Global50 CEO Talk 2023

“Good Stories Never End.”

Hou Xiaonan, CEO of Tencent Corporation’s Yuewen platform, is the sole guest speaker at the Global 50 CEO Talk 2023.

Illustration of Yuewen Website

The Global 50 CEO Talk 2023, held in partnership with the Frankfurt Book Fair on Wednesday, October 18, 2023, from 14.00 to 15.00 in the Frankfurt Pavilion, will explore how Yuewen is expanding literary story telling into a dynamic ecosystem which includes reading, comics and animation, film and television, games and much more.

Yuewen is the online platform for writing and reading in China’s Tencent corporation, a multinational technology and entertainment group headquartered in Shenzhen. It currently serves over 10 millions writers and over 200 million monthly active users, hosting over 10 millions literary works, and reporting annual revenues of  7.63 billion Chinese Yuan (958 million Euros or 1.05 billion US Dollars).

Founded two decades ago under the iconic brand name of Qidian, it preceded platforms such as Wattpad or Kindle Direct Publishing, pioneering a digital universe for story telling in all its facets.

About Hou Xiaonan:

Mr. Hou Xiaonan joined Yuewen in April 2020 and currently serves as its Chief Executive Officer, President and Executive Director, responsible for the strategic planning and business operation. Mr. Hou also serves as the Vice President of the Platform and Content Group of Tencent and the Head of Tencent Animation and Comics. Mr. Hou joined Tencent in 2003 and has held various management positions for Tencent businesses including Mobile QQ, Qzone, Tencent Open Platform, YingYongBao, Qingteng and Penguin Media Content Platform, acting as a core figure in Tencent’s open ecosystem strategy. He has extensive and in-depth management experience in product operation, business model innovation, and ecosystem cooperation. 

 

Hou Xiaonan, CEO of Yuewen

The Global 50 CEO Talk is prepared in conjunction with the Global 50 Publishing Ranking of the publishing industry, mapping the 50 largest publishing corporations each year since 2007.

This ranking is listing the world’s 50 largest publishing companies, who in 2022 generated publishing revenues of 62.6 bnEUR (70.9 bnUSD).

The Global 50 Publishing Ranking is researched by Ruediger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, and published by Bookdao (PR China), The Bookseller (UK), buchreport (Germany), Livres Hebdo (France) and Publishers Weekly (US).

The Global 50 Ranking and CEO Talk are supported by Bookwire (www.bookwire.de )

The full Global 50 report, with the big list, an analysis and data rich company profiles will be available as a digital publication of around 250 pages from mid October 2023 at www.wischenbart.com/ranking , and at websites of Bookwire, Bookdao, Livres Hebdo and Publishers Weekly.

CEOTalk2022-EN

Global 50 CEO Talk 2022 "Beyond Publishers": Ashleigh Gardner and Michael Tamblyn on "New facets of the global book business today."

The Global 50 CEO Talk 2022, held in partnership with the Frankfurt Book Fair Studio on Wednesday, October 19, 2022, from 14.00 to 15.00, will explore the book business beyond traditional publishers.

In recent years, the novel ways of how authors exploit their intellectual property (or IP) have opened wide and highly productive fields of creation, radically expanding what books, publishing and reading encompasses today:

  • Authors are building critical communities of readers online;
  • Well established bestselling authors are going ‘direct’ by publishing their books themselves;
  • Cross-media exploitation intertwining books, movies and games have expanded;
  • Industry sized cooperations between digital platforms and retailers have become well established practices;
  • With the success of graphic novels and manga, traditional boundaries between gernes of narrative fiction have blurred;
  • New business models have surged, including freemium and subscription, curated access to collections and both broad as well as highly specialized niche collections of titles.

This year’s CEO Talk will shed light on the game changing dynamics resulting from these non-traditional publishing models and explore the opportunities with thought leaders from two of the world’s largest platforms in this regard:

  • Ashleigh Gardner (Wattpad WEBTOON, Canada/Korea), and
  • Michael Tamblyn (Kobo Rakuten, Canada).

The Global 50 CEO Talk is prepared in conjunction with the Global 50 Publishing Ranking of the publishing industry, mapping the 50 largest publishing corporations each year since 2007

This ranking is listing the world’s 50 largest publishing companies, who in 2021 generated publishing revenues of 58.8 bnEUR in 2021 (66.7 bnUSD).

The Global 50 Publishing Ranking is researched by Ruediger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, and published by Bookdao (PR China), The Bookseller (UK), buchreport (Germany), Livres Hebdo (France) and Publishers Weekly (US).

The Global 50 Ranking and CEO Talk are supported by Bookwire (www.bookwire.de )

Ashleigh Gardner (Wattpad WEBTOON Studios)

About Ashleigh Gardner (Wattpad WEBTOON Studios):

As Senior Vice President, Managing Director Global Publishing, Ashleigh Gardner works with writers and publishers around the world to turn stories and digital comics from Wattpad and WEBTOON into books and graphic novels. Under Ashleigh’s leadership, the Wattpad WEBTOON Book Group is reshaping the publishing industry by leveraging data and insights from the one billion uploads that have been shared on Wattpad to find future best-sellers. In addition to publishing stories under the Wattpad Books and W imprints, Ashleigh sells translation rights, creating global imprints in partnership with some of the leading publishers around the world. 

 

Michael Tamblyn (Rakuten Kobo CEO)

Michael Tamblyn, President and Chief Executive Officer at Rakuten Kobo, drives growth, profitability and international expansion in a fiercely competitive market. He combines a passion for reading with a deep focus on hardware and software experiences. In addition to leading Rakuten Kobo, the global digital bookseller, he advises start-ups focused on aging and technology as Chief Entrepreneur of Age-Well NCE, is on the board of directors of the Law Commission of Ontario, Ontario’s law reform body, as well as The Power Plant, Toronto’s foremost contemporary art gallery. Michael has been a part of Rakuten Kobo’s executive team since its inception in 2009, and previously held the role of Chief Content Officer. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario.

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