Chapter 29: Good News One After Another

Time entered June.

The book Cao Sheng had been worried about, "The Days of Living with a Flight Attendant," as more and more chapters were updated, saw its popularity on Banyan Tree growing higher and higher.

The growth rate of every metric was getting larger and larger.

The number of new book reviews added each day was also doubling.

Because the recently serialized plot of this book was about the male protagonist Ding Yang trying every method he could think of, like a peacock fanning its tail, wanting to show off all his various merits in front of the female protagonist Ran Jing, yet repeatedly causing comedic mishaps.

And the female protagonist Ran Jing?

In the recent plot, what was shown was her beauty, her gentleness, her virtue, and her tolerance.

Having lost her lover, although her heart was sorrowful, although she felt nothing about Ding Yang's pursuit, she could tolerate the impact Ding Yang had on her life.

These plot points were quite taxing for Cao Sheng to write, because he wanted to produce a side-splittingly funny effect, and crafting such a plot required careful conception, otherwise if he couldn't make the readers laugh, the plot would seem very awkward.

It was precisely these plot points that had recently made the readers ecstatic.

More and more readers liked Ran Jing.

Readers who felt the male protagonist Ding Yang was fun and interesting were also increasing day by day.

In mid-June, this book's readership exceeded one million, setting a new record on Banyan Tree.

The newly established Banyan Tree specially put up a banner on the website's homepage to announce this good news.

This undoubtedly further boosted the book's fame.

Along with it, more long serialized novels began to appear on Banyan Tree.

……

For Cao Sheng, this month's good news was not merely the soaring popularity of "The Days of Living with a Flight Attendant."

What made him happiest was the good news from Xinchang Publishing House.

On a Friday night in mid-June, he once again came to the internet café to pull an all-nighter.

After turning on the computer and logging into his email, he received an email from Chang Qingshu.

The contents were as follows:

"Cao Sheng, I have a piece of good news to inform you of. Your work 'I Want to Become an Immortal,' volumes one and two, have had very good sales after going on the market, and reader feedback has also been very positive. Therefore, the president has specially approved that your work can have its observation period shortened by one month. In other words, starting from this month, 'I Want to Become an Immortal' no longer needs to be limited to publishing one volume per month. If you have manuscripts in hand, you may publish two or three volumes this month if you wish. Moreover, your royalty for this month does not need to be held back. Send us a few volumes of manuscripts, and we can quickly remit the royalties for those volumes into your bank account.

Upon seeing this letter, please contact me as soon as possible, because if you want to publish one or two additional volumes this month, we need to act quickly, otherwise the time for our proofreading, typesetting, and printing here may be very tight.

I look forward to your reply.

—Xinchang Publishing House, Chang Qingshu"

……

Seeing such an email, Cao Sheng was naturally happy in his heart.

The royalties from his second volume published in May had been treated as a deposit and had not been paid to him.

In other words, he had currently published two volumes of this book, but had actually only received royalties for one volume.

Originally, he had thought that in June, he could only receive royalties for one volume.

After all, Chang Qingshu had previously told him—according to the rules, for a new author's new book publication, during the first three months only one volume could be published per month, because the publishing house needed to observe the market's response.

After three months, if the response was good, they would allow an increase in the number of volumes published per month; otherwise, the publishing house had the right at any time to demand the work be concluded immediately.

These were all clauses written in the contract.

And now, the publishing house had actually taken the initiative to shorten the observation period by one month, allowing him in advance to publish one or two additional volumes per month.

What did this indicate?

Cao Sheng's judgment was: the response after volumes one and two of this book hit the market was very good.

At least in terms of sales, it should have made Xinchang Publishing House feel pleasantly surprised.

Otherwise, it shouldn't have received special approval from the president, who was eager to accelerate the publication pace of this book.

While Cao Sheng was happy, the thought of raising his royalties also emerged.

—Since my book's sales are good, is it time now to bring up the matter of raising royalties with the publishing house?

He was somewhat inclined to bring it up.

But reason stopped him.

A voice in his heart said to him: bringing it up now is not yet the right timing, wait a bit longer! Wait until this book's sales are higher, when the plot gradually reaches its best moments, then bringing it up should be best. Moreover, sales probably haven't reached their peak yet, so even if royalties were raised now, the increase wouldn't be much. Wouldn't it be unreasonable to ask for a raise again after some time? Asking for a raise several times during the publication of one book would disgust the publishing house, wouldn't it?

Wait! Wait a bit longer!

Anyway, "I Want to Become an Immortal" is a xianxia cultivation novel, and this kind of subject matter easily lends itself to super-long works of four to five million characters, so there's no need to rush to raise royalties now.

Once he had thought it through clearly, his heart settled.

With a slight smile, he opened the draft notebook he had brought tonight, opened the electronic document, and began bit by bit to convert his handwritten manuscripts into electronic manuscripts.

By dawn, his email inbox had over twelve thousand characters of manuscript added.

Adding the existing manuscripts in his email, he put together two volumes' worth and sent them to Chang Qingshu.

Once these two volumes were sent over, it meant his royalties for this month would be 8,000 yuan.

Adding the remainder of his royalties from the first volume, his savings on hand would exceed ten thousand.

In '98, most households in the country probably didn't have savings exceeding ten thousand, yet he, Cao Sheng, still a student, already had this much money.

This was a small achievement.

……

The next day, Saturday night.

Cao Sheng once again came to the internet café to pull an all-nighter, continuing to convert his handwritten manuscripts into electronic manuscripts.

Monday, noon.

After lunch, he found time to come to the internet café again; today was the day he was supposed to update "The Days of Living with a Flight Attendant."

After the computer successfully booted up, he first logged into Banyan Tree's author backend, and just as he was about to log into his email to pull up the manuscripts, he suddenly caught sight of a new message in Banyan Tree's author backend.

Did Rongshu Xia send me another site message?

Did they give this book of mine another recommendation slot?

Cao Sheng, with a hint of anticipation, clicked open this site message.

But the content of the message read: "Dear author Zhongyuan Yidian Hui, first of all, congratulations on Your work 'Days of Living with the Flight Attendant' becoming the first work on our site to surpass one million readers. This is your achievement, and also the glory of us at Rongshu Xia. For this reason, we held a meeting and unanimously decided to strongly recommend this work of yours to multiple domestic publishers, hoping to help this work of yours get published domestically. But before that, we need to obtain your publishing agency authorization. If you are willing, please send us your address, and we will send a dedicated person to come discuss the publishing agency contract with you. We look forward to working with you! — Rongshu Xia"

After reading this site message, Cao Sheng's expression was very surprised.

He hadn't expected Rongshu Xia to have this idea.

They actually wanted to help him publish this book?

He hadn't even hoped this book could be published in the short term.

Before, he had always thought about writing this book purely out of love, running on passion alone.

And now?

Rongshu Xia wants to generate power for me?

Strongly recommend to multiple domestic publishers? The multiple domestic publishers they mentioned — are they referring to publishers here on the mainland?

These days, publishing a simplified Chinese book on the mainland is no easy matter!