Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. is beefing up its effort to further set foot in the country's booming online literature sector as it recently opened a new company in the Hubei Province capital, Wuhan.
The new firm, which was established by the tech powerhouse's literature unit China Reading Ltd., aims to manage the adaptations of the popular works of Tencent's pool of online writers.
The company will generally deal with intellectual property-related issues that may arise from the sale as well as the use of Tencent's original materials.
This move comes after Jiang Chenzhou's "The Journey of Flower" generated 2 billion yuan worth of commercial revenue when its TV drama adaptation landed on Chinese screens.
For China Reading vice president Zhu Jia, "[their] goal is to promote writers in the way we present movie stars."
"The new company will function as an agent to take care of cooperation deals with publishing houses, movie companies, game developers and music enterprises," Zhu added.
China Reading is also the owner of one of China's largest online literature platforms.
According to the firm's website, it already has a library of 10 million original books and a pool of four million online writers.
For Li You, an official at Wuhan Business Incubator, where the new unit will be based, this recent unveiling "will attract more online writers and entertainment companies to [them], which will help the city become a copyright trading center for original Web-based books."
China has seen online original literature boom into one of the country's most valuable intellectual property sources.
"Intellectual property is like mining. A great deal of wealth can be dug out of entertainment, and there are huge commercial opportunities to come out of it," He Yunpeng, games firm Hubei Manzu Game Co. Ltd. CEO, remarked.