That article provoked some of the most spectacular fights to date between authors' camps on the mainland. Yu Quiyu's fans unleashed a canonade of charges against Yu Jie, a writer too callow in their eyes and largely unknown to square with a revered author like Yu Qiuyu. By some media accounts, Yu Qiuyu, rankled by the high-pitched brawl, announced he was retreating from writing and any cultural activities. Modern China's money obsession is changing not only writers but their arbiters as well. The days when writers knocked on the doors of publishing houses for contracts are gone, bemoans Li.
Writing is initiated by publishing houses.
Authors begin to write novels only when they have an order and an advance of few thousand dollars. Some publishing houses have special teams probing the readers' market and compiling lists of the writers with the greatest market appeal. If books become hot property on the market or get banned by Communist Party censors, it is because of media hype. They occupy themselves with some reading only when the media has gone crazy about something. It is not that they do not want to control, it is simply that they cannot control.