Chapter 89: Shelf Speech
It would go live tomorrow.
The new book period was extended by a week, but it still didn’t advance in the Sanjiang recommendation, barely missing out just like the last time. Rather than blaming it on bad luck, it’s a fact that my writing wasn’t as good as others, and I have to admit that. After all, luck in writing is built on skill.
This is the third book to hit the shelves at Qidian.
I clearly remember when writing the first book, "Lady," it also failed to advance to the Sanjiang recommendation. The pacing was slow due to excessive preliminary setup, and I still remember the comments from many readers: "Swinging randomly from one thing to another, it’s unclear what the author is writing about," "Confusing," "Does the author have an outline? It’s already going off track," "Trying to be mysterious," "Honestly, I don’t understand it," "Too many characters," and other such comments. So, when it went live, it was disastrous, garnering only a thousand initial orders. (Crying to death)
I recall it was probably around Chapter 120, when all the threads came together, that "Lady" slowly started to gain popularity, and finally it caught a small fire, rising from one thousand initial orders to an average order of nine thousand. It could have reached ten thousand, but it was taken down and "harmonized," and now it can only be found through audiobooks. This was my own fault, and I have nothing to blame. However, this book also brought me confidence and some solid readers.
In the second book, "Madame," the initial comments were similar. The old readers were okay, but the new ones were still baffled. Fortunately, because of the performance of "Lady" and a gripping start of "Madame," it almost secured all the recommendations for the new book period, with initial orders close to four thousand. If I could stick with it, I believe it would have reached ten thousand. The momentum after going live was good.
The irony, however, was that with "Lady’s" initial one thousand, facing many doubts, I stuck to the outline, and it was a success. Yet with the better-performing "Madame," I failed to keep true to myself, changed the outline significantly, and ultimately collapsed completely, leaving many readers disappointed and abandoning the book.
This third book, "Ex-Wife," was also starting from scratch.