Launched just over half a year ago, "Hongzhu Stories", a paid novel platform under ByteDance, announced that it will be shut down.

The paid novel app "Hongzhu Stories" under ByteDance is about to cease operations.

On July 12, "Hongzhu Stories" released an in-app service shutdown notice, announcing a phased suspension of operations from July 9 to August 17. According to the announcement, paid services including membership top-ups and book coin purchases will be halted starting July 9, content updates will cease and automatic refunds for user assets will be initiated on July 10, with servers officially shutting down on August 17.

On July 13, a reporter from Jiemian News opened the app and found that content was displaying normally, but clicking on "Membership Top-up" showed the message "System maintenance in progress, top-ups are temporarily unavailable".

App store listings show that both the developer and operator of this app are Jiangxi Bihui Moying Technology Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary indirectly controlled by ByteDance, fully owned by Beijing Bimo Liuxiang Technology Co., Ltd.

Different from ByteDance's free novel app Fanqie Novel, Hongzhu Stories focuses on paid reading. This novel app was quietly launched at the end of 2025.

The homepage of the Hongzhu app inherits Fanqie's minimalist style, divided into three sections: "Recommendations", "Novels", and "Short Stories". It also features a membership zone and a free zone, where only a small number of free novels are available, while all other novels require payment to access. Previously, the monthly membership fee for Hongzhu Novels was 25 yuan, offering benefits such as ad-free unlimited reading of premium content in the membership zone and a 20% discount on paid books.

According to the official announcement, starting from July 9, 2026, the Hongzhu Stories app will stop membership top-ups and renewals. Users who have enabled auto-renewal will have their recurring payments automatically suspended, with no manual cancellation required. All paid services including book coin purchases, and purchases of individual chapters or full novels will be discontinued.

Starting from July 10, 2026, all content consumption scenarios such as novel updates within the app will be halted, with only customer service remaining operational. Automatic refunds for users' remaining assets will begin (to be completed within 15 working days), no manual application is required, and refund details will be notified via in-app messages.

Starting from August 17, 2026, full-platform operations of the Hongzhu Stories app will be completely terminated, with servers officially shut down. From that date onwards, users will no longer be able to log in to the app or access related services.

In contrast to Hongzhu Stories, which closed down just half a year after its launch, Fanqie Novel has rapidly expanded its market presence and secured a leading market scale since its 2019 launch, leveraging a free-with-ads business model.

According to data from QuestMobile, as of February 2026, Fanqie Free Novel had approximately 260 million monthly active users, representing a 1.3% year-on-year increase, ranking first in the digital reading industry in terms of user base. On the content side, Fanqie Novel currently has over 600,000 signed authors, more than 780,000 signed works, and a copyright library containing over 1.5 million titles, forming a large and diverse content creation ecosystem.

In fact, as early as 2021, ByteDance began experimenting with paid novels outside of its free novel model.

In the second half of 2021, ByteDance launched a quick app product called "Jiudu Novels" in the Huawei AppGallery, positioned as a paid novel platform where users need to spend book coins to read the next chapter. It also introduced a "monthly novel reading" feature, allowing users unlimited reading within the monthly subscription period.

Subsequently, ByteDance launched more than ten paid novel apps including Cuiguo Novels, Zukan Novels, and Bingke Novels one after another, but these experiments did not yield satisfactory results. All these paid novel apps were successively removed from app stores between the end of 2023 and 2024. It was not until May this year that ByteDance launched the "Hongzhu Dudu" mini-program on WeChat, which is considered the predecessor of Hongzhu Novels.

From a business model perspective, the dual-track structure of free and paid offerings in the online literature market has become increasingly clear. The paid segment is represented by China Literature Group's Qidian Chinese Network, which has built a mature creator ecosystem through systems such as VIP payment, author welfare programs, and platinum author recognition, leading the industry in IP adaptation capabilities. Blockbuster IPs such as *Douluo Dalu* and *Joy of Life* all originated from this platform.

In terms of competitive landscape, the market has formed a pattern of "one dominant player with multiple strong competitors". According to the "2025 China Online Literature IP Platform Ranking" released by iMedia Rankings, China Literature Group firmly holds the top position in the industry with a 35% market share, followed by Fanqie Novel and Qimao Novel in second and third place respectively. Fanqie Novel has 218 million monthly active users, representing a 35.5% year-on-year increase; Qimao Novel has accumulated over 300 million users, occupying a leading share of the free reading market.

Notably, short drama adaptations are becoming the most profitable monetization channel for online literature platforms. From January to May 2026, the total transaction value of online literature IP licensing for short drama adaptations exceeded 1.8 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of over 120%. The three major platforms of China Literature Group, Fanqie Novel, and Qimao Free Novel account for more than 70% of the market share. Fanqie Novel offers adaptation rewards of up to 3 million yuan for a single short drama, and its "Million IP Protection Plan" provides a minimum guaranteed copyright fee of 2 million yuan.

According to the "2025 China Online Literature Development Research Report" released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in April 2026, the scale of China's online literature reading market reached 50.21 billion yuan in 2025, representing a 16.6% year-on-year increase. The total number of authors reached 32.694 million, with 4.186 million new works added throughout the year. Meanwhile, the online literature IP adaptation market experienced explosive growth, reaching 367.61 billion yuan with a 23.13% year-on-year increase, far exceeding previous market expectations.

This article is from "Jiemian News", reported by Jiang Yiman, and published with authorization from 36Kr.