“ The content craftsmen lost to the content porters, and the traffic producers lost to the traffic stealers. ”
With the prosperity of the self-media business, people often remember the phrase " good content brings its own traffic ", but ignore the following sentence: good content deserves respect that matches its cost!
Yesterday, Xinbang tweeted “Reminder! A group of self-media people received a lawyer's letter... How to avoid image infringement? | New List Observation", explores the topic of image infringement that has been hotly debated in the self-media recently. After reading the article, many people suddenly realized: it turns out that copyright awareness is equally important in the new media environment.
What should some people do when they are upset about “accidentally infringing rights” when using pictures? Some people are also worried about infringement, as the content they worked hard on was "taken away openly".
We have talked a lot about how to avoid infringement, but on the other hand, copyright is also to protect the producers of original content. After all, too many people have paid high costs for high-quality content.
How expensive is this content? We talked to the three content teams from three perspectives: comics, pictures and text.
How much does new media comic content cost?
One thousand yuan for one comic
As a representative of new media comic content creation, Visual Magazine’s official account “Girl Rabbit” produces comics suitable for new media dissemination every day.
How much does a comic like this cost? We asked Sha Xiaopi, a member of the New List Club and founder of Visual Magazine, and he replied: The average production cost is about one thousand per article .
The main cost is labor cost. Sha Xiaopi said that Visual Magazine has 6 copywriters and 6 painters, and is still recruiting. The ideal situation is to have 20 people.
Judging from the data, the dissemination effect of "Girl Rabbit" is good enough, but it also faces the problem of being taken away without a word. When asked about the copyright infringement, Sha Xiaopi said: "We have original pictures on WeChat . It's OK within the WeChat system. Any repost will be automatically marked."
However, there are a lot of random reposts outside of public accounts. However, Sha Xiaopi has a positive attitude and has not dealt with any external infringements. Because their comics are IP images, no matter who reposts them, it is considered to be spreading their IP image.
How expensive is graphic content?
"Planetary Research Institute": Cost per article: 30,000-50,000
If you have read the articles on the public account "Planetary Research Institute", you will definitely be impressed by the exquisite and magnificent pictures and texts. Although this public account "focused on exploring the ultimate scenery" updates slowly, each article is a masterpiece, with almost 100,000+ readers, and it has recently produced several popular articles with over a million views.
During the just-concluded National Day holiday, an article titled "What is China?" 》Received over 2 million views. Many readers left messages in the comment section and were moved to tears.
The tear-jerking content is not pieced together. Researchers from the "Planetary Institute" told us that the cost of each article is between 30,000 and 50,000 yuan, including the cost of pictures and time.
The extremely shocking photographs in the article were basically purchased by the "Planetary Research Institute" from photographers or photo libraries. They will contact the photographer and establish a long-term cooperative relationship. Some foreign works are purchased from stock galleries, and some are contacted with photographers through stock galleries, IG, Facebook, email, websites...
With the title "What is China? 》For example, the cost of pictures accounts for about 1/3 of the total cost of the article.
However, there are also image sources with public copyrights like NASA. In the popular article "Farewell, Cassini", the "Planetary Research Institute" used a large number of images from NASA.
Another cost is time. How long does it take to produce such high-quality content?
A researcher from the "Planetary Institute" said that it usually takes 7-11 days from topic selection to publication, and if everything goes well it can be completed in a week. Sometimes, in order to seek a breakthrough and make the article different from the previous ideas, an article may even take more than ten days to complete, and the actual preparation time may be even longer. At least three people collaborated on each article.
During the conversation, the researcher revealed an interesting detail: a cost that is not too large but cannot be ignored - the purchase of books and materials. Not only do I buy them every week, but sometimes I may have to buy several books every day depending on the needs of the article. In addition to paper books, e-books are also bought. The researcher showed 15GB of e-books in the folder.
Image courtesy of Planet Research Institute
Having said that, like many high-quality content producers, the "Planet Research Institute" is also troubled by infringement.
Articles are often illegally reprinted by other public accounts and platforms, or plagiarized and images stolen. They said that illegal reproduction can be resolved by reporting, contacting privately, etc., but plagiarism and image theft are more troublesome.
The Planetary Research Institute explains the copyright issues of the images to readers in the comments section
Researchers from the "Planet Institute" said that they are currently considering ways to protect copyright, and they also understand that the cost of protecting rights is still relatively high at this stage.
20 yuan per word
AI Finance declares its anti-infringement stance
Compared with cartoons and pictures, it is more difficult to protect the rights of texts.
Many content entrepreneurs have experienced this distress: the results of their hard work fighting on the keyboard are copied and pasted everywhere by others the next day. What’s worse, some people delete and modify the work to deceive the platform, and then mark it as “original”.
There was nothing he could do, even Liu Shenleilei could only post Elder Tang to respond to the plagiarist.
You have to know that writing also has costs! Especially professional reporting.
"We charge 20 yuan per word, thank you!"
On October 20, the hard-working "AI Finance Society" declared its anti-infringement stance. In the anti-infringement announcement, it not only stated that "our cost price for each word has reached 20 yuan", but also pointed the finger at 46 media organizations, including some well-known media giants in and outside the industry.
What is most impressive is the cost of “20 yuan per word”. How is it calculated? Xinbang interviewed the relevant person in charge of AI Finance and Economics.
AI Finance is a comprehensive commercial media brand established on May 4, 2017. It includes Caijing Tianxia Weekly and AI Finance Society, and is dedicated to providing high-quality, in-depth financial reports.
Relevant person in charge said that the current content positioning of AI Finance focuses on in-depth reports of more than 3,500 words, with high requirements for manuscripts. The team is also the most senior editors in various industries, and the manuscript production process is longer than that of general media.
He explained the cost accounting logic of AI Finance.From the perspective of time : tracking time from the assignment of topics, to the reporter submitting the first draft, to the editor proofreading, and finally typesetting and operation ...
On average, a reporter spends at least 20 hours on "pure interviewing " for each topic, and with communication and business trips, it takes another 10 days.
It takes an average of 3 days to write an article, and 2-3 days to edit and revise it. All together, the production cycle of each in-depth report is close to 20 days.
This cycle requires the simultaneous participation of reporters, editors, operations and editor-in-chief. " Five people busy for nearly 20 days " becomes the basic cost of the operation cycle of a single in-depth report manuscript. On average, the cost price is about 13 yuan per word.
Therefore, after comprehensive consideration, AI Finance proposed a protection price of 20 yuan per word.
At present, the most common infringement encountered by AI Finance is website reprinting. What makes "AI Finance" a headache is that after their content is published, sometimes it is moved from other websites by other public accounts and marked as original before being pushed by their own public accounts .
"Some people also asked for the WeChat public account whitelist. As a result, after it was opened, the article was published not only on the public account, but also on the other party's website, app, Toutiao and many other places." AI Finance and Economics staff said that this is also one of the troubles. Originally, it was just an authorized reprint through a single channel , but in the end it became a shared ownership of the article. They believe that many people are now playing this kind of edge ball.
Judging from the current rights protection results of AI Finance and Economics, the person in charge revealed that at least five media and companies that have illegally reprinted the content have paid the reprint fees , and more companies are still in negotiations.
You know that the other party has plagiarized or infringed your rights, but you find it troublesome to protect your writing rights? What should self-media people do?
The relevant person in charge of AI Finance and Economics said that they have fully entrusted an intellectual property protection agency to help handle the rights protection, and will arrange colleagues in operations to be responsible for monitoring various platforms and do a good job of collecting evidence. Subsequent legal proceedings will be left to the agency to handle.
The rights protection statement explains their basic attitude: no matter how high the current cost of rights protection is, they must look at the long-term.
"The decline of traditional media is largely due to the fact that when online media emerged, people did not work together to protect copyright. Eventually, when the traffic was sucked away by others, coupled with technological changes, the content producers who paid the cost became the biggest losers."
A relevant person in charge of AI Finance and Economics said that the reading channels of mobile Internet have basically settled down. Under this circumstance, content entrepreneurs should learn from past lessons, strengthen their awareness of intellectual property rights, and not pay too much attention to the early costs of rights protection, otherwise the content will become less and less valuable.
When it comes to detailed operations, everyone feels that it is difficult to protect their rights, but AI Finance and Economics revealed that there are now big data monitoring methods that can quickly detect illegal reprints, retain evidence as soon as possible, and then choose to make regular public announcements.
"It may be psychological. People instinctively feel that the cost of defending their rights is huge and not worth it. But if they really try, they will find that the cost is not that high, and if they don't defend their rights now, the price they have to pay in the future may be higher. " said a relevant person in charge of AI Finance.
Creation is not easy, creativity is priceless... Undoubtedly, each of us hates infringement.
For institutions or traditional media, the cost of content production includes a series of expenses such as interviews, printing and distribution. For new media practitioners, producing high-quality content is not an easy task, and the cost may be hair loss, crazy weight gain, and burnt lungs...
Truly good content is never cheap or easy to come by.
The author of this article @新榜 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!
