On the Publication of the Book
Before I knew it, this book had already exceeded 250,000 words. First of all, I would like to thank all the great authors for their continued support.
This is the author's first book to be published. The idea of writing a book came to me in the second half of last year. Actually, when I first started writing, I wanted to write about the Zerg as my first book. But when I started writing, I realized that there was too much knowledge required. Because of laziness, I temporarily abandoned this topic and plan to write another book first to practice.
So, I decided on a post-apocalyptic theme for my first book. I thought about it for a long time and came up with a logically consistent setting.
Then, in October, I started writing, buried in my work for over a month, accumulating 200,000 words before uploading. After uploading, I discovered many problems and realized that there were so many things to pay attention to when writing.
Post-apocalyptic themes are difficult to write; there are many parts that easily result in 404 errors. You have to revise the entire story before uploading, which means half of the initial writing is wasted. New writers often lack this skill and don't even know how to revise to meet the requirements. Moreover, the results are often poor, and the "golden finger" (advantages or plot devices) takes a long time to appear.
A few days after uploading, a writing contest came out on December 1st. I used that as an excuse to stop reading the book; thankfully, nobody read it anyway...
This book was born under these circumstances. Only after starting to write did I realize how tiring writing is, especially science fiction. Sometimes I would research a lot of information, only to write a few sentences. Since writing this book, the author's knowledge of various biological subjects has increased dramatically, which is a reward in itself.
For a newcomer, the book's plot is truly a challenge. In the early part of the story, the protagonist has no interaction with any intelligent beings, creating a completely isolated environment.
The protagonist's previous life was just an ordinary person who had not undergone any special training. The author referenced many social experiments, such as staying in a cabin for thirty days or island survival challenges. However, these were not conducted in a state of complete despair; they knew it was an experiment that could be stopped at any time, and they were still part of human society.
Even though Robinson Crusoe lived on a deserted island for 28 years, he still had a cannibal friend, and he knew he hadn't left Earth. On the other side of the ocean, human civilization still existed, and perhaps one day a ship would pass by the island, even if it took a long time.
However, the protagonist's situation is truly desperate. He has been turned into an insect and stranded on a strange planet. Under such circumstances, it would be remarkable if an ordinary person could even survive. The author is a novice and has limited writing skills, so he couldn't fully express the protagonist's complex emotions of wanting to live but experiencing depression and world-weariness whenever he has free time.
Furthermore, the protagonist is mostly in a single-player mode in the early stages, without any interaction, which is a challenge. The author also wanted to add some intelligent insects, such as Big Black, so they could interact with the protagonist, both to pad out the word count and to make the story more interesting.
However, the outline had already been drawn up before the book was written, so changing this point would mean changing everything. Moreover, it would be very abrupt for insects to suddenly develop advanced intelligence, which would not conform to the author's original intention in writing this book.
Because this book is practically the author's first book, it marks the beginning of a dream. Therefore, between conforming to trends and pursuing dreams, the author chose the latter.
Thus, the book had a very dull beginning. It was already a niche genre, and the protagonist was an insect, making it difficult to immerse the reader. At over 80,000 words, it only had a few dozen favorites. Then a website recommended it, adding over 100 favorites in a week, and then nothing more. It flopped terribly, with extremely poor sales.
When I first started writing the book, I made some friends through author assistants and forums. After they learned about my situation, they all said I should just give up. Continuing to write would be a waste of time.
However, the author has already cut one book in half for various reasons. If he continues to cut books in half, it might become a habit, and he might never be able to finish a book again.
At the time, I thought that even if no one read it, even if it was done out of love, I would still finish writing this book according to my own ideas.
As the story unfolded, more and more people started reading. The author greatly admired these friends, because without their recommendations, the author couldn't find the book without searching for its title.
Recommendations, favorites, and monthly tickets gradually appeared, along with comments and chapter comments, and even some tips later on. Whenever the author received a system notification, he would be very happy, because it was a form of support and encouragement.
I originally thought I'd be lucky to get a few hundred favorites by the time it went on sale. But to my surprise, the number of favorites started to increase dramatically a few days ago, with dozens of favorites every day. I not only reached 1,000 favorites, but I've also got over 1,700 favorites so far.
Although it can't compare to others' collections of tens or hundreds of thousands, it has already far exceeded the author's expectations. Thank you again for your support.
Now that this work is available, I hope everyone will continue to support it, and those who are able can please subscribe. After all, writing for love is a last resort, and it would be even better if I could earn some money to supplement my family's income. Since I started writing the book, I've had almost no leisure time, staying up until midnight every night. There are many parts, especially the transitions between scenes, that I didn't know how to write, so I had to painstakingly craft them word by word.
Family members who are no longer spending time with their children have strong opinions about this, and earning some money would at least provide some explanation.
This is my first time writing a post about launching a product, so I'll stop here for now.
Finally, I'd like to ask for your favorites, votes, and subscriptions. Thank you everyone.