continuous market in the field of comics, and on the other hand, if you look at the average of more than 10 years, the numbers are not exaggerated. In addition, half of the works on the entire list have not even sold more than 5 million in the past ten years, which shows that the comic market field is still very late, and this is a very young and potential market.

In the data of 12 years, Zhou Hongbin has 18.15 million at the top of the list, which is obviously larger than the average number of 10 years on the 11-year list. Moreover, the threshold for entering the list in one year has exceeded the cumulative amount in the past ten years, which is enough to allow the rapid growth of the entire industry now, and it can be said that the industry has initially formed a certain scale.

In 13 years, although the second place Zhu Deyong fell directly from the runner-up list because of no new work, Zhou Hongbin, who won the first place for a second time, greatly increased his income to 23 million in one year. Although the data of other rankings has not changed much, we can still think that the entire industry is still slowly improving and developing.

There is still a long way to go

Big Brothers are not a good reference

Every time the Chinese comics industry is mentioned, everyone inevitably compares Japanese comics with American comics, but in fact, the characteristics of the Chinese comics market itself have little in common with them, making it basically not of reference value in comparison.

For example, Eiichiro Oda, the author of "One Piece" of Japanese comics, also won the first place in Japan this year with 18 million copies sold, which is already the eighth consecutive crown of "One Piece" in the Japanese manga sales list. In the past, there have been media reports that Oda earns more than $24 million a year, a figure that is already comparable to the income of international sports superstars.

The income of Japanese manga artists is mainly royalties and licensing fees for peripheral development, and the manuscript fee can only be regarded as a small part. Therefore, the adaptation and animation of the work has had a great impact on the income of the work, whether it is the animation that in turn drives the sales of the original work or promotes the development of various derivatives such as peripherals.

As for American comics, it can be seen from the global comic book sales history that the various classic American hero comics in the most well-known and profitable Marvel, DC and other series do not seem to rely too much on the sales of the comics themselves.

Because there are no Superman, Batman, Avengers, or Spider-Man in the top 70 in the rankings. Among the non-children's works in Europe and the United States, only "X-Men", an old object from the 60s, can occupy the second place with 430 million copies. On the contrary, starting with "One Piece", which occupies the fourth place with 345 million copies, Japanese manga dominates most of the list.

Therefore, the main income of American comics comes from the adaptation of various commercial blockbusters that can sweep the world by relying on the developed film industry in the United States, and the value of this aspect is precisely beyond the reach of many Japanese comics with super high sales.

But in the final analysis, whether it is adapted into animation, making movies or distributing peripherals, it is obviously a routine that cannot be copied for Chinese comics at the moment, which is why it is of little value for the two big brothers to give us reference. Then we can only rely on ourselves to find a development routine of "socialism with Chinese characteristics".

For example, the webtoon field and its online animation market, which has only emerged in recent years, are a path that is very much in line with the current trend. Through the open environment of the Internet, you can get very relaxed restrictions on the subject matter, so that the author can be more bold and free to do it. However, the online platform is a new field for the comics industry that has just started, and the prospects and obstacles to its development are not small, and it is still unknown whether it can open up a new world.

You should look up to your own industry

Finally, let's go back to the list to summarize the other problems that exist in the comic industry itself:

1. It can be seen that most of the top few on the list are works of young age, which in itself shows that most of the basic readers of comics are primary school students and middle school students, and to a certain extent, it also reflects that the concept of the Chinese people's comic consumer market is still more for children.

2. Mu Fengchun's work "Douluo Continent" has changed from the 11th place in the first session to this year's Tanhua, which seems to be an impressive progress, but in fact, it will make people feel that it is just the credit of the original novel. So in addition to children's works, whether the original works of young people can really be strong has been drawn as a question mark.

3. A phenomenon on the Internet list: almost 8% of the works are from the starting point, and it is not an exaggeration to say that this is a rich list from the starting point. This is also reflected in the comic list: "Bosom Friend" alone also occupies half of the list.

4. In addition, there is only one author in the entire comic list, and authors under 30 account for one-third of the online list.

Problems such as the dominance of one family and the scarcity of fresh blood are inevitably not a good phenomenon for the diversified conditions required for the development of an industrial environment. These problems all reflect that the future road of the comic industry is still not too easy.

However, it is the readers themselves who can really affect the development of the entire industry the most. We can be pleased to see that compared with the almost one-sided criticism and depreciation in the past,More and more users have begun to pay attention to the development of Guoman。 The awareness of genuine copyright has also begun to improve slightly with the general trend - this is of course also due to the fact that the awareness of copyright in China has begun to change in recent two years, and the introduction of genuine copyright has begun to increase.

In short,With the foreshadowing of these prerequisites,We have reason to believe that the day when the quality of the works that are not inferior to the Japanese comics in Guoman should not be too far away。

epilogue

In the past, I often saw some children say, "Fortunately, I couldn't bear it back then, and I didn't apply for the related majors of animation hobbies, otherwise it is very likely that I will only be able to work as a migrant worker in painting outsourcing in the future." And today, when I saw someone in the group discussing the rich list of comic book writers, I exclaimed, "Why don't you go draw comics too!" "Sure enough, China's comic industry really needs someone to affirm itself. So, please have a little more "rich lists".