According to data from the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, the overseas revenue of China's online literature industry reached RMB 4.35 billion in 2023, marking a year-on-year growth of 7.06%—a sharp decline from the 39.87% growth seen in 2022.
Once a booming sector that attracted major players such as ByteDance and Xiaomi, the market is now showing clear signs of slowing down. As the industry enters a new phase, with the wheat separated from the chaff, which players are still vying for dominance in the global market?
01 | Beyond Infinity Technology (无限进制)
Founded in 2020, Beyond Infinity Technology traces its origins back to STARY (星阅科技), which launched its global-facing novel app Dreame as early as 2018.
To refine its market segmentation across different regions, Beyond Infinity Technology has also introduced Sueñovela for the Spanish-speaking market in Latin America, Yugto for Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and ЧитРом targeting Russian-speaking users.
According to AppGrowing, in the past three months, Beyond Infinity Technology ranked first among book and reference app developers in advertising volume across iOS and Android. The company is currently promoting six novel apps, with Dreame accounting for over 90% of its total marketing resources.
Dreame
Unlike most competitors that follow a "translate first, then create" strategy, Dreame adopted an original-content-first approach, recruiting native writers to produce original novels from the outset. This gave the platform a strong localization advantage, which was further amplified by the rise of the "stay-at-home economy" in 2020. In November of the same year, Apptopia projected that Dream's revenue had surged by an astonishing 583% year-on-year.
On the user acquisition front, Dreame has consistently pursued an aggressive marketing strategy, with over 960,000 ad creatives launched in the past year and daily ad placements peaking at 60,000—consistently outpacing competitors.
Geographically, the app's top three target markets are the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, solidifying its focus on developed English-speaking regions.
As for creatives, over 80% are images, with the creative direction centered around romantic and emotionally charged narratives. The ads often play on complex emotional entanglements to captivate users or create a dreamlike romantic atmosphere to fulfill their emotional cravings.
02 | New Reading (新阅时代)
Founded in 2020, New Reading primarily focuses on the English and Spanish-language markets.
Over the past three months, New Reading ranked second among book and reference app developers in advertising spend, with its flagship product GoodNovel leading the charge, alongside BueNovela, MegaNovel, and Filinovel.
GoodNovel
GoodNovel entered the market with a mix of UGC (user-generated content) original works and translated Chinese novels. Although a later entrant, it rapidly gained traction through aggressive paid acquisition, climbing into the top charts of book apps in over 50 English-speaking countries on Google Play within just five months.
Today, GoodNovel has surpassed Dreame on the U.S. iOS book app revenue charts, making it the top-grossing Chinese overseas novel app.
Its advertising remains substantial, with over 660,000 ad creatives launched in the past year, and daily ad placements once peaking at 26,000. Notably, GoodNovel and Dreame have exhibited synchronized spikes in ad spend, with both apps ramping up acquisition efforts at similar points in time.
Like Dreame, GoodNovel prioritizes English-speaking markets, with the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom as its top three regions.
However, when it comes to creative direction, GoodNovel takes a bolder, more provocative approach, often incorporating sensational, borderline-content, or bizarre elements.
A recurring motif is "wolf" or "werewolf" imagery, likely influenced by the prevalence of werewolf mythology in Western culture. One widely used video ad, for instance, transitions from a romantic scene of a boy confessing his love to a girl—only to cut to a majestic, intimidating wolf in a dramatic close-up.
Additionally, AppGrowing's newly launched “Top Novels” feature shows that GoodNovel heavily promotes specific book titles. Over the past three months, the platform’s top three most-advertised novels have all been werewolf-themed, with the most popular, The Alpha’s Contract, receiving nearly 12,000 ad placements.
BueNovela
Catering to Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking markets, BueNovela topped Latin America's book app user spending rankings in the first half of 2021, according to data.ai.
New Reading continues to allocate significant marketing resources to BueNovela, with 240,000+ ad creatives launched in the past year and peak daily placements exceeding 8,000.
Interestingly, despite its focus on non-English markets, the United States ranks first in its regional ad distribution, followed by Brazil, Portugal, and Spain.
BueNovela's creatives closely mirror GoodNovel's, with a 58% video to 42% image ratio, and even content overlap between the two platforms.
Currently, AppGrowing tracks over 300 novels actively promoted on BueNovela, most of which are in Spanish or Portuguese. The most heavily advertised book in the past three months, Chefe irresistível: sucumbindo ao seu toque, a CEO romance, has over 10,000 ad placements, with 99% of its audience being female, particularly within the 25-34 age range.
03 | MoboReader (畅读科技)
Compared to its younger competitors, MoboReader—established in 2014—is one of the earliest Chinese companies to expand into overseas online literature. The company began its global expansion in 2017.
Over the past three months, MoboReader ranked fourth among book app advertisers, with its flagship app MoboReader leading, alongside Manobook, Lera, Litrad, Kifflire, and others.
MoboReader
Launched in 2017, MoboReader gained momentum only in 2022. That March, data.ai reported that the app climbed 14 spots on the non-gaming revenue rankings, helping MoboReader break into the top six publishing companies by monthly revenue.
MoboReader has taken a more measured advertising approach, with 230,000+ ad creatives over the past year, exhibiting notable spikes during key seasonal periods (early year, summer, and year-end).
Its top markets remain the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, though the Philippines—where English is an official language—also ranks in the top five.
Like GoodNovel, MoboReader's creatives heavily feature werewolf tropes and "beauty & the beast" dynamics, leveraging contrast and tension to captivate users.
Despite focusing on English-speaking markets, MoboReader also promotes non-English titles, including Unzerbrechliche Liebe, a German-language tragic romance novel that has garnered over 1,200 ad placements in the past three months.
04 | Fengmingxuan Technology（凤鸣轩科技）
Originally known as Fengmingxuan Novel Network, one of China's leading romance fiction platforms, the company was acquired by MoboReader in 2018 and became its wholly owned subsidiary.
According to AppGrowing, Fengmingxuan Technology is currently promoting three key fiction apps in global markets: Amolivro, ReadNow, and Novella.
ReadNow & Amolivro
Launched in 2019, ReadNow is Fengmingxuan's flagship product. Initially, it focused on the Southeast Asian market, with primary ad placements in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. However, the app has since shifted its focus towards Western markets, with the U.S. now accounting for the largest share of its advertising spend. That said, the distribution across key regions remains relatively balanced, indicating a "global reach" strategy.
In contrast, Amolivro targets niche language markets. Over the past year, its advertising has been primarily concentrated in Portugal and Brazil, with both regions accounting for over 20% of total ad volume.
The marketing creative strategies of these two products also reflect their differing operational approaches. According to AppGrowing's "Stage Analysis" function, the most exposed ad creatives for both apps are image-based.
However, ReadNow's ads predominantly feature comic-style illustrations with no strong localization elements, using English-language text to appeal to multiple markets simultaneously.
On the other hand, Amolivro's ads incorporate localization elements, including culturally relevant clothing styles in imagery and Portuguese-language copy, making them more tailored to regional audiences.
05 | Yuewen（阅文集团）
As one of China's leading Online novel platforms, Yuewen has long been a key player in global markets. In recent years, the company has also been actively exploring new verticals, including short dramas and AI-generated content.
As early as 2023, Xiaoxiang Academy, a Yuewen subsidiary, launched "Dream Island," an AI-driven novel feature that allows users to create custom virtual boyfriends and generate personalized storylines using generative AI technology.
Currently, Yuewen's global fiction portfolio includes Webnovel and Chereads, with Webnovel serving as its primary product.
Webnovel
As the international version of Qidian (起点中文网), Webnovel was one of the earliest Chinese Online novel platforms to expand overseas. Following Yuewen's acquisition of Gravity Tales in 2018, Webnovel's strategy shifted from translating Chinese works for foreign markets to fostering local original authors, deepening its localization efforts.
According to AppGrowing, Webnovel significantly ramped up its ad spending from late September last year, culminating in a major year-end push in December, when daily ad placements peaked at over 3,000.
Webnovel employs a "global reach" strategy, with a relatively balanced distribution of ads across regions. Its top three markets by ad volume are Brazil, Canada, and the U.S..
In terms of creative strategy, Webnovel's most frequently used ad creatives are image-based, and AI-generated content is increasingly being incorporated as a supplementary element. The key visual themes in these ads are closely tied to popular novel genres, particularly those favored by Western female readers, such as werewolf romances, ABO (Alpha/Beta/Omega) dynamics, and domineering billionaire stories.
06 | The Shifting Landscape of Online Novel
Over the past year, the global Online novel market has faced slowing growth, consolidation of top traffic sources, and AI-driven disruptions to traditional content creation models. These shifts are increasingly pushing the market from a platform-centric competition to a content-centric one.
In response to this evolving landscape, AppGrowing has recently launched a "Top Novels" feature, designed to help publishers track trending high-traffic novels and better navigate the next phase of competition—where content, rather than platforms, will define success.
