How can I save myself if I still want to draw comics in China in 2026?

This article is reprinted with permission from "Donghua Xueshu Pa"

Author / Banqiao

Editor / Pel

Layout / Rinz

In China, original comic artists have become a rare species, and webcomics are no longer at the forefront of the times.

In recent years, however, within traditional print book publishing, we have seen a batch of "author-driven comics" that feature novel themes and styles and promising commercial value.

- What noteworthy works are there beneath this wave?

- In the current environment, how do comic artists "save themselves" to gain exposure and opportunities?

- And what niche does manga occupy within the publishing industry?

This article attempts to explore two recent waves in China: the concentrated emergence of "author-driven comic collections" and "SNS hit publications".

01​

Concentrated emergence of "author-driven comic" collections: a spring of mushrooms or a flash in the pan?​

From 2023 to 2025, a small but noteworthy wave quietly emerged in China's original comic industry: the concentrated publication of author-driven comic collections.

In chronological order, the cases I observed include: DanRead's "Small Place", Postwave's "SC: Private Experience", Manbian Studio's "Manbian Selection: Nine Stories", Motie Youhu's "Lost Character Intersection", and Manhua Upward Comicup's "Past · Future · Link: Original Short Story Black-and-White Comic Collection", all physical print publications. In addition, the Comic Experimental Field project launched the online collection "Wheat Plan" on Bilibili Comics, filling the gap for digital distribution.

In mid-2023, under the joint planning of DanRead and the "author-driven comics" team papayep (Zheng Yi, Cheng Hua), "Small Place · DanRead PLUS · Mang Xiang Ji" was officially published. This book contains works by 16 authors from China, France, and Spain, based on the long experience of papayep's two founders working in France and DanRead's international perspective.

Its theme revolves around individuals' emotional connection to "hometown" and "place" under the impact of modernization. With the acceleration of urbanization, personal drifting and the search for local identity have become universal feelings. "Small Place" truly sees the big from the small.

In early 2024, "SC: Private Experience" was published, marking a milestone collection in the development of Chinese "alternative comics" over more than two decades, bringing together most of the key authors in the field since the new century. The magazine collection "SC" was founded in 2004 and won the "Alternative Comic Award" at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2010. Its official publication provided a long-awaited opportunity for this "underground" incubation of twenty years to step into the spotlight, allowing once-fringe creations to connect with the market.

Naturally, such an extremely idiosyncratic comic collection, always keeping distance from the market, did not come for the sake of the market; it seemed more like a long-accumulating effort to document the life history of a creator community.

Subsequently, "Nine Stories", "Lost Character Intersection", and "Past · Future · Link: Original Short Story Black-and-White Comic Collection" presented a different editorial logic: they did not set a unified theme but instead used "authorial quality" as a link, bringing together works that reflect contemporary narratives.

Notably, these three collections show overlapping authors, reflecting the limited scale of the independent comic creation circle. For market considerations, "Lost Character Intersection" tended to select authors who already had awards or exhibition endorsements; "Nine Stories" had a relatively broad selection range; while "Past · Future · Link" paid more attention to creators who remained active on social platforms like Weibo, whose works also tended to be closer to mainstream commercial comics in style.

The rise of this wave of collection publishing is rooted in two realities of the publishing industry:

First, the publishing opportunities for original Chinese long-form comics are extremely scarce.

Each year, the market's hot spots are mostly imported Japanese manga. In an industry environment lacking systematic support, local authors find it difficult to bear the costs and risks of polishing a long-form work. The seemingly vast blue ocean is actually hard to nurture sustainable creation. Faced with a gap in original works, editors naturally turned their gaze to wild, self-cultivated "author-driven comics" that have reached a certain stage.

Second, after years of visual narrative exposure, readers' needs are increasingly segmented. They are tired of formulaic stories and crave fresher, more immediate content. This gave even marginal "author-driven comics" a chance to step into the spotlight.

However, in practice, book editors often find it difficult to provide substantive support throughout the entire creative process for authors. Not to mention the editors' own level of expertise; even if they want to give comic creators opportunities and advice, an editor often juggles multiple roles, and limited by workload and energy, cannot offer long-term support. In most cases, they are like hungry giraffes — the low-hanging "fruit" (works already validated by the market) is fiercely competitive and scarce, so they have to look to higher "fruit". When editors see "unripe fruit" (i.e., new independent creators) ripening in the wild, they try to pick it.

The mentality of publishing houses or imprints is even more contradictory. On one hand, they understand they cannot rely solely on imported works and must develop originals; on the other, when proactive editors bring these unripe but novel proposals to meetings, the company often rejects them with reasons like "the topic is too niche", "the author is too new", "sales expectations are too low", preferring to wait for these authors to mature on their own elsewhere, grow into bigger, easier-to-pick "fruit".

This creates a vicious cycle: the more depressed the industry, the more publishers crave innovation; but once the risk of innovation becomes apparent, possibly failing to recoup costs, they immediately fall back onto conservative safety patterns, preferring books with proven market performance and guaranteed sales.

If no one takes on the responsibility of providing exposure channels for newcomers, and everyone is busy poaching successful authors, new authors will find it even harder to enter the professional market.

Over time, creators and publishers may fall into a fragmented state of "each doing their own thing": creators survive or die outside the system, while publishers passively wait for a hit, like "snipers waiting by a stump".

This also shows that, at least in the comic field, with the evolution of media ecology, the discourse power of comics has largely shifted to online platforms, social media, and fan-made content. The publishing industry has largely become a downstream "physicalization" link that harvests existing results and continuously absorbs smaller niche circles, partially losing the cultural function that books should have, such as leading topics and inspiring new trends.

"Partially losing" does not mean total failure; niche circles themselves may incubate future mainstream culture.

In fact, the small trend of author-driven comic publishing we can see in recent years heavily relies on individual editors' industry insight and desire for change, while the publishing platforms that dare to try often have relatively stable comic divisions or forward-looking layouts, and even flexible independent publishing brands like "Dream Potion" dedicated to original comics.

Despite the generally unsatisfactory sales of these collections, by 2026, few new collection publishing plans have been heard. This tug-of-war between individual enthusiasm and institutional conservatism makes the model of nurturing new talent through collections hard to sustain, often falling silent after a round of market testing.

Compared to the animation collection "Yao-Chinese Folktales", which also has authorial and experimental qualities but sparked a social sensation and subsequent commercial development of "The Langlang Mountain's Little Monster", short comic collections face far greater difficulty in generating discussions of a similar scale: their information density is limited, and the reach of the book medium is far inferior to animation or social media.

The advantage of "author-driven comic" collections lies in their short-story format, bypassing the dependence on long-form authors, spreading the risk of publishing newcomers, and allowing readers to enjoy diverse styles in one book while avoiding competition with mainstream commercial works through different creative concepts. However, this is also where they are criticized: the lack of connection between pieces and their varied styles and concepts give a mixed, unsatisfying reading experience.

02​

From SNS authors to blockbuster books: is it still an era for creators to shine?​

After the "collective charge" of collection publishing cooled down, another path more dependent on individual creators — connecting directly with readers via social media (SNS) — has shown greater resilience and possibilities.

As the market expands and segments further, unmet new demands emerge. "Author-driven comics" are difficult to categorize and often treated with a love-it-or-hate-it attitude precisely because they are born from keen creators spontaneously wanting to fill unmet gaps in the market, yet their original intent is not purely market-driven.

This kind of creation hovers between self-expression and serving readers, making its motives mixed. In form, "author-driven comics" have not yet differentiated into mature genres; they are akin to stem cells — full of vitality and infinite possibilities, fuzzy and朦胧 — that exist before the birth of genre works.

Now, rather than banding together, self-media authors publishing complete stories in their own name may be more likely to achieve rapid spread and response.

The prerequisite is that you are willing to bear all the risks.

With the development of SNS, it can be said that this is a "golden age for author creation": the market validation of works is greatly brought forward, allowing them to be published first without relying on traditional print media or comic platforms. Readers and algorithms vote for them through browsing and filtering. In this process, editors, directors, and investors are also closely watching those that have shown potential.

At the same time, almost all choices and risks are returned to the individual.

Here, we summarize three paths using three recent successful cases of moving from SNS author to blockbuster book:

1. "The Oyster Shell Is an Adult's Heart": from internet sensation to bestseller

This path is characterized by the author building initial popularity through short stories — being noticed by an editor — undergoing careful planning, editing, and close collaboration between author and editor — leading to a qualitative change in dissemination during the publication process.

Nini graduated from the China Academy of Art. With delicate and gentle art style and highly emotionally resonant expression, she quickly became popular among young readers. Her representative work "The Oyster Shell Is an Adult's Heart" has cumulatively sold over one million copies, with a long-standing Douban rating around 9.5, becoming one of the most representative healings comics in recent years.

Initially, Nini treated drawing as an emotional outlet, using simple words and quiet images to record the exhaustion, fragility, and self-repair of growing up. Although highly personal, her work accumulated a stable and loyal readership during its online serialization phase.

The key turning point came from the initiative of planning editor Catbro. Catbro sought to get this project approved. When the original company declined, she succeeded in gaining strong support from Liu Ping, deputy editor-in-chief of Times Chinese Media. They were deeply moved by the "softness beneath the adult shell" in the work and quickly judged that it responded to the strong emotional needs of young people today.

Thus, the team clearly positioned the work as "emotional healing literary comics". From the title, binding, to visual imagery, everything revolved around the core quality of "tender but not escapist".

From dust jacket design to character actions, from marketing rhythm to reader communication, to nationwide healing exhibitions, a series of seemingly trivial editorial tasks helped the work move from niche to mainstream.

Nini's experience also shows that in the current comic publishing environment, the sincere expression of a creator and the professional judgment and systematic operation of an editor can indeed create a perfect synergy, amplifying the work's influence a hundredfold or thousandfold.

2. "Little Fox Takes Human Form": a native online hit short story

Yangzhi's "Little Fox Takes Human Form" relies more heavily on the SNS platform mechanism, following a path of explosive one-time success.

Yangzhi graduated from Fudan University's Department of Cultural Heritage and Museology, then studied animation at UCLA, and has extensive experience in film storyboarding. This gives her webcomic a cinematic rhythm and visual density, making it highly impactful in the information feed.

After diving into comic creation, her work "Little Fox Takes Human Form" launched in the summer of 2024, reaching over 20 million clicks in just seven days, becoming a phenomenal work of the year.

"Little Fox Takes Human Form" starts with a naive little fox entering the human world for the first time. While foraging in the wilderness, it nearly falls into a trap but is rescued by a white fox sister.

Its core premise — the little fox uses transformation magic to "become the form others desire" — is not just about fantasy growth; it subtly points to the performative personality, identity anxiety, and self-discovery of contemporary people. This narrative, combining emotional resonance and real-world metaphor, has an all-age appeal like Disney animation yet with a Chinese story core, allowing it to spark discussions across different reader groups and making it naturally suitable for social media dissemination.

Early in its release, the work won praise and recommendations from core comic enthusiast circles through word-of-mouth, then continuously broke through bubbles. Readers' empathy and sharing actually became the driving force behind the work's spread.

As popularity accumulated, the publishing and animation industries followed. The physical book was published in 2025, maintaining a Douban rating of 9.5. Meanwhile, an animation adaptation is also underway, extending the IP value.

The success of "Little Fox Takes Human Form" shows that creators' cross-disciplinary perspectives can often inject deeper layers into content, ultimately carving a sustained creative path among platforms, publishing, and animation.

3. Deep Sea Giant Dog and "The Lamp Genie: Unfulfilled Wishes": the victory of niche cultivation

The first two cases debuted with short works. But for long-form series, people nowadays only seem to think of webcomic platforms. Is there a way out for independent long-form writing?

Author Deep Sea Giant Dog is an excellent example. Rather than entering webcomic platforms where update frequency, traffic, and monthly tickets are core metrics, she kept the copyright of her work firmly in her own hands from the start, advancing the long-form creation at her own pace and cultivating her niche.

"The Lamp Genie: Unfulfilled Wishes" is a fantasy comic incorporating the tragic core of Greek mythology. Its subject matter is relatively niche, and the background details are too meticulous to cater to fast-paced mainstream reading. Yet, relying on a complete worldview, long-form narrative, and serious thematic treatment, it has accumulated high recognition within its niche.

During its serialization phase, "The Lamp Genie" was set to be entirely public; even without paying, readers could still read the full content. Subscriptions were more a voluntary way to support the author.

The work was primarily updated simultaneously on Weibo and Afdian. Deep Sea Giant Dog used Afdian as a "pure update space" with a simple interface showing only the comic itself, making it easy for readers to immerse and subscribe. On Weibo, she stayed active as a social platform, continuously updating progress, story discussions, research materials, and life snippets related to creation.

From conception to completion, the work took two years. After it ended, Deep Sea Giant Dog did not exit. Instead, in the two years before publication, she personally adapted the webcomic into page comics, filling narrative gaps, and deeply participated in the binding design, publication, and promotional processes.

Based on long-term reader validation, Zhejiang Photography Publishing House included the work in its "Manhua Upward" product line as a key release in 2024, and it officially debuted at the 30th COMICUP (CP), setting a sales record for fiction works in January 2024. The work has now been published in simplified Chinese and Taiwan editions.

When the work was nearing completion, many publishers approached the author for book deals. COMICUP (CP), which had first supported the author, had already reached a publishing agreement with her, offering a royalty rate ten times higher than average.

Deep Sea Giant Dog's case shows that, without relying on high-pressure updates and short-term traffic, creators can still complete their work, make it understood, and achieve longer-lasting vitality through copyright ownership, long-term creation, and deep community management.

Through these three paths, it is clear that currently, individual authors have far more freedom to decide "what to draw, how to draw, and for whom". Creators no longer have to wait for permission from a single institution to make their work truly seen.

Platforms, publishing, and industries are no longer the only starting points; they can become validators and amplifiers that join at any time. For the first time, readers can directly participate in shaping a work's destiny, helping it complete through companionship, discussion, and support.

But at the same time, we can also see the twists and risks beyond success: these works were not completed in well-prepared, risk-controlled environments. They are highly dependent on the creators' extraordinary talent and persistence.

Nini's work is a record of how to rebuild life after being forced to grow up. Family changes, economic pressure, and identity transformations gave her firsthand experience of "shattering" and "rebuilding", imbuing the work with genuine and sustained emotional power.

Deep Sea Giant Dog's "The Lamp Genie: Unfulfilled Wishes" was also not achieved overnight. After her long-form work was shelved, setbacks on platforms, life changes, and mental exhaustion, she chose to temporarily abandon "The Dawn Book", a work she had been creating for two years, to refine the script and continuously adjust the creative scale, just to finish the new story "The Lamp Genie".

The so-called "good era for individual authors" is not entirely an era of lowered thresholds — it is also an era where all pressures and risks related to emotions, time, economics, and life are simultaneously piled onto the creator's own head.

03​

Conclusion​

Based on practice and industry observation, I have also compiled several specific submission strategies for creators, hoping to provide some practical reference.

1. Do background research on publishing institutions, understand the "style" of the publisher.

Each imprint has different preferences and standards for selecting topics, so imprints also have "style".

Understand scale: Large publishing houses have high requirements for print run and market potential, generally favoring works with "blockbuster" potential; small or independent publishing brands are more flexible and often willing to accept new authors and unique topics. Therefore, being rejected by a large house does not mean the work is denied; it may even be that the editor likes the work, but the large house has higher operating costs and finds it harder to pass small-scale topics. Trying another imprint may instead go smoothly. Keep trying.

Judge tone: Use platforms like Douban to check the imprint's recent publication list, observe if they have a comic product line, and the style tendency of works (e.g., youth-oriented, niche topics, close to contemporary). Prioritize imprints that match your own work's temperament.

2. Make good use of public information, proactively contact key people.

Find editor information: The copyright page of the target book usually carries the responsible editor's information. You can try to contact them accordingly; even if the work is rejected, you may get practical advice.

Increase online exposure: Editors often browse social platforms heavily in search of new topics. Continuously posting works and showing the creative process on channels like Weibo and Xiaohongshu can increase the chance of being noticed by editors.

Good at tagging people: KOLs in the comic field, established authors, and core organizers of major comic festivals can be seen as "invisible editors". Sending work to them or exposing it via social media to gain their recognition and recommendation can sometimes deliver the work to the right publisher faster.

3. Adjust mindset, treat submission results rationally.

In short, publishing institutions have no unified criteria for selecting topics. Authors need not feel that being rejected once means being rejected by the entire publishing environment. Even for editors, having proposals repeatedly rejected is common. A good topic is often noticed by multiple editors simultaneously; even if one publisher rejects it, it may be favored elsewhere. Authors should not be discouraged by temporary setbacks; instead, they should continue to expose themselves and contact more imprints, which will bring more opportunities.

Finally, perhaps it goes without saying that author-driven comics are still a relatively marginal form of content. But being marginal does not mean destined to disappear, nor does it mean unprofitable. Compared with traditional genre commercial comics, I can see more potential and vitality for the budding new growth of Chinese comics in these works and authors.

The development of Chinese "author-driven comics" shows a distinctive feature of growing outside the system. It is neither the result of proactive planning by the traditional publishing industry nor a traffic product nurtured by webcomic platforms. It is a new ecology driven by individual creators, promoted through social media and specific publishers.

It should be noted that the rise of author-driven comics does not equal mature creative standards. For example, many stories that dig into personal past life experiences are highly similar in theme, lacking skill training and topic packaging, easily making valuable personal expression cliché. If one intends to make the work more popular, they need to problematize and universalize their story, connecting individual experience with broader emotions and reality.

Through the turbulent currents of commercialization, Chinese comic creation has now arrived at a gentle shoal. The focus of creation has shifted: from genre-oriented, mass-audience-driven to individual experience narratives and emotional resonance. This indeed marks the "stratification" of the Chinese comic market. Besides the mainstream track pursuing scale effects, a market layer serving segmented audiences, valuing author personality, and offering more diverse ways of realizing value is taking shape.

The future of comics does not depend on whether the next national blockbuster emerges, but on whether occasional individual successes can evolve into a sustainable ecosystem. This requires publishing institutions to reform evaluation systems and establish production and marketing processes better suited to small-scale, stylized works. The middle layer of the industry (editors, planners, comic festivals) needs to more actively play the roles of "talent scout" and "nurturer", systematically reducing the cognitive cost and risk for new creators entering the professional field. Creators themselves, while strengthening personal expression, should consciously transform SNS traffic into a long-term, sustainable reader community and learn basic copyright and project management knowledge to prepare for a long-term career.

The road to comic salvation is long. Whether by huddling together for warmth or working hard in solitude, the works and authors mentioned in this article have become an unignorable tributary of Chinese comics.