Is a shorter novel IP better? Not necessarily. At a manga café, Utsudo noticed that many famous works are long-running IPs with dozens of volumes, grown over years by creators pouring in love and time. But Taiwan has a small population, a shrinking reading public and high adaptation costs, so publishers prefer works of three volumes or fewer. They’re easier to manage, but at a disadvantage when it comes to building up an audience—and few creators can devote a lifetime of passion to one work. Long and short IPs each have pros and cons worth considering.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

Observations at a manga café

This thought came to me during a recent visit to a manga café.

The manga café offers private booths and food, but space is limited, and too many bookshelves would block the flow of foot traffic. So they have to stock works customers are likely to enjoy, or that are hugely popular right now, in that limited space. The works you find on the shelves are masterpieces that have survived decades of commercial trial.

By that logic, you’d think anything you grab would be a great read, right?

Actually, when I have a choice, I still wander around picking and choosing, and end up prioritizing works I was hooked on long ago or had read before but stopped following. If the art style doesn’t suit my taste or the subject doesn’t appeal to me, I still won’t pick it up.

I think that’s because “entertainment” is, after all, something people choose. Non-essentials don’t easily win favor. So if your book leans toward the “practical,” like self-help or finance, it might be chosen more easily when people need it—but that’s a tangent.

Long-running IP needs time and love

I noticed that famous works today have dozens of manga volumes out, and some haven’t even been adapted into manga yet. Out of so many works, they may have first been serialized in magazines, been lucky enough to be loved and not canceled, and only after building up for a good while were finally collected into books.

Publication is only the beginning. Creators must keep producing and endure deadline pressure to release volume after volume, until finally an anime adaptation lets more people see the work.

Every creator knows creating is very lonely. During that time, you face the fear of being canceled at any moment, you need the resolve to scrap and redo entire storyboards you’ve submitted, and you fight with your manuscript every week… Only after years of this do they build up so much work, which then crosses the ocean to be translated into Traditional Chinese, and even editions worldwide, for us to read.

An IP that grows over the years needs not only time to mature but also the love creators pour into it. Whether they treat the IP as a job or nurture it like a child, it gradually grows under their constant love and care. The process is quite long.

You have to pour a great deal of love into the right work to get good results. But who knows whether the work in their hands is “the right one”? Probably the only way is to put it on the market and let readers choose—the ones that survive are probably it.

Write just one long masterpiece in a lifetime?

People often say, “It’s enough to do one thing well in this life.” For creators, maybe that becomes “It’s enough to write one long masterpiece in this life”? If you could truly devote your whole life to one work, nurturing it carefully every day, might it one day grow into a great tree?

But then I want to ask back: how many people can pour love into the same work their whole life?

Take me, for example. My first long novel, 《絕命拍檔》, is probably the work I poured the most of my own ideas and self into. Then I gradually wrote several other works, projecting less and less of myself into them. Now I can write a work even with almost no experience in the subject.

Honestly, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Isn’t creating supposed to be about pouring deep emotion into a work so it moves others more easily?

When I finished 《絕命拍檔》, I did submit it to a major publisher and got a contract right away, but things didn’t go smoothly afterward. It was only with a second publisher that it was officially published.

Maybe that first successful submission had something to do with the love I poured in. But later, even as I gradually withdrew myself from my works, investors still picked them up. So now I’m not sure—maybe pouring in love isn’t as romantic as I imagined, and even purely commercial work can be loved by the public?

The IP industry gap between Taiwan and Japan

Back to the topic: although Japan has a more complete industry chain that helps incubate IP and more capital to nurture manga artists, creating long works of dozens of volumes still takes a great deal of time and energy.

In Taiwanese local creative work, by contrast, works spanning dozens of volumes are the rarest of the rare. There also seems to be a lack of well-developed promotion plans, so works authors poured their hearts into never get the chance to be adapted into media more easily absorbed by readers, and gradually fade from public view.

Of course, this has a lot to do with business models. Our population is small, the reading public keeps shrinking, and manga adaptations are expensive—even if commercialized, it may be hard to recoup costs. Under these conditions, long-running, long-term works like those in Japan hardly exist.

Publishers prefer works of three volumes or fewer

That said, with the publishing industry shrinking and books hard to sell, many Taiwanese publishers prefer manuscripts of three volumes or fewer. Fewer volumes are easier to manage and don’t lose too much even if they sell poorly. But in terms of the IP development we just discussed, fewer volumes make adaptation into other media harder.

Short works can still be adapted, but when others’ IPs routinely run dozens of volumes, our short works competing with them are at a big disadvantage in terms of accumulation. Personally, I still think long IPs are better for adaptation and promotion. Long can become short, but turning short into long is a hassle—you can only ask the author to keep expanding it.

So which is better, long or short IP? I think it’s well worth discussing. What do you think?

FAQ

Further reading

• Previous: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #230: Is Local Taiwanese Content Just a Trend?
• Start from the beginning: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #01: Utsudo’s Debut — A Road to the Dream Covered in Frost
• Utsudo’s books

About the author

Utsudo is a Taiwanese light novelist and novelist VTuber with more than ten years in the industry and 40 commercially published print books. Her novel 《遺失的情書》 received a 2022 Ministry of Culture youth creative award. The 《嘿！聽說妳在鬼島當作家》 series records her experiences as a novelist in Taiwan.