Chapter 194: Die-hard Supporter

After agreeing to the request from Dacheng Lixiang, Akiwara Yuto began a tour of book signing events in the Kinki region.

The Kinki region, also known as the Kansai region, possesses the Osaka Metropolitan Area, one of Japan's three major metropolitan areas, and is a major regional concept within Japan. It covers an area of over 27, 00 square kilometers with a population of 19. 81 million, of which over 80% is urban.

Because of its high level of urbanization and commercialization, it was listed by "April Youth" as the most important market outside of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

In fact, it was not just "April Youth"; the other three major publishing houses also increased their development of these lower-tier markets during this period.

While Akiwara Yuto was touring this area for signings, "Tokyo Literature," "Tokyo Youth," and "Literature Spring" also began promotions in the form of channels, advertisements, or distribution.

This made Akiwara Yuto feel somewhat agitated, but he also knew that his restlessness was useless. After all, this was different from what he had experienced with the Man-tan Agency; now, it was normal commercial competition between all the publishing houses.

But after being restless for a while, he quickly calmed himself down.

His goal was to be number one in the industry; if it were that easy to achieve, it would be a strange thing instead!

Rather than having time to be restless, it would be better to cooperate more with "April Youth," attend a few more signing events, and show a more "gentle and approachable" attitude toward the readers!

As for the rest, he could only wait for the work "Furuhata Ninzaburo" to slowly ferment and then prompt fans and book critics to spontaneously recommend it.

Although he said that, he was not entirely busy with signing events; he took the time to write the manuscripts for the next three issues and handed them to Awazu Hideki.

Besides that, under the special arrangements made by Asano Aiko, he stayed in hotels or inns that came with their own hot springs—basically, every time he finished working hard, he could go for a soak to relax his exhausted body.

In fact, upon discovering that every city had hot spring hotels or inns, Akiwara Yuto was surprised for a moment, but Asano Aiko quickly told him the specific reason.

Because it is located on the Pacific volcanic seismic belt, Japan's crustal activity is very intense, which has created a large number of hot springs.

From south to north, there are nearly 2, 00 hot springs and 75, 00 hot spring inns. The large number of hot spring inns has also led to a culture where the public loves to soak in hot springs.

According to incomplete statistics, about 110 million people go to soak in hot springs every year, which is equivalent to the number of the entire Japanese population. In other words, basically every Japanese resident will go to soak in a hot spring within a year.

In the process of soaking in hot springs and holding signing events like this, Akiwara Yuto found that December passed very quickly.

……

During this month, the second, third, and fourth issues of "April Youth" were released one after another—the content of the second issue was the Kabuki actor murder case, the third issue was the psychiatrist murder case, and the fourth issue was the writer wife-murder case.

The story structures were all very clear; they all introduced the special relationship and methods between the murderer and the victim, then the routine of Furuhata Ninzaburo arriving at the scene to discover them, and finally the murderer expressing their stance and repenting.

It looked very simple, but simple did not mean that readers did not approve; after all, for this kind of continuous detective series, the most important thing was still the logic and methods of reasoning and solving cases.

For example, the Conan and Jin Tianyi series, although many people found them uninteresting or the routine patterns repetitive, still had many core reader groups that approved of them.

Under these circumstances, the sales of "April Youth" grew steadily: the sales of the second issue remained at 195, 00 copies, the third issue reached 200, 00 copies, and the fourth issue reached 203, 00 copies.

It was hard to say how much of this was due to the signing events, but in terms of ranking, it was already firmly standing in third place, maintaining a significant gap with "Literature Spring."

After confirming this, the internal management of the Kejiaoguan gave higher importance to the "April Youth" editorial department and increased their resource support.

It was not that "Literature Spring" did not try to fight back to regain the market, but their main core market had been snatched away by "April Youth" quite a bit. So even with constant efforts, sales could only barely maintain a range between 180, 00 and 190, 00 copies.

As for "Tokyo Youth" and "Tokyo Literature," sales remained in the first and second positions, which would be difficult to surpass in the short term.

However, Akiwara Yuto and the "April Youth" editorial department were not discouraged; after all, although it was difficult to surpass them in the short term, the gap between them was constantly shrinking.

By constantly moving steadily, sooner or later, they could reach or exceed the other party's sales!

And what made Akiwara Yuto the happiest was that with the serialization of "Furuhata Ninzaburo," some neutral book critics also began to pay attention and spontaneously recommended this work.

When Akiwara Yuto was reading a newspaper on a chair in the inn, he found that in a medium-sized newspaper, a book critic commented like this: Furuhata Ninzaburo is the most charming protagonist in Akiwara Yuto's series of works; his words are full of cynicism, and although he is out of place with the traditional police image, he is very impressive.

This book critic also wrote:

"When Furuhata Ninzaburo works, he hunches his back, his clothes are not tailored, and most of the time when investigating, he is not swift and decisive, sometimes even appearing lazy. He also often bullies his assistant, Imaizumi, and even rides a bicycle to the scene; there are too many traits that don't sound high-end. But these traits form a very obvious contrast with his 'battle of wits' with the murderer when solving cases."

"He does not pride himself on his status as a police officer and use official procedures to force suspects to answer questions. Instead, he uses various excuses and 'thick skin' to get close to them, thereby obtaining all possible clues. From beginning to end, he reveals a very elegant temperament while solving cases."

This was a rare long review, covering nearly two-thirds of a page, but it mainly focused on the description of the protagonist.

So Akiwara Yuto asked Asano Aiko to find another newspaper with greater influence, which contained descriptions of other aspects of the work.

"The work 'Furuhata' informs readers of the criminal's design of the crime process in advance, unlike general reasoning where one can only substitute into the detective's perspective, which enhances the interest."

"The murderers are basically middle-class, and each murderer has a different profession. Many stories involve background knowledge related to these professions, which is a genre painting of contemporary Japanese society."

"The full personality of the criminals gives this work great appeal. In the process of reading, some readers will even find that the murderer becomes gradually anxious and worried. For some murderers, readers even give sympathy, which is very rare."

After reading it, Akiwara Yuto subconsciously glanced at the name of the author of this book review and found it somewhat familiar—Yashiro Toshihiro; when he had just published "Decoration and Yoko" before, the other party had already written a book review for him.

He didn't expect that even now, the other party was still supporting him; this could be counted as a die-hard supporter.

Next time there is an opportunity, he should still invite the other party for a drink and get together; after all, since others support him so much, how could he not do some feedback!

Akiwara Yuto put down the newspaper, then wiped his wet hair, walked down the stairs, and went to a computer room in the inn.

He turned on the computer and looked at the feedback on the internet. As he watched, his brows furrowed...