The latest review on a web-novel app is "aaazsw ww": My Novel and a Vietnamese shell-account pipeline

My Novel is an English romance novel reading app on Google Play. Since launching a month ago it has racked up 60k installs, almost all from India. Its product is no different from dozens of other web-novel apps, and its installs were bought in waves; once the budget stops, only a few people a day install it. What's really worth looking at isn't the app but the team behind it: several Vietnamese and Indian shell-company accounts that take turns listing the same short-drama and web-novel templates, each package getting a few days of spend at a time. Below: how it got going, why it can't hold users, and what you can take from it.

A review you can't make sense of

On Nov 5, on the India Google Play store, a user named Pancha Chakraborty left the latest review on My Novel:

aaazsw ww 3/2#/, t d bn u🙏mtlo

The one before it was "good try" from Oct 22. The entire India store has 33 reviews in total, rated 3.9 stars (store page, 11-06). 60k installs, 33 reviews, and the newest one was typed out by hand, the way someone types who didn't come to read a novel.

This app's store page is tidy: "📚 Discover Your Next Read", categories, charts, new releases, weekly picks, adjustable font size and background color, shelf management. Within one paragraph it repeats romance stories, romance novels, and love story four or five times. The developer is CONG TY CO PHAN XAY DUNG ALPHA, which translates to Alpha Construction Joint Stock Company, based in Hanoi, with a garbled Gmail as contact. A construction company building a romance novel app: that's the first thing that doesn't add up.

Installs are a tap opened and shut

(Google Play installs; AppstoreSpy estimates backfill the curve since launch, as of 11-06)

Oct 21 is the build date of its new version v1.0.0_20261021. That day installs jumped from a few hundred to 8,771. Six days later, on Oct 27, they dropped to 6 a day. No gradual transition. This isn't word of mouth rising or falling; someone is switching the budget on and off. Once it's off, installs go near zero, which means there's no organic traffic: store search, recommendations, word of mouth bring in no one.

Its best rank was 10-29 on the India Books & Reference Top Free chart at #26, then it kept sliding, 11-06 at #172. The third-party site appsxray puts 99% of installs in India (unverified). Searching TikTok, X and the press turns up nothing.

Where the money comes from: ads, not chapter sales

The store page lists both "Contains ads" and in-app purchases at $1.99–19.99, which looks like the coin-unlock chapters common in web novel apps. But AppGoblin estimates about 31k monthly active users and under $10k in monthly revenue, with nearly 100% from ads and IAP at roughly 0 (estimated). Its app contains 11 ad networks, 2 mediation layers, and 1 attribution SDKs.

This is the reverse of how GoodNovel and Dreame operate: those platforms sell to affluent users in Europe, the US, and Japan, and recover costs through heavy coin purchases. My Novel targets cheaper users in India and recovers costs through interstitial and rewarded ads. Whether people actually read doesn't matter; watching a few ads is enough.

Who's behind it: a byte-identical file

The team gave itself away through a file called app-ads.txt, which app developers use to declare to ad platforms which monetization accounts belong to them.

My Novel's developer site is an empty GitHub Pages site (homepage 404), but it hosts an app-ads.txt with 1,345 lines. The GitHub Pages sites for three other developer accounts host a byte-identical copy (11-06 fetched, all four md5 hashes match): the same 7 AdMob publisher IDs, 2 Meta Audience Network accounts, AppLovin, and more. It even keeps Google's test publisher ID pub-3940256099942544 from the official docs. The template was copied directly and nobody removed it. Only one group could share the same list of monetization accounts.

(Google Play installs, 11-06)

A construction company and an agriculture company are both publishing short drama and novel apps. The version number formats are identical (v1.0.0_20261012, v1.0.0_20261021), in-app purchase price points are nearly the same, privacy policies are hosted on Google Sites, and contact emails are garbled Gmail addresses.

The most telling part is when the three web novel apps were run:

• Novel Fic: 10-12 to 10-18, about 73k installs, after which it dropped to roughly 0
• My Novel: 10-21 to 10-26, about 48k installs
• Novels: Read Fiction Stories: 11-01 to 11-03, about 45k installs, +52k over 7 days in the week of 11-06, #9 on India's Books Top Free chart

Relay, not simultaneous. A new package and a new account take over, and the previous one goes to zero. This looks like someone comparing which package and creative set pays back best using the same template, or spreading the risk of bans so one account getting banned doesn't take the others down (inference). Also, both accounts started with short dramas, reaching hundreds of thousands of installs before launching web novels. Short drama and web novel audiences and themes (CEO romance, werewolves, romance) almost completely overlap, so the acquisition playbook transfers directly.

Crowded or not

The two layers need to be considered separately.

Web novel apps: a crowded category. In India, Pratilipi (54.6M installs, 12 Indian languages, with a writer ecosystem) and PocketFM's Pocket Novel (12.1M). Going global: Fizzo (85.9M, ByteDance-owned, also free-with-ads reading), Dreame, GoodNovel, WebNovel, NovelToon. In 2026 and 7 through September, a batch of new entrants also appeared: BetterStory, Amberia, Novellea, KissNovel. They're running paid acquisition in the US, Europe and Japan, at 27K to 76K installs. My Novel has nothing in its product that stands out.

The "shell account + template + paid acquisition" playbook is still paying off. From 2026 8 to October, at least a dozen short-drama apps from small Vietnamese studios charted on Play: LumaReel 627k, MystReel 373k, VioletBinge 300k, VibeReel 250k... Whether they're the same team is unclear, but the trick is clearly catching on in Vietnam.

No one has written about it and its revenue isn't public, which is good news for anyone following. But it hasn't earned anything that would turn heads. The team swaps out a web novel package after only 3 to 7 days, which could mean testing, or could mean a single package generally doesn't pay back. From the outside, there's no way to tell.

If it were you

In one line: C. Don't build "another web novel app". What's worth learning is the workflow: one template, multiple packages, small rotating test budgets, scale up the winners, drop the rest. Teams that already know how to buy traffic and have one category running can apply this process to adjacent categories. Teams without paid acquisition experience have no real place here.

Who it suits: small teams that have already run Google UAC, Meta, or AppLovin campaigns and know their cost per install and ad revenue per user; teams with a category already working (short drama, utilities, casual games) looking to port the playbook to an adjacent category with overlapping audiences and cheaper content.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone hoping to grow through product, ASO, or content operations (stop spending and it goes to zero, which is the nature of this model); anyone without legitimate content sources who doesn't want copyright risk (where the novels come from is undisclosed, and I haven't verified it); anyone building a long-term brand or accumulating users (its users come and go).

How to do it: first get one package working in one category and lock down the acquisition model (bids, creatives, payback days). Then reskin the same client into two or three more packages, concentrating a few days of budget on one package at a time, and compare payback speed. Use licensed or original content. Web novel licensing costs are far lower than short drama, which is why it can port over from short drama. In low-priced markets like India, ads alone can pay back, but first confirm ad revenue covers install costs before scaling up.

How to get users: paid acquisition, nothing else. Creatives follow the short drama formula: clips of romance, CEO, and werewolf conflicts, landing directly on the store page.

Risk warning: Google Play is increasingly scrutinizing template apps and linked accounts. Running multiple accounts that share one app-ads.txt is itself ready-made evidence of linkage. If you run multiple accounts, don't share monetization accounts or website templates.

Deadline: there's no seasonal window. The real deadline is platform policy: this playbook works until Play's next sweep against template apps and linked accounts.

If I'm wrong: (1) the team keeps releasing new web novel packages every week and runs each one longer than the last, which would mean web novels are profitable and deserve serious attention, and this rating should go up; (2) conversely, Novels: Read Fiction Stories gets no successor and the team goes back to short drama only, which would mean web novels don't pay back on Indian ad monetization; (3) several of these accounts are taken down by Play in bulk, which would mean the shell account matrix approach has hit a wall.

Data and sources

• Installs and charts: Google Play global cumulative installs and category charts for India and other storefronts, as of 11-06. Daily curves since launch are AppstoreSpy estimates.
• Store page and reviews: Google Play India storefront and developer page, 11-06.
• Monthly actives, revenue, SDKs: AppGoblin (appgoblin.info/apps/com.novel.story.bookapp), all third-party estimates.
• 99% of installs from India, and India trending chart rank: appsxray, unverified.
• The same team's footprint: the app-ads.txt on the four github.io sites xay-dung-alpha, nong-nghiep-xanh, aadhya-tech-limited, and inter-human-limited, fetched 11-06, byte-identical.
• No direct evidence on acquisition channels or unit costs (Google, Meta, or other networks). Content sourcing is unverified. The real companies behind the four shell accounts were not identified.