Chapter 103: First Day Sales

October 8th, Anjiu Bookstore.

Akiwara Yuto stepped on the "creaking" stairs, walked into the second-floor office. In the office, including Anjiu Jin Gangyi, all employees had already arrived.

Anjiu Jin Gangyi saw Akiwara Yuto had arrived, announced the start of the routine meeting, coughed, and prepared to announce the first-day sales of *The Devotion of Suspect X*.

Everyone at the scene was a bit nervous for a moment. After all, whether this book sold well was related to the business situation of Anjiu Bookstore, and even more related to everyone's salary and bonuses.

Akiwara Yuto looked around and found that the two female employees, Satake Maki and Bando Haruka, had their faces tight, Kusanagi Shunpei and Kishitani Toru swallowed their saliva, and even Nishida Youhei, who usually looked quite steady, had his eyes narrowed.

Anjiu Jin Gangyi didn't sell it short. He opened the drawer, took out a piece of paper, took a deep breath, and read out: "According to feedback from direct sales bookstores and distributors, the first-day sales were 1,200 copies."

After finishing this sentence, he bowed: "During this period, everyone has worked hard!"

Anjiu Jin Gangyi's heart was a bit restless. After all, although he judged that Akiwara Yuto's work had the potential to be a bestseller, judgment was just judgment after all. Without seeing the actual sales data, it was hard for him to set his mind at ease.

Now the data was out, proving that his own vision was not a problem!

Hearing this result, everyone at the scene also breathed a sigh of relief. Akiwara Yuto smiled, Satake Maki and Bando Haruka's expressions relaxed, Kusanagi Shunpei and Kishitani Toru looked at each other, and Nishida Youhei clenched his fists.

The office was quiet for a moment, followed by a burst of applause and cheers!

First-day sales of 1,200 copies meant that this book wouldn't be returned in large quantities like the books published before. In other words, no one had to worry about facing salary cuts and layoffs.

Anjiu Jin Gangyi straightened his body, showed a smile, followed by clapping, and then said: "The first-week sales won't have results until next Monday. Before that, I hope everyone will still do their own work well."

Then, he announced the meeting was dismissed, but turned to Akiwara Yuto and said: "Teacher Akiwara, please stay for a moment."

Akiwara Yuto nodded. He actually had questions he wanted to ask the other party.

After 5 minutes, only the two of them were left in the office. Anjiu Jin Gangyi opened the drawer again, handed a document to Akiwara Yuto, and said in as steady a tone as possible: "According to channel statistics, sales in Tokyo were 900 copies, and sales around Tokyo were 300 copies, with the purchasing crowd mostly being young and middle-aged men."

By this time, Anjiu Jin Gangyi couldn't suppress his excitement, losing the steadiness he had in front of his subordinates, and said joyfully: "Teacher Akiwara, we succeeded."

No matter how you look at it, according to the current sales trend, the first edition of 30,000 copies can be sold out smoothly. For Anjiu Bookstore, the rest is purely pure profit!

Akiwara Yuto nodded. Although he was a bit happy, he wasn't as excited as Anjiu Jin Gangyi.

After all, he calculated based on the more than 100,000 weekly sales he had when he was at *New Novel*.

Now this little number, what does it count for?

Akiwara Yuto scanned the data and raised a question: "President Anjiu, what is the estimated weekly sales?"

Anjiu Jin Gangyi thought for a while and replied: "It should be about 3,500 copies."

Akiwara Yuto pondered. According to the experience he learned at *New Novel*, generally speaking, the first-day and first-week sales of a standalone volume are undoubtedly the highest, but in the following weeks, the readers' freshness will undoubtedly pass, which will cause the sales of the standalone volume to gradually drop to a stable level.

If that's the case, maybe the monthly sales will only be 7,000 copies... and it will gradually decline...

This sales figure actually can't be considered low. According to the trend, it might take about half a year to sell out the first edition of 30,000 copies and then reprint. But if that's the case, wanting to sell to 100,000 copies might take 1 or 2 years.

This number, no matter how he thinks about it, feels like it's sorry for the work *The Devotion of Suspect X*. After all, it became a bestseller very quickly in his past life.

So, he still needs to find other channels to do some promotion. He can't just rely on recommendations between readers. No matter how you look at it, this speed is too slow...

However, he didn't tell Anjiu Jin Gangyi these thoughts in his heart. After all, the other party was happy now, and it wouldn't be good for him to pour cold water on him.

It's better to wait a few days, wait until he makes a plan or something, and then raise suggestions.

Time quickly reached noon. After Akiwara Yuto finished the bento brought to him by Satake Maki, he left Anjiu Bookstore.

He took the train to an internet cafe near his home, paid at the front desk, and found a cubicle to sit down.

Akiwara Yuto turned on the computer, preparing to log in to the forum he had seen before, but found that he had forgotten his account. He thought for a while and registered a new account called "Fujiwara Secretary" before logging in.

Let's look at the online feedback for *The Devotion of Suspect X* first?

He made a decision and quickly entered the keyword in the search box of the forum.

After waiting for more than 10 seconds, the webpage loaded the results he wanted, totaling only 5.

Seems a bit bleak...

However, the book has only been released for one day, so it's normal to have this result. Let's wait a bit longer...

Akiwara Yuto set his mind at ease and opened the first search result to look at it.

The title of this post was "A Pitiful Murderer," and it contained thousands of words, roughly outlining the plot of the story. At the end, it strongly recommended all netizens to buy a copy of *The Devotion of Suspect X*, saying the content was unimaginably wonderful.

Akiwara Yuto nodded with satisfaction. Sure enough, there are readers who will recommend it. In this way, it should also be able to drive a batch of sales.

He dragged the mouse and continued to look down, finding that there were more than a dozen replies, mostly "looks quite interesting," "preparing to buy one later," "hope the OP didn't exaggerate," etc.

He closed this post and opened another one, but the content of this one made him feel quite surprised.

【Regarding the protagonist Shi Shen of *The Devotion of Suspect X*, I express my heartfelt disgust. The reason is very simple, because what he is thinking about is not protecting the mother and daughter at all, but wanting to bind the two to his side.

After killing the ex-husband, the mother and daughter could have surrendered immediately. Because of the ex-husband's extortion behavior, the two should only be judged as self-defense, so they wouldn't be sentenced for many years.

Conversely, Shi Shen committed murder and hid the corpse, instead causing the lives of the mother and daughter to fall into an abyss.

Is this the love he thinks he has?】

After reading it, Akiwara Yuto was a bit speechless. He didn't expect the haters to come out so quickly. But he thought about it, if he didn't explain, it might affect the book's sales, so he started typing on the keyboard.

【There are two wounds on the ex-husband's body, one is a blunt object hitting the back of the head (the sound was so loud that even Shi Shen next door could hear it), and the other is a strangulation mark on the neck. In addition, no one can prove that the ex-husband came to extort money.

So even if the mother and daughter surrendered, it would likely be judged as premeditated murder rather than self-defense.】

After finishing the reply, Akiwara Yuto closed the webpage. After all, there are haters every year, so it's not worth spending too much energy. But then again, should he specifically find an assistant later to be responsible for the management of online public opinion.

Akiwara Yuto thought for a while and decided to consider it slowly after going back.

He looked at the time and found it was still early, so he entered another keyword in the search box: "New Novel."

The related results that came out immediately made him surprised... ===== CHAPTER 104 =====