Rebirth begins with studying hard

Chapter 16 Signing Invitation

Shanghai, Qidian Editorial Department.

After finishing the meeting and handling her tasks, Xuebi frowned, thinking about how her recently signed books hadn't been doing very well.

He graduated with a degree in Chinese Language and Literature, and came to Qidian as an editor because he loved reading novels.

I originally thought signing online novels was simple; I could just sign whichever one I liked.

But it turned out that this wasn't the case. There were also requirements for signing contracts for online novels, and Qidian had the highest requirements among all the websites.

After finally finding some books that I thought had potential, I asked the editor-in-chief to agree to sign them.

The books they signed didn't perform well, and most of them were abandoned before they were even published.

One book was even abandoned during the recommendation process, and he was specifically reminded by the editor-in-chief several times because of this.

Because the overall performance of the books he signed was not ideal, the editor-in-chief is now more stringent in reviewing his submissions.

He envied other senior editors, who had established authors publishing books and meeting basic performance targets, as well as many newcomers with some experience coming to submit their work.

With the performance targets easily met, I can spend the rest of my time reading my favorite books while on paid leave.

As a new editor who has been in the industry for less than a year, he has few new authors to contribute to, let alone established ones.

Most of the new books in the library are not good, and even the books that can be signed cannot meet the sales targets.

In order to find promising authors, he would often go to Tieba, Longkong, and even Rongshuxia to recruit people.

But those authors who had already written good stories either didn't reply to him or had already been poached by others, leaving him with nothing.

"I hope someone will reply to me." After spending some time leaving messages for authors who had achieved success on various websites to see if there was a chance to poach their work, Sprite opened the backend and began to check the new books published in this group.

Although the number of books he's signed in the library recently hasn't met his expectations, this is all the resources he has left.

After spending some time reviewing the 10-word contract application form assigned to him by the backend, he disappointedly crossed it out completely.

He started looking at new books that had reached 50,000 words, and there was one that he thought was quite good and wanted to sign it.

But considering his current performance, I decided to be more cautious and followed up for a while to see the data before submitting my application.

"Another fruitless day." He grimaced, feeling that if things continued like this, he might really have to give up.

Suddenly, he remembered that during the meeting on Monday, the editor-in-chief praised an editor from the next group for having excellent judgment. The editor had signed a book when it had only reached 3 words and had given it many recommendations despite opposition.

The final result was excellent.

"Everyone can learn from him and actively seek out new books."

Recalling the editor-in-chief's words, he encouraged himself, then reopened the backend and searched for books with fewer words in the new book library.

Because long-term serialized online novels were a niche genre at that time, many people treated Qidian as a forum and published books casually and unstablely.

Many books are only updated to 20,000 or 30,000 words before they are finished. Finding books from the shortest list is very inefficient, so we review books with more words.

If there's a new book with particularly good natural data, they'll take a look.

Otherwise, we wait until the word count reaches 50,000, and if we're unsure, we wait until it reaches 100,000 before making a decision.

But under pressure to meet performance targets, the renovation of the library had to be done, no matter how inefficient it was.

After reading dozens of new books, just as he was about to give up and finish reading a few more, a new book called "Battle Through the Heavens" came into view.

"The name sounds interesting." He became somewhat interested, but after reading the description, he frowned.

Battle aura? Warrior? No magic?

It's not Western fantasy.

It's not in the cultivation or urban genres either.

He shook his head inwardly.

Currently, Western fantasy books, represented by "The Law of the Devil," are performing very well and are extremely popular.

Many veteran authors are preparing to start Western fantasy books to ride the wave of popularity.

Aside from Western fantasy, cultivation and urban fantasy genres are also popular and tend to be more successful.

There are also stories featuring pure warrior characters with fighting spirit as the main characters, but they are not very successful.

Moreover, he felt that the book's synopsis was too simple and didn't highlight its selling points.

He was a little disappointed that there weren't many words, only ten chapters had been published.

But since the book has appeared in his back office, I have to finish reviewing it no matter how disappointed I am.

Chapter 1: The Fallen Genius

"Power of Battle, Third Stage!"

He hadn't had high hopes initially, but after reading a few hundred words, he perked up:

"Feels pretty good..."

The opening style was quite different from the new books I've read before, and it was very engaging.

He roused himself and continued reading.

"Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river, never underestimate a young man's potential..." He was startled when he saw this line in the scene where the protagonist was divorcing his wife.

Thinking about his current poor grades and being secretly looked down upon, he felt a strange sense of identification.

After a moment of reflection, he continued to scroll through the mouse.

It wasn't until he had read all ten chapters that he finally snapped out of his immersion in the story, still feeling a bit lost.

"It feels like a good book!" Although it has very few words and can only be initially judged to be a story of a loser's rise to power and leveling up, the writing is fine and the reader is very immersed in it.

Without hesitation, he initiated the signing process.

He only closed the page after confirming that the process had reached the editor-in-chief for review.

"Is it an alternate account of some veteran author?" But thinking that even if it was an alternate account of a veteran author, it was still unclaimed as long as it hadn't entered the signing process, so he stopped thinking about it and continued working.

During the breaks, he kept refreshing the process, but the editor-in-chief still didn't approve the signing process he submitted.

As the workday was drawing to a close, the editor-in-chief still hadn't made a move, and he couldn't hold back any longer.

"Sprite's here? What's up?" After hearing Sprite's purpose, Editor-in-Chief Bai Chen smiled and asked him to pull up a chair.

"I've read the book 'Battle Through the Heavens' that you submitted for signing. It's well-written and quite good; it definitely meets the criteria for signing a contract."

"But only 30,000 words is too little, and it's not written by a familiar author. What if they sign the contract and then stop updating?"

"The rate of missing updates for the books we've signed up for has been quite high lately. If it gets any higher, we might have to get extra attention."

"You haven't been in the industry for long, so it's normal that the books you've signed haven't performed well. We've all been there, so don't worry."

Sprite scratched his head, looking a little embarrassed.

The editor-in-chief said that the rate of missing updates for books signed by this group is relatively high, but in fact, only the books signed by him have such a high rate of missing updates, which is already close to the red line.

He knew the editor-in-chief was reminding and reassuring him not to rush into signing the new book.

"I won't reject the process either. Let's observe the author's subsequent update schedule. If they can consistently update to 70,000 or 80,000 words, then we'll sign the contract."

"We can also observe the quality of this book further."

Sprite was a little impatient.

In the past, if the editor-in-chief had spoken, he would definitely have listened to the editor-in-chief's opinion.

After all, the word count is indeed lower, and if he stops updating, his update rate will only worsen.

But this was the only reliable book he'd seen in the past few days. If he couldn't grasp it, even without pressure from the editor, he wouldn't be able to continue. So he said:

"Chen Da, I think this book has a lot of potential. I'd like to sign him, establish contact with him, and exchange ideas on future creative work."

"If the author has any problems with their writing, I can point them out in time; if the author has any difficulties, I can also offer encouragement."

"So that he can create better."

"This is also a solution I came up with recently to address the issue of a high rate of missed updates. I want to start by trying it out with this book."

Bai Chen pondered for a moment.

Judging from the 30,000 words released so far, this novel, "Battle Through the Heavens," is fine; in fact, the opening chapters are of quite high quality.

The main reason he suggested that Sprite wait was that Sprite's book signing rate was too high, and he was worried that further increases would cross the line and cause problems.

However, Sprite's idea is not wrong. Indeed, some authors stop updating simply because they are too casual. If editors could communicate with them in a timely manner or provide encouragement and motivation, they might not stop updating.

Being able to follow up in advance might be a good thing, so he nodded: "Okay."

"Communicate with the author more often, and contact me if you have any questions."

After completing the review and confirmation of the signing process, he gave a few instructions and then went about his work.

Upon returning to her workstation, Sprite immediately initiated a contract signing invitation within the platform.

night.

Lu Jie, having finished his homework and turned on his computer to update today's new chapter, saw a new message as soon as he logged into the author's backend.

[Dear author, your work "Battle Through the Heavens" has passed the contract review. Please add the editor "Sprite" as a contact...]