Chapter 19: Speeding Up

Judging from the newspaper Asano Aiko handed over, the book review of "Little Ornament and Yoko" only had content the size of a palm; if one didn't look closely, one might not notice it at all.

What was even more embarrassing was that the book review of "The Footsteps of Searching" next to it occupied half the size of the newspaper page.

Compared to the two, "Little Ornament and Yoko" was like a free gift given during a supermarket sale.

Forget it, it was expected; let's see how these two book reviews were written.

Akiwara Yuto placed the newspaper in front of him and began to look at it carefully. To be honest, he was also curious about how the book reviewer evaluated his and Kadowaki Yuzhen's works respectively.

He first examined the layout, scanned the other party's headline "Kadowaki Yuzhen's Masterpiece: A Detective Journey to Hokkaido," and then examined it—this article, because it occupied half a page, reached more than 4,000 words; calling it a book review, it looked more like a book promotion advertisement.

The entire content, looking back and forth, was all "the author's writing style is very good," "the scenery foil is very great," "the local customs and practices of Hokkaido are explained vividly," and other words that made people blush when said.

He looked at it twice and felt a bit jealous. After all, the book review of his own article was only 500 words long, a full eight times less than the other party's.

However, he was just envious; he was just a newcomer writer, and Asano Aiko was also a small editor; neither of them had any say.

After a few more years of suffering, naturally, there would be such treatment, just like this article...

Huh, it seems a bit wrong?

To confirm, he returned to the beginning of the article again and began to ponder word by word.

Generally speaking, the purpose of a good book review is to make readers know how successful and interesting the book is, so that they become interested in continuing to purchase it.

To achieve this effect, the book review must be based on the book, starting from the content of the book to give people inspiration; simply put, the book reviewer must convey the information and emotions obtained to the readers under their own independent values.

But this book review introducing "The Footsteps of Searching," although it looked like it was praising it to the skies on the surface, actually didn't touch the core of the story at all.

You know, for detective novels, the book review should mention the various mysteries or difficulties at the beginning as much as possible without revealing the murderer, tricks, key clues, and the truth, so as to achieve the effect of attracting readers' interest.

If even these are not mentioned, how can it attract core readers interested in detective work? They can't buy it to look at the description of the scenery, right?

Akiwara Yuto pondered for a while, but still couldn't think of the reason why the book reviewer wrote like this; he shrugged his shoulders and decided to continue to see how the book review of "Little Ornament and Yoko" was written.

But holding suspicion about the book reviewer's level, he already held no hope in his heart.

However, the specific content surprised him a bit.

The title of this book review was "A Story from Pain to Rebirth."

The article first told a news report, that is, a man because of his different attitudes toward the young child and the eldest daughter in the family, led to the latter running away from home and disappearing for many years. Then it began to explore human nature, talking about why parents could have different attitudes toward children who were their own flesh and blood.

After a simple analysis, the article also led to the content of "Little Ornament and Yoko," telling the story of the different encounters of a pair of twins in the same family, describing a series of stories of Yoko being abused, thereby arousing the readers' sympathy.

While guiding emotions, this article also used the technique of deceptive narration to return to Yoko, saying that she saw her own corpse downstairs at home, fully arousing the readers' doubts. Finally, it recommended "Little Ornament and Yoko," saying that it could be seen in the second column of "New Novel."

Akiwara Yuto was a bit speechless for a moment; this book review was written much better than the one just now, and even he was interested in buying a copy to see. But what he found strange was why the level of these two book reviews was so different?

He glanced at the author column and found that both were written by a book reviewer named Yashiro Toshihiro; he was a bit confused in his heart, and even suspected that Kadowaki Yuzhen had a grudge against the other party, but felt it was unlikely; this kind of commercial promotion, no matter what, couldn't involve private issues.

Forget it, it has little relevance to himself; let's think about what he should do next?

He fell into deep thought again there; Asano Aiko didn't disturb him after seeing it—writers and such things, you never know what is in their brains; if you disturb him, he can say you destroyed his inspiration; in short, just pretend you didn't see it.

Akiwara Yuto didn't know Asano Aiko's belly-mouthing; he considered for a long time and decided to continue to promote the adaptation work of foreign detective works first; as for the serialization on "New Novel," let it be for now; after all, it was not something he could decide.

He picked up his chopsticks and took away the last piece of hamburger meat in the bento box, which made Asano Aiko's eyelids jump; that was what she specifically didn't eat and left for herself, but it was swallowed by Akiwara Yuto in one bite, which was simply a bit annoying.

Forget it, hold back, be reserved, be elegant; I am a lady. Besides, Mom made it for him in the first place.

A few days ago, Mom took the initiative to ask her about Akiwara's specific situation; after learning that he grew up in a welfare institution, she also sympathized with his encounter very much, not only increasing the portion of the bento but also making many rich dishes.

This made her feel that she was not her own child; you know, because the production process of hamburger meat is relatively troublesome, she herself usually couldn't eat it.

Akiwara Yuto quickly finished the dishes, put down the chopsticks in his hand, and then changed to a newspaper to start studying carefully.

As the most influential communication channel in Japan at present, the role of newspapers cannot be ignored.

In his past life, Japan was one of the largest newspaper distribution countries in the world; among the top 10 newspapers in the world by circulation, Japan accounted for four.

Among them, the first "Yomiuri Shimbun" had a circulation of 9.1 million copies, the second was "Asahi Shimbun" with a circulation of 6.62 million copies, and the third was "Nihon Keizai Shimbun" with a circulation of 2.72 million copies.

In this world, because the national conditions are the same, there are also newspapers with huge circulation such as "Nihon Industrial Review," "East Nihon," and "Chiji Shimbun."

If he wants to establish himself in the literary world, he must attach importance to the role of these newspapers, especially the book reviews in the newspapers; after all, no matter how well you write, if no one promotes it, it can only rot in the warehouse.

Under such a plan, he looked for a long time, basically flipped through all the newspapers in the editorial department, and found that except for "Tokyo Daily News," other newspapers didn't even have a word about the articles on "New Novel," which was simply speechless.

It seems there is really no influence.

Putting down the investigation in this regard, he studied the book reviews related to the literary magazines of the four major publishing houses in the newspaper—although it has little to do with him now, knowing a little more doesn't hurt.

He looked for a while and found that the struggle between the four major publishing houses had reached the point of bayonet fighting.

In these newspapers, the number of book reviews related to Toei's "Tokyo Youth" is the largest, mainly revolving around three works, which are a honkaku detective novel describing modern case investigation, a critical novel depicting social reality, and a beautiful novel depicting men and women.

Jingfan's "Spring of Literature" ranks second; the book reviews mainly talk about two orthodox detective novels, one is a detective biography set in the Edo period, and the other is a modern Tokyo police story.

Mantanshe's "Tokyo Literature" ranks third; the popular works mainly include two, one is a social detective novel about family ethics, and the other is a biography about Japanese people making their way in the United States.

Kejiaoguan's "April Youth" ranks fourth; the popular work is only one unorthodox detective novel, mainly about a nursery rhyme murder story in Japanese folk.

After looking for a long time, Akiwara Yuto had a further understanding of the current situation—compared to these large magazines, the book reviews of "New Novel" were only the two he saw, which could not even be counted as a lying-flat salted fish.

But even this lying-flat salted fish, he was not the most valued writer, and his work was not the most valued.

Thinking of this, his brows frowned.

No, must speed up! ===== CHAPTER 20 =====