A Frank Word
Today, I chatted with some friends in the authors' group and found myself thinking about a few things. To be honest, it's the same old topic: piracy.
Actually, Dong Liu knew that making a separate post about this was completely useless. Piracy—a problem not even nine years of compulsory education could solve—was even less likely to change because of one short piece from me.
But some words really were like a bone stuck in my throat. I had to get them out!
Enough small talk. Now for the real revelations. Non-combat personnel, please watch under parental supervision.
Let me state this in advance: I won't insult anyone in this post, much less spew obscenities. Let's stick to facts and reason. I ask my readers to keep an eye on me.
I'm sure many of the things I'm about to say have already appeared in other authors' standalone posts. Dong Liu couldn't say my writing was necessarily better than theirs, or that I could explain it more thoroughly, so I'll skip the criticism and get straight to the point.
Over the past few years, I've constantly seen people complain about one thing: Why were there fewer and fewer good novels nowadays?
What I wanted to say was that the people who determined what online fiction developed into weren't actually the authors, but the readers.
What data did authors care about most when they wrote?
Subscriptions!
Changes in subscriptions were enough to affect an author's creative thinking and direction. This was the most crucial part of reader-author interaction, and also the part readers most easily overlooked.
If you didn't believe me, go look at the final chapters of those abandoned novels, or what they called completion notes and the like. Setting aside all the bizarre nonsense, what was the