Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to China Literature's 2024 interim results conference call. A copy of the interim results can be found and downloaded from its investor relations website http://ir.chinaliterature.com. At this time, all lines have been placed in listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions following today's presentation. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Ms. Maggie Zhou, Head of Capital Markets and Investor Relations at China Literature. Maggie, please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our 2024 interim results conference call. Joining us today on the call are Mr. Xiaonan Hou, our CEO, and Mr. Jackie Xu, our General Manager of Finance. For today's call, Mr. Hou will discuss the company's strategies and business highlights, and Mr. Xu will go through the financials. We will then open the call for questions. Before we begin, I would also like to remind you that management comments during the conference call will include forward-looking statements that are based on our current expectations. All statements other than statements of historical facts during the conference call are forward-looking statements, which are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and may not be realized in the future for various reasons. Information about general market conditions is coming from a variety of sources outside of the company.
This presentation also contains some unaudited, non-IFRS financial measures that should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for, measures of the company's financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. Please do take a minute to read the risk factors and non-IFRS measures discussion in China Literature's 2024 interim results earnings release. I'll now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Xiaonan Hou.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our earnings call today. Before we dive into our results for the first half, I would like to share with you a recent major milestone we achieved. On May 16, 2024, Joy of Life 2: Qing Yu Nian 2, the eagerly anticipated second season of the drama series adapted from our renowned web novel, made its highly successful debut. The drama series quickly became a national sensation, shattering domestic records with a meteoric rise in viewership and popularity during its 18-day prime time run. On Tencent Video, its popularity index surpassed 34,000 points, setting an all-time record high. It also maintained the top position in nationwide live viewership ratings on CCTV-8 for 18 consecutive days, and topped the charts across major industry review platforms, including Kuyun, Douban, Maoyan, Vlinkage, and Enlightent.
Joy of Life 2: Qing Yu Nian di er ji not only achieved phenomenal success domestically, it also captivated international audience with its simultaneous release on Disney+, where it quickly became the platform's highest-viewed mainland Chinese TV series. It is currently being translated into 14 languages for release into other markets around the world. Joy of Life 2's success extended far beyond that of a standalone project. It exemplifies our strategy to leverage resources across various departments and effectively collaborate with both upstream and downstream partners. We assembled our largest ever dedicated team during the project's early development stages to guide us. Simultaneously, we rolled out Joy of Life 2 themed products across various media formats, including online literature, drama series, online games, merchandise, and collectible cards. This approach maximized the IP's impact on audience and fully unleashed its monetization potential.
To give you some examples, we launched a virtual fan zone on Qidian Reading app alongside the release of Joy of Life, which gave readers free access to the author's trilogy for a limited time, as well as offered a series of engaging activities. These initiatives resulted in a 38-fold increase in reading volume sequentially, generating over 100 million visits to the virtual fan zone, and set a new annual record for Qidian Reading app daily active users. We also released 11 categories of Joy of Life-themed merchandise, including blind boxes and a premium collectible card series featuring 308 card designs. Sales of the blind boxes exceeded 200,000 units, while the collectible cards generated over RMB 20 million in GMV before the drama's release, making them the all-time best-selling collectible cards in the drama scene category.
We launched a series of offline events that attracted a large number of fans. These events engaged participants to share their experience online, sparking a viral wave of social media activity and the user-generated content. This fully integrated approach sets new standards for managing our flagship IP holistically and will be applied to other premium IPs in our portfolio. The remarkable success of the Joy of Life, Qing Yu Nian series, validates two crucial aspects of our strategy. First, it demonstrates our consistent ability to create and replicate blockbuster IPs. Second, it showcases the power of our business model, which collaborates with partners across the entire IP value chain to maximize the potential of our premium IP. We have long been committed to fostering a robust ecosystem for IP development.
Our recent success with this flagship IP, achieved through effective mobilization and the coordination of resources across multiple stakeholders within our ecosystem, marks a significant milestone. While Joy of Life 2, Qing Yu Nian 2 stands out as a remarkable success, it is just one of many accomplishments during the first half of 2024. Our drama series, The Legend of Shen Li, Yu Feng Xing, and The Tale of Rose, Mei Gui de Gu Shi, were released to critical acclaim. While the film YOLO, Re La Gun Tang, has led nationwide box office sales in 2024 so far. These success stories set a strong foundation for what we anticipate will be a blockbuster year for China Literature. Let me now go over the progress we made in each specific business during the first half of this year. To begin, let's talk about IP creation.
We continued to strengthen the content ecosystem of our online reading business. In the first half of this year, our online reading platform added approximately 170,000 writers and 320,000 literary works, collectively contributing over 21 billion Chinese characters. A steady stream of high-quality new works continue to be released, with the number of newly signed literary works with over 50,000 subscribers per chapter, increasing 75% year-over-year. Additionally, the number of newly signed literary works generating over RMB 2 million in reading revenue grows 33% year-over-year. Notably, we've seen a surge in young talent, with writers born in the 1990s accounting for over 70% of newly added platinum and phenomenal writers in the first half of 2024.
While nurturing high-quality writers and promoting outstanding literary work remains our focus, we remain committed to building a robust user community, strengthening collaborations for flagship IPs, and amplifying fan engagement. These are enhanced content and operational framework. Monthly paying users grew steadily on a sequential basis to 8.8 million during the first half of the year. Moving on to our IP visualization business, where we launched several top-tier titles during the first half of the year, garnering enthusiastic audience reception and widespread acclaim. In the live action TV and film segment, as mentioned earlier, we have one box office champ, and so YOLO, Re La Gun Tang, and three robust drama series, including The Legend of Shen Li, Yu Feng Xing, Joy of Life 2, Qing Yu Nian, and The Tale of Rose, Mei Gui De Gu Shi.
These productions have not only captivated domestic audience, but have also made significant inroads in overseas markets. The Legend of Shen Li, Yu Feng Xing, was aired in over 180 countries and regions globally in 16 languages. YOLO, Re La Gun Tang, was distributed by Sony Pictures globally and is currently the highest grossing Chinese language film overseas this year. In the animation segment, we launched a number of new series, including The Richest Man in Game, Kui Cheng Shou Fu Cong You Xi Kai Shi, and The Charm of Soul Pets, Huan Chong Shi, as well as sequels to classic titles such as The King's Avatar, Quan Zhi Gao Shou, and Start with the Mountain, Kai Ju Yi Zuo Shan.
We released new episodes for our long-running annual animation series, Battle Through the Heavens, Dou Po Cang Qiong, helping it to maintain its top ranking on Tencent Video's annual best seller list. According to Google data, 15 of the top 20 most watched online animated series in the first half of 2024 were adapted from China Literature's IPs. Furthermore, we completed the acquisition of Tencent Animation and Comics, adding a number of top Chinese comic IPs, such as The Outcast, Yi Ren Zhi Xia, and Fox Spirit Matchmaker, Hu Yao Xiao Hong Niang to our portfolio. Going forward, we will leverage Tencent Animation and Comics' high-quality production capabilities to accelerate our IP visualization process. We continue to track the commercialization and monetization of our IP business. In the merchandise segment, we unveiled a diverse array of trendy collectibles and merchandise based on popular IPs such as Joy of Life....
70 years, The King's Avatar, Lord of the Mysteries, and Battle Through the Heavens. These offerings, including blind boxes, toy collectibles, and accessories, were launched alongside the release of the online content. In addition, we continue to expand the scope and scale of our IP licensing for merchandising. We made significant progress in our collectible card business in the first half of 2024. Our goal is to build China leadership in full IP universe of collectible cards, meeting Chinese collectors' growing demand for high quality IP-based products, while further expanding IP monetization. Our collectible card series based on the drama series, The Legend of Shen Li, and Joy of Life have delivered strong results. We plan to launch more series such as parties of the platform-based cards. Additionally, we have a rich portfolio of comic and animation IPs that can be adapted into collectible cards for global distribution.
In the second half of 2024, we will launch comic animation themed cards, both domestically and globally, including The King's Avatar, Battle Through the Heavens, Lord of the Mysteries, The Outcast, Yi Ren Zhi Xia , and Fox Spirit Matchmaker. In the first half this year, total GMV for our IP-based collectible cards reached approximately RMB 100 million. In the game segment, two titles based on our IPs, Soul Land and Battle Through the Heavens: Peak Showdown, were launched in the first half of this year, generating solid sales. We have a rich portfolio of IP-based games set to be released in the near future, including Lord of the Mysteries. We continue to explore new technologies and emerging business opportunities. We are strategically deploying AI capabilities across our diverse business to enhance our ecosystem.
We continue to refine our smart large language model, empowering writers to boost their productivity. Simultaneously, our AI translation technology is driving rapid growth in the number of translated works on our overseas platform. In the first half of 2024, Webnovel, our overseas reading platform, added over 1,200 AI translated works in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, and Indonesian. Notably, approximately 40% of the top 100 best-selling works on Webnovel are AI translated. We are actively exploring the integration of AI technology with various IP content formats, including audiobooks, animations, videos, and merchandise. Responding to the rapidly growing short-form drama market, we leverage our content strengths and extensive creator network to produce high-quality short-form drama adaptations of our IP. We've achieved several successes, with the most outstanding title generating RMB 13 million in GMV.
For the whole year, we plan to release over a hundred short-form dramas and explore new innovative formats, such as interactive short-form dramas. To summarize, we delivered an exceptional performance in the first half of 2024. We released four blockbuster titles, firmly underscoring our commitment to our premium IP strategy. The launch of Joy of Life 2, Qing Yu Nian 2, exemplified successful collaboration with our ecosystem partners, achieving success that benefits everyone in the value chain. We also achieved notable progress in the international markets, IP merchandising, and the new business initiatives. Looking forward, we will continue to strengthen our IP incubation and enhance IP adaptation and commercialization, optimize our operational framework for flagship IP based on past experience, and explore new technologies and emergent business opportunities.
I'm confident that these initiatives will deliver long-term and sustainable returns for the shareholders who have consistently, consistently believed in and supported us on this journey. I will now conclude my remarks and hand it over to Jackie to discuss the company's financial performance. Thank you.
Thank you, Maggie. Hello, everyone. In the first half of 2024, our total revenues increased by 27.7% year-over-year to RMB 4.2 billion. Let's take a look at our online business first. Online business revenues were RMB 1.94 billion, compared with RMB 1.98 billion in the first half of 2023. The decrease was mainly due to continuous optimization of ROI of our distribution channels and our focus on driving growth in core products.... Breaking down our online business further. Revenues from our separate owned platform products decreased slightly on a year-over-year basis to RMB 1.7 billion. Revenues from certain online products were negatively impacted by the initiatives I just mentioned.
Revenues from our self-operated channels on Tencent products were RMB 131 million, compared with RMB 177 million in the same period last year, mainly due to a continuous decline in advertising revenues from free-to-read channels, as we focus on developing a high-quality pay-to-read business model with more content distributed through pay-to-read channels with higher ROI. We recorded an 18.2% year-over-year increase in revenues from third-party platforms to RMB 116 million, mainly due to increased collaboration with our third-party distribution partners. In terms of operating metrics, total MAUs for our online reading business were 176 million, compared to 212 million in the first half of 2023. This reflects our efforts to prioritize high-quality users rather than quantity.
MAUs for our own platform products remain stable at 105 million, while MAU from Tencent channels, consisting many operators, decreased from 106 million to 71 million. MPUs for our paid content were 80.8 million, a slight 0.4% increase year-over-year. Monthly ARPU for paid reading content was 31.7 RMB, compared to 32.3 RMB in the first half of 2023, mainly due to changes in revenue mix from different product offerings. Now turning to IP operations and other businesses. In the first half of 2024, revenues from IP operations and other increased by 73.3% year-over-year to 2.3 billion RMB. Within this segment, revenues from IP operations increased significantly by 75.7% year-over-year, reaching 2.2 billion RMB.
The increase was due to solid growth across the board from our IP operations businesses, driven primarily by an increase in the release of blockbuster drama series, films, and animated series, as well as expanded licensing of our IP for adaptation to business partners. In addition, new initiatives such as short dramas, merchandising, and the collectible card business grew significantly during the period. Revenues from the artist category, consisting mainly of sales of physical books, increased 6.9% year-over-year to 48 million RMB. Now let's look at costs and expenses. In the first half of 2024, our cost of revenues amounted to 2.20 billion RMB, up 25.6% year-over-year.
This was due to higher production costs associated with an increase in the release of TV, web, and animated series and film, as well as an increase in content costs as they boosted investment in high cost content. Our gross profit increased by 29.8% year-over-year to RMB 2.1 billion. Gross margin increased to 49.7% from 48.9% year-over-year. Our selling and marketing expenses increased by 41% year-over-year to RMB 1.2 billion in the first half of 2024, mainly due to an increase in promotion and advertising expenses associated with our film and drama series, as more titles were released during the period. As a percentage of revenues, selling and marketing expenses were 27.7%, compared with 25% in the first half of 2023.
With G&A expenses increased by 1.9% year-over-year to RMB 545 million in the first half of 2024, mainly due to higher employee benefits expenses. As a percentage of revenues, G&A expenses decreased to 13% from 16.3% in the first half of 2023. As a result of our factors, our operating profit increased by 46.1% year-over-year to RMB 454 million. Our profits attributable to shareholders of the company increased by 33.9% to RMB 504 million. Non-IFRS profit attributable to shareholders of the company increased by 16.4% year-over-year to RMB 702 million. That concludes our financial review part. Let's move on to Q&A session.
Thank you for the presentation. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Analysts, please self-translate first with Chinese, then English. Now we will start the question and answer session. Please feel free to raise any questions. The first question comes from Ziqing Zhang with CICC.
[Foreign language]
Thanks management for taking my question.
Congratulations on those strong results. My first question is related to company pipeline and the New Classics Media. And as management, as management just mentioned, you delivered an exceptional performance in film and TV, drama series business with four big blockbusters. So can management share with us the pipeline for the second half of the year and next year? Specific to New Classics Media, this year is the last year for the period. So what's the NCM business plan for the next year and beyond? My second question about IP derivatives. You made significant progress in collectible card business in the first half of the year. Recently, IP derivatives such as cards, acrylic standees and badges are very popular. So what's the company's strategy for IP derivative, derivatives business?
Is it mainly through a variety operation, or will you do self-operation in some categories? Is there any new progress can share with us? Thank you.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Cao from New Classics Media will address the first question. So for NCM, its pipeline for the second half is also pretty strong, including the drama series Guardians of the Dafeng, Dafeng Dagengren, and Yashe, expected to be released in the second half of the year. Our pipeline for the next two years is also very rich, including more than 10 drama series such as The Narcotic Operation [Foreign language]. The Single Woman [Foreign language] , Criminal Police Moment [Foreign language] , Young and Promising [Foreign language] , Crime Crackdown [Foreign language] , My Heroic Husband 2 [Foreign language] 2, The Panorama of Rivers and Mountains [Foreign language] , The Dust Settles [Foreign language] , A Beautiful Destiny [Foreign language] , as well as film projects such as Chinese Detectives [Foreign language] and Passion Like Fire [Foreign language] The Single Woman, [Foreign language] , Criminal Police Moment [Foreign language] , Young and Promising [Foreign language] and A Beautiful Destiny [Foreign language] are expected to start shooting in the second half. It has been six years since the completion of the acquisition, and NCM team has achieved a high level of integration with China Literature in terms of both management and cooperation throughout the upstream and downstream of the industry chain.
NCM has also made significant achievements in adapting China Literature's IP into drama series. NCM is continuously exploring new areas, and a number of works that are currently in the incubation or adaptation process have been pre-ordered by video platforms. The NCM team is still in a vigorous creative cycle. Moving forward, the team will continue to focus on high quality productions and at the same time, strive to gradually increase the production capacity. Thank you.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Mr. Hou, our CEO will address the second question related to our collectible cards and the merchandise business. Yes, currently, the market demand for these merchandise characters is pretty robust. As these categories now majorly target female fans, the pattern, also known as Bing Tu, as the foundation of the product design, is the most essential part we should focus on. We will engage the top artists in the industry based on the fans' core demands for the content IP, including popular characters, famous scenes, classic content symbols, and the trendy art style to satisfy the fans' preferences. As the IP owner, we will continue to focus on the IP content and operating this business.
The merchandise team, the IP operations team, and the marketing team will work closely to create and launch merchandise that could satisfy IP fans' demand to be emotionally connected and synchronized with the release of other content formats, as well as offline events, allowing the content to reach more users and be more widely recognized by the general public besides its original fan community. Our business model includes both licensing and self-development, taking into account the advantages of different parties. For the categories that require a complicated supply chain, heavy investment, and a long production cycle, we will license our IP to business partners with advantages in these aspects to develop our IP into merchandise. While for the categories that are mature, light assets, and short-chain production cycle, we will majorly consider adopting the self-development model, accompanied by licensing model, to expand our business scale together. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Thomas Chong with Jefferies.
[Foreign language]
We are seeing macro uncertainties. How should we think about the online reading business in terms of paying ratio and ARPU, and how should we think about the trend going forward? And second question is about AIGC. Can management share about the latest updates about how AIGC is applied in our operation, user experience, as well as how we help writers to increase productivity? Thank you.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
so our China Literature Vice President Gao Hang will address your question. In terms of your question regarding online reading business, we don't think the paying ratio or ARPU of our online reading business will be affected by the uncertainties of the macro, because literature as a form of spiritual nourishment, is an essential product for users, and readers of online novels usually exhibit a high degree of loyalty, stickiness, and sustained reading habits. Especially for serialized novels, readers eagerly anticipate the progression of subsequent chapters.
Here we see a very important fact, which is quality is key, and high quality literature works, such as the content of China Literature, have a tremendous appeal to users, who also show a strong willingness to pay for our premium content. At the same time, compared to other forms of entertainment, the cost of online literature is not high. Our monthly ARPU in the first half of the year was RMB 31.7, which will not cause any economic burden on users. In the current market, the value and the importance of premium content is even more evident. Thus, for China Literature, we have further strengthened our focus on the acquisition of high quality content and the consolidation of our writer ecosystem. Currently, our content quality is unrivaled within the industry. Meanwhile, we also continue to optimize the operations of our products and the community, enhance our user engagement and stickiness, and improve the distribution, efficiency, and ROI of our content and the channels to pursue a high quality growth of our online reading business. More importantly, with our premium online literature content as the foundation, we continue to execute our integrated content operation mechanism for our IP across the entire IP industry chain. Incubation of high quality content and the downstream operations of IP serve as our core competitive advantages that will bring us massive opportunities in the pan-entertainment market. Thank you.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Okay, so I'm actually very glad to share with you our application of AI in China Literature. In general, we embrace the AI technology very actively to empower our content ecosystem, and we have made decent progress so far. First of all, as our CEO mentioned in his prepared remarks previously, we made significant progress in AI translation. So far, our proprietary AI translation model trained and reinforced with the professional terminology and the vocabulary in our online literature content library, has become more and more mature, and enable a high automated translation powered by AI with very limited human interference, which has enhanced the translation efficiency by nearly 100 times and lowered the costs by over 90%.
In the first half of this year, Webnovel, our overseas reading platform, added over 1,200 AI translated works, reflecting a significant improvement in the speed of supplying high quality works with the application of AI. Compared with the fact that only around 3,000 works had been translated manually during the past seven years. At the same time, we have been extending AI translation to more languages, covering English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Indonesian, and other minor languages to reach users in more countries and regions to further expand our overseas business. In addition, in the first half, AI translated works from Chinese into other foreign languages accounted for around 40% of the top 100 best sellers on Webnovel, demonstrating users' recognition of the content quality of the AI translated works.
The originally Chinese works that have been translated into foreign languages by AI, and also reflecting the users' very strong willingness to pay for these products. We will continue to optimize our AI model to drive the overseas expansion. In terms of text-to-text generation, last year, we launched our Smart Pen large language model and developed the application, Smart Pen edition for the author assistant application. And the product is being updated and iterated and upgraded consistently to better assist the writers in their content creation process and boost their productivity. The feedback from the writer community is very positive, and the reputation is also pretty good. And so far, the weekly engagement rate with the AI features has reached 30%.
In terms of text-to-image generation and the text-to-video generation, we are training our self-developed vertical model that is able to consistently and steadily generate more and more visualized images in different scenarios based on text and fixed IP character images. Currently, the text-to-image features are in beta testing, with some of our writers involved, and certain pictures already used as illustrations of our serialized novels, which have not only enriched users' reading experience, but also helps with the subsequent visualization process. We are also testing the application of text-to-image features in designing the character image for merchandise development, which will also lay the visual foundation for the subsequent development of animation and games. In addition, AI technology will also help improve the efficiency and the capacity of video production and assist with different procedures, including content planning, script creation, production, post-production, project promotion, et cetera.
Meanwhile, we are also actively exploring the integration of AI with various IP content formats, including audiobooks, animation, and merchandise. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Rebecca Zhu with Morgan Stanley.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language] Thanks, management, for taking my question.
I have two questions, the first question is regarding the IP operation. We see great success for this year's blockbuster and IP [Foreign language]. Can management share some thoughts on IP operation and any incremental IP operation revenue during the release of the blockbusters? The second question is regarding the short drama industry. The industry saw significant growth since last year. What is your take on the new industry trend and any help or any help or any negative impact to our future growth? Thanks.
[Foreign language]
Thank you for your question. I will take your first question regarding our IP operations and Gao will address your second question about short-form drama business. So first of all, in the first half, Joy of Life 2, as a standalone drama project is absolutely a national blockbuster. It has set a new record for the popularity index on Tencent Video, consistently ranking first in viewership ratings across major data platforms and is also the most popular mainland Chinese drama ever broadcasted on Disney+. This validates the influence and commercial value of our premium IP, and reconfirms our ability to create and consistently replicate blockbuster hits. Thanks to our consistent focus on premium content, the current trend in the content market is that the Matthew effect-...
and the influence of leading content and the blockbusters is becoming increasingly significant. With the industry's demand for top-tier IPs growing consistently, and the value and importance of high-quality content becoming even more evident, we will benefit from this trend as our ability to incubate high-quality IPs and develop them for the long term and in series, is the core of our sustained competitive advantage. Secondly, and more importantly, synchronizing with the launch of the drama, various departments in China Literature collaborated each other and worked with industry partners throughout the industry chain and executed a series of joint operations, which resulted in considerable incremental value to our business, just as mentioned previously, in my prepared remarks discussing the highlights of our business.
In terms of online reading, during the broadcasting run of the drama Joy of Life 2, we launched a virtual fan zone on the reading app, releasing brand new side stories like Ye Qingmei's Diary, Ye Qingmei Riji, as well as the novel's worldview, settings, character profiles, and archives, among others. Additionally, a series of fan engagement activities were organized, which sparks into the active discussions among users about the content, driving a 38-fold increase in reading volume sequentially, and a new annual record for daily active users of Qidian Reading app. In addition, we have made further breakthrough in the commercialization and the monetization of our IP. Synchronizing with the release of the drama, we launched a series of offline merchandise, including 11 categories of Joy of Life themed blind boxes and accessories, and a premium collectible card series featuring 308 card designs.
Sales of the blind boxes exceeded 200,000 units, while the collectible cards generated over RMB 20 million in GMV before the drama's release, making them the all-time best-selling collectible cards in the drama-themed category, and opening up new prospects in the drama-themed collectible card market. At the same time, we also licensed the IP image of Joy of Life to a number of costume consumer brands, including electronic products, food and beverage, fashion toys and accessories, and offline physical entertainment, further amplifying the IP's popularity and the commercial value. The outstanding achievements generated by our integrated content operation mechanism have verified China Literature's business model of integrated IP development across the full industry chain, and has also set a new benchmark for the systematic management of our top IPs.
I think this mechanism will be applied to more of our IPs to further create synergies across the entire industry value chain, covering literature, film, drama series, games, merchandise, collectible cards, and other forms of content, therefore, thereby maximizing the value of IP. Thank you.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
I will, I will take your question about our short form drama business. In 2024, we see that the short form drama industry is still growing very strongly. This year, we will continue to accelerate the development of our short form drama business. In the first half, we launched a few dozen high quality short form drama projects adapted from our IP, several of which achieved grossing receipts of over RMB 10 million, with the highest grossing title reaching RMB 30 million. As we have a rich reserve of premium IP scripts and creators, we expect to launch more high quality short form drama projects in the second half. From a full year perspective, we expect to release more than 100 short form dramas in 2024, and hope to see more high quality and successful production.
In terms of the industry chain for the short form drama business, it majorly consists of three parts. The first one is script creation, the second one is shooting, and the third one is operation and user acquisition. So for China Literature, we are majorly responsible for the first part and the third part, which are respectively script creation and operation and user acquisition. First of all, the upstream IP screening and the script incubation, which we have a very strong competitive advantage as we have a strong IP portfolio with deep understanding and the control of our content that allows us to select the literature works that are suitable for short form drama adaptation from our extensive content library. Online literature and short form drama share certain similarities in terms of content pacing and payment conversion.
We also have a great number of excellent content creators to help us convert the literature works into scripts. So our advantages in the upstream content creation are relatively evident. In addition, we are also responsible for the operation and user acquisition for our short form drama projects. Besides the short form video platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou, some of our existing channels for distributing online literature works can be reused for distributing short form dramas, and we will also expand our collaboration with Weixin ecosystem, Tencent Video, and other partners. In general, we have mature and comprehensive capabilities across the industry chain, from the upstream content creation, including IP incubation and script creation, to the downstream content distribution, as well as media operation and user acquisition that support the short form drama ecosystem, serving as a deep moat for our short form drama business. Thank you.
That concludes our question and answer session. I will hand back to Maggie Zhou for closing comments.
Thank you, operator. Due to time constraints, we will now conclude today's call. On behalf of the entire China Literature management team, I would like to thank you for your participation on today's conference call. If you have further questions about China Literature, please feel free to contact us. Thank you, and goodbye!