A Few Thoughts on Going Premium
RT, the attempt to launch the Zhoujiang project this week failed, it will be available tomorrow.
On the bright side, we finally don't have to worry about the word count being too high, so I'll be adding an extra chapter tonight at 10 PM, and another free chapter tomorrow morning. It will become a paid chapter this afternoon.
As promised, starting this Friday and continuing until next Friday, I will be updating with over 10,000 words every day. As for how many words I'll update each day after that, we'll see how well it goes; I'll try my best to update as much as possible.
These are the future update plans. Now, let me share my thoughts.
I was aware of the book's flaws, but the situation was indeed beyond my control. What many people don't know is that this book was rejected by two editors when I first submitted it. I was already preparing a new book when my current editor, A-Fei, signed it.
This resulted in me only having 20,000 words of draft when I published the book, so my initial preparation was insufficient and some plot points were not well arranged. For example, the part where Cui Man made a mistake in dealing with Spider-Man's command was originally planned before the "Typhoon" and "Millennium Problem," but I wanted to move a more innovative scene earlier to attract readers' attention, so I moved it to the later part.
This directly led to the command error of Spider-Man being magnified infinitely, but this error was indeed a foreshadowing, so theoretically I was the one who messed up Xiao Man (in order to make up for it, I plan to arrange myself as a minor character in the book and personally make my favorite Commander Cui Man happy).
This is a flaw that I personally believe is undeniable, so later on, the plot might seem much smoother to everyone because I had more drafts saved up, allowing for more revisions and adjustments.
As for the main character's design, no matter how it's set up, some people will like it and some won't, and there's nothing that can be done about it. So I hope to build up some popularity through this book so that I can prepare more thoroughly for the next book and bring everyone a better experience.
Let's also talk about the readers. I've always felt that the relationship between readers and authors during the "trial reading" period is like that of a couple dating—a process of mutual adaptation.
If two people are attracted to each other at first sight and start dating, but then discover some things they don't like along the way, they might break up (abandon the relationship) or they might tolerate each other and continue. This is called "adjustment."
Some readers might say, "Hey, aren't we the ones tolerating you? What does it have to do with you?"
But actually, I've made a lot of changes, including secretly revising the parts you pointed out that had issues (for example, some chapters you mentioned had disappeared in large numbers). I've also directly deleted many parts of the plot that you felt were too weak. For instance, chapters 113 to 118 were originally 10 chapters, but I cut out all the unnecessary parts. So this was indeed a process of adjustment between both sides.
For readers who have made it this far and intend to continue supporting the book after it becomes a paid subscription, it's like we've finally achieved our goal. I'll try my best to make it both long and engaging to satisfy everyone.
This book currently has 18,000 favorites, and I'm not sure how many subscriptions it will have. After the big update next Friday, once the subscriptions stabilize, I'll add an extra chapter for every 100 new average subscriptions to celebrate. I hope we can all reach the point where it's considered a premium book. (If we don't make it, there's nothing I can do; I'll keep trying with the next book.)
September 16, 2021.
Let's look back when we've achieved excellence together.