The nation that invented paper is now in the midst of an online-publishing boom that is making fortunes, changing lives and creating a truly populist literature for the first time.
Police officer Li gets barely four hours of sleep a night. At night he is Red Eyes, author of online hardboiled police novels. To appease his 20.000-strong fan base, he must churn out 8.000 Chinese characters a day.
Revenues from his online writing nets him three times his official salary.
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The succes of online publishing is directly related to the failure of China's straightjacketed book business. The communist state has long regarded books with suspicion. In the offline world, a manuscript can only be published after censors scour each page for hidden references to sex, politics or other taboo topics.
(c) Hannah Beech, Time
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