I finally got a recommendation! How well each recommendation performs affects whether you get the next one.
This book is 60,000 words long, and so far I've only established the background. It currently has 1,700 followers, so I can only call its performance pretty average. Still, a lot of familiar faces have already shown up in the comments, and that makes me very happy.
I'll just put up a standalone post and ramble a bit.
Actually, well, I can't really say it's the only seedling in the village. There have been a few decent sci-fi novels lately, but overall, their performance has been pretty average.
Die on Mars currently has 25,000 followers. It may still be some way from reaching the premium threshold, but it's probably the most promising of the bunch.
Metal Crack's new book hasn't been gaining followers very quickly. It's only got a little over 5,000 so far, and judging by the numbers, it looks like it might flop...
No one wants the book they've worked so hard on to flop and waste months—or even a year—of effort. If you're interested, you can go show it some support. (Just a friendly recommendation, no strings attached.)
As for the other promising sci-fi novels, I don't know. Maybe they've already withered away before anyone could discover them...
So far, more hard-core interstellar sci-fi remains a "rare species."
Here's my advice: when promoting various "hard sci-fi" books, don't be too hung up on distinctions between hard and soft sci-fi. The moment you promote something as "hard sci-fi" or "hard-core," people will look down on you and brush you off with, "Hard sci-fi on Qidian? You just insist on calling it sci-fi."
There's not much point in arguing with people who are biased from the start.
Anyway, back to the point. I submitted this book by email at first, and somehow it didn't get signed!
Unbelievable!
Later, I contacted an editor directly on QQ. He said in surprise, "So you're the one who wrote it!"
And then he signed it.
Essentially, it was because he recognized my author name that he signed the book.
That also shows just how niche this kind of story is. The real world won't change at all just because The Wandering Earth became a hit movie.
Books that are going to flop will still flop.
Some people say my last book flopped. It wasn't that bad, really. It reached 600,000 words and had 2,200 average subscriptions. That's not too shabby, right?
I don't think that counts as a flop.
The main reason was censorship. I kept changing the outline, and the plot got a bit derailed, which meant its performance after going paid wasn't great.
So this book starts out as an academic prodigy story, and there's no way I'm going to get into politics. I won't go into detail about Earth's political situation, so please understand.
But politics will definitely come into play in the middle and later parts. By then, the book will be behind a paywall, and the haters will probably all have left anyway.
Oh, right, the first recommendation is just [New Sci-Fi]. It didn't even get an app recommendation. What a rough start.
If you like this book, friends, please add it to your reading list if you have one, or recommend it to others. Thanks, everyone!