The Famous Millionaire

"How can we find such a man in the world? Maybe animation critics are better than others in evaluating animation," said Gyungsu, grinning.

"Then, why don't you ask for famed animation critics' advice? If they think your animation isn't likely to be popular, you don't have to waste money on that."

"Do you think they're stupid enough to do that? They wouldn't be involved in anything they have to answer for. In other words, they hedge their bets as a rule."

"What do you mean? Hedging their bets?"

"They would never say a certain animation work will be a success or failure. If their prediction proves wrong, they would have to take responsibility for that. Even if any work is a sure success, they usually say "Looks good" or "Just okay". For most of the works, they usually say, "Looks like it won't be easy to make it." That can be interpreted either as it can be a success or a failure."

"Still they're more accurate than us in evaluating animation works, right?"

"Yes. Much more accurate. So, some companies with solid financial footing ask for their opinion, but they're very expensive. It's the tail wagging the dog, though, if something goes wrong."

Hearing Kyungsu's explanation, Hyunwoo felt it looked like a tough challenge for a small startup company like his. Still, there might be some solution if he tried hard to look for one.

"Can't you find an animation fan who has an eye for animation? There might be someone who can instinctively find out if it's going to be a success or failure the moment they see the animation."

"Such a person is what you call an animation critic. What you're saying is to find some unknown person with that kind of ability. Do you think it makes any sense? Instead of putting a great deal of efforts to find such a person, it's much faster to produce a good animation work with the same efforts."

"I think you're right," said Hyunwoo, nodding his head.

"In about 15 days, I'm going to finish one. It's too expensive for me to ask for a critics' evaluation of it, so I'm going to bring it to the Anifan kids at the House of Happiness for their review," said Kyungsu.

"I wish you good luck."

"Thanks."

The next morning, Daeyong visited the House of Happiness despite it being Sunday. That suggested that he was pretty much nervous about the contract on payment to them is very high. Actually, this was a matter of copyright infringement, and the victims were the Anifan kids who made it. If reporters got a wind of this, it would be a sensational hit. If they reported about it, it was 100% certain that Imagingpia would be described as a bad guy while the Anifan kids as the most miserable in the world. Even that kind of imagination made Daeyong's skin crawl.

On the other hand, if he succeeded in getting hold of the copyright of the payment to them is very high, Imagingpia had a chance for a rebound. That's why he worked hard on a draft contract throughout the night, thinking hard how to buy the copyright while spending as little as possible.

He presented the draft contract to the kids.

"Won't you read it over?" said Daeyong.

Jihun read it carefully, but he put it down after reading a few lines because its first clause said the Anifan would transfer the copyright completely to Imagingpia.

"You can purchase the selling right, but not the copyright," said Jihun.

"But that thing is…" said Daeyong. He tried to persuade the kids, emphasizing he would be willing to hire them if Garbage World made commercial success. At the same time, he threatened he would break the contract. In that case, it would be the Anifan kids, not Imagingpia that would suffer a loss, he emphasized, but the Anifan kids didn't budge a bit. Believing the advice from Hyunwoo and Kyungsu that they had the upper hand in this negotiation, they didn't make any concessions.

After all, Daeyong surrendered. He was confident he could drive the negotiation the way he wanted to, but the more he negotiated, the more concessions he had to make. At the end of the negotiation, he had to accept all their demands. He could get only half of what he originally had in mind.

On the other hand, Jihun and other Anifan kids were very satisfied. They scanned the signed contract and emailed it to Hyunwoo and Kyungsu.

Hyunwoo reviewed the contract. The most important thing was that they didn't give Imagingpia any exclusive right. Anifan could sell the sales rights of Garbage World to more than one company.

Hyunwoo called JIhun, who said he sent a copy of the contract to Kyungsu, too. Jihun said Kyungsu gave a greenlight.

"Then, you guys have to start working on it apart from Imagingpia," said Hyunwoo.

"Yea, actually we are divided into several teams. Suhim is working on a story for it."

Hyunwoo smiled a satisfactory smile. What the kids were working on was webtoon.

They were lacking in the technical expertise on video, so it might be a lot easier for them to tackle webtoon. They had to change the contents. For the video contents of Garbage World were rather immature, targeting elementary school students, but the webtoon was aiming at middle and high school students and above, so the contents had to be much more serious.

On a Saturday evening several days later, Hyunwoo was supposed to attend an alumni meeting proposed by his high school classmate, Hyunsun Kim. Hyunwoo entered the restaurant. He arrived a bit earlier that the appointment time, but there were only a couple of friends there.

Hyunwoo sat beside them, extending his hand.

"You guys got here early. What are you watching so intensely instead of chattering together?" said Hyunwoo.

"Oh, we're reading a novel on Story Mecca."

"Story Mecca? What is that?" asked Hyunwoo curiously.

Then, one of the friends looked at Hyunwoo as if he were a monster.

"How come you don't know about Story Mecca? It's a collection of all the genre novels in the world."

As far as novels were concerned, Hyunwoo was a layman. He only read several fantasy novels when he was very young, so it was only natural that he knew nothing about Story Mecca.

"Wow! I didn't know there was such a website."

In the past, they used to borrow novels from book rental shops, but such a trend changed when the novelists turned to the internet to run novel series. In the process, lots of websites popped up on the internet that hosted novels, and Story Mecca started to dominate the market. Story Mecca took care of the writers through good management, so that they could enhance their writing abilities and give the readers access to the novels at a discount. As a result, Story Mecca satisfied both the writers and the readers and became the most popular website on genre novels. The number of readers visiting the website amounted to almost 30 million a day.

Korean people accounted for 20% of them, and the rest were foreign readers like Americans, Japanese and Chinese people. As the translated versions of the original novels were available, Story Mecca grew into a worldwide novel-hosting website.

What's more surprising was the accelerated growth of the website. According to Story Mecca, about 100 million readers were expected to visit the site daily within the next three years.

Thanks to that explosive growth, worldwide writers from America, Japan and Europe were swarming to the website. The number of writers active on the website was more than 100,000, and more than 1,000 out of the them were making more than 10 million won per month. In particular, the best 100 writers received almost 100 million won per month.

"Wow! That's terrific!"

Hyunwoo looked at the website with the alumni. Despite the popular novels being on a paid site, some novels saw the number of visits to their sites hitting more than 2 million per chapter. There were replies below the novel, and some of them easily hit 10,000. His friend paid attention to the replies, too.

"What kind of reply did he post today" said the friend. Using the search function, he began searching for the reply he had in mind. Curious enough, Hyunwoo also watched his smart phone carefully.

"I've found it!" said the friend, showing Hyunwoo the reply in question. The guy who posted the reply was under this nickname Eagle Eye.

"What kind of guy is he?" asked Hyunwoo.

"He's the most famous critic of Story Mecca."

"Critic? Even critics visit this site to post replies?"

"Of course, he is not a real critic. He is active only here in Story Mecca. He's just an ordinary citizen, but passes as a critic here."

Hyunwoo felt that it was an interesting system that could only be possible because there were so many users of the website, Hyunwoo thought.

Hyunwoo read the reply with the friend about the current chapter.

His reply was critical. He criticized that the writer gave the readers lots of expectation of a sense of revenge in the beginning of the story, but he didn't deliver it even through the middle of the series. He even warned that without satisfying the readers' expectation, they would defect massively from the story.

In Hyunwoo's opinion, it was a very dangerous reply. If the readers were still there without defecting until the writer didn't satisfy them for the run of the next five chapters, the critic's prediction would prove wrong. Nonetheless, the critic offered a bold prediction.

He was clearly different from the kind of critics that Kyungsu mentioned. Instead of protecting themselves first like those those in the animation world, these critics on Story Mecca were very challenging and provocative.

When Hyunwoo told the friend about the animation critics' working style, the friend grinned, saying, "Well, you have to take the risk to draw the attention of the readers. Who would love those critics who were only concerned with posting safe replies?"

In other words, they have to show their challenging attitude to survive as the critics in Story Mecca. For example, any replies to those novels already popular among the reades didn't draw much attention no matter how good their replies are. On the contrary the critics' replies that said "this work will soon be a big hit" for an unpopular novel or "soon destined to fall" for a highly popular novel stimulated the readers' interest.

"In that case, I guess you see different critics every time. They can't offer a precise prediction every time, right?"

"Yea, half of them are replaced every time, but half of them are still there, enjoying a high rate of prediction."

"High rate of prediction? How high?"

"Well, they just read the first few chapters and post their own review if they feel it's going to be a hit. Then, it is really a popular hit nine out of ten."

Hyunwoo's eyes became wide at that because Kyungsu needed that kind of person for his company.

"Wow, they must be really capable."

"That's why they're making 100 million won per month."

"100 million won per month? How come they make such a big money?"

The more Hyunwoo listened to the friend, the more surprised he got.

According to him, there were more than 100 critics active in Story Mecca, and among them 30 were working as professional critics. They selected popular critics every month through the readers' votes. Then, the first top ten critics are selected with the best critic making 100 million won and the guy ranked 100th making one million won per month.

In short, once recognized as an established critic, he would have no problem making a living, but this was the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the critics didn't necessarily post replies to those novels likely to hit big time. If some writers bribed them for their good reviews, the critics would do so. That way, some critics would make ten times more than they make from Story Mecca, according to the friend.

Hyunwoo's interest suddenly exploded. Hyunwoo felt if he could find someone very capable among the Story Mecca critics, that person would be a big help to Kyungsu or Imagingpia's

business.