Literary Master: Starting with Refusing to Be a Child Star

Chapter 116 Domestic and International Cultural Exchange

Chapter 115 Domestic and International Cultural Exchange

While Stranger Things was still in the planning stages, Luo Jinnian had already begun arranging another seemingly unrelated matter.

He sat at his desk for an entire afternoon, organizing the contents of the first volume of "Charlie IX".

This book was a childhood memory for many people born in the 1990s and 2000s. It tells the story of a boy named Mo Duoduo and his friends Fu You, Hu Sha, Yao Tingting, and a talking dog named Charlie IX, who go on adventures and solve mysteries together.

Every story contains a bizarre event, and behind every event lies some kind of scientific or human truth.

When children read it, they feel excited, scared, and unable to put it down. After reading it, they will find that those seemingly illogical monsters are actually people and things that have been misunderstood, harmed, or trapped by their own obsessions.

Luo Jinnian chose to release this book at this time not because it was convenient, but because this story actually has a similar aesthetic to "Stranger Things".

They are all stories featuring children as protagonists, supernatural phenomena as a shell, and friendship and courage as their core themes.

If this book becomes popular first, the children who grow up reading it will naturally become the most loyal viewers of Stranger Things in the future.

They will recognize those familiar elements: a group of adventurous children, a bizarre disappearance, an unknown and unpredictable unfolding, and the entrance to the "Upside-Down World".

Children will think, "This is a story I read when I was a child."

""

Moreover, the author is the same person.

When the manuscript was submitted, Jiabei remained silent for a while on the other end of the phone after reading the first volume.

Just as Luo Jinnian once believed, children's stories are the foundation of book publishing, and whoever wins over children wins the world.

"The printing press here is wide open for you. I have a feeling that the first volume of 'Charlie IX' will create a sales miracle in the country."

On the day the first volume of "Charlie IX," titled "The Ghost of Black Bay Street," was published, Luo Jinnian did not conduct any special publicity.

Early Spring Culture's official account only posted one message on Weibo: "The first book in the new Charlie IX series is available today, suitable for readers aged 8 to 14. A story about adventure, friendship and courage."

The accompanying image is the cover photo: a boy standing on a misty street with a dog on a leash, and the silhouette of an old house in the distance.

The first week's sales weren't particularly impressive; new children's books typically take some time to be discovered by readers.

But things started to change in the second week. Someone posted on the forum: "Has anyone read 'Charlie IX'? I bought a copy for my nephew, and after he finished reading it, he told me that the book was better than the cartoon. My goodness, he was so engrossed in the book that he didn't even eat."

Someone commented below: "My daughter did the same thing. She read until 10 pm last night and refused to go to sleep, so I forcibly took the book away."

Someone below even asked, "You guys aren't doing a sponsored post, are you?"

The reply said, "It was written by Early Spring Tea. If you don't know the name, I can give you a brief introduction."

In the third week, the first group of readers began spontaneously recommending the book on short video platforms.

Someone held up the cover of "Charlie IX" in front of a webcam and recommended it, saying, "This book is really good, I especially recommend it to children."

Someone posted a video saying "I told the whole plot of the first book in one go", and it got over a million views in a day.

The platform's algorithm pushed this content to more parents, and the sales curve started to rise, then got higher and higher, and steeper and steeper.

A little over a month later, the first volume of "Charlie IX" sold over 600,000 copies.

This number is absolutely a miracle for physical books in China, especially in the field of children's literature.

Some publishers have started inquiring about how this series under Early Spring Culture was planned, so they can know how to avoid it when releasing their own books in the future.

"It would be a shame if there wasn't a second volume."

Many envelopes were delivered to Early Spring Culture Company.

Luo Jinnian was on set when she received the print run report.

During a break in filming, he sat in a folding chair, read the report, then closed it and placed it aside.

Gu Yanxi walked over, and after shaving her head, she habitually touched the top of her head. "What are you looking at?"

Luo Jinnian said, "The books are selling well."

Gu Yanxi glanced at the numbers on the report. "So you wrote this book so that those children would read your 'Stranger Things' in the future?"

,

This is her personal reflection during this period.

Yes, smart.

Luo Jinnian did not deny it, but asked in return, "Do you think this counts as planting seeds in advance?"

'

Gu Yanxi thought for a moment and said, "It's possible, but I don't think it will be very useful."

""

"Consider this a test of the market. Books can fail regardless of their production costs, but Stranger Things absolutely cannot."

Gu Yanxi understood that Early Spring Culture had invested a lot in this drama, but she still didn't expect Luo Jinnian to take it so seriously and use a work as a test.

In the distance, Director Mo was discussing the lighting for the next scene with the cinematographer, while Chu Qingning sat on a chair in the corner, drawing with her head down.

Three child actors selected from all over the country squatted next to a prop box, playing with a glass marble that had somehow appeared out of nowhere.

Laughter was carried by the wind from afar, intermittent like the chirping of cicadas in summer.

The relationship between "Charlie IX" and this show is like that of a seed and a tree seed buried in the soil. Everyone only sees the soil, but only he knows what is growing underneath.

After a while, the tree grows, and those who have read the story of the seed will recognize that the tree's roots began to grow from that time.

He stood up, folded the report, put it in his pocket, and went to look at Director Mo's monitor.

The screen shows a scene from the factory residential area in the early 1990s: old-style tenement buildings, quilts drying on the balconies, a 28-inch bicycle parked downstairs, and a half-finished chess set on a stone table under the shade of a tree.

The chess set was borrowed from an elderly local family by the props team. The pieces were polished to a shine, and the edges were rounded, as if someone had actually played chess on this stone table for many years.

Looking at the scene, Luo Jinnian recalled a passage from "Charlie IX": "Sometimes, the most terrifying things are not the monsters you can't see, but the things you see but dare not believe."

When he copied that sentence, he was thinking about the deeper aspects of the two plots, as well as the truths hidden beneath everyday life that needed to be seen.

This book and this drama are two fruits that grew on the same vine. One grew on a plum tree and the other on a peach tree. Although they taste different, they are from the same root.

The presentation of both works is also a form of cultural exchange between China and other countries.