Free Web NovelChapter 75: On-the-Shelves Testimony (Part 2)
If any readers here are suffering from a ’book famine,’ after you subscribe to my book, you can just give your monthly tickets to Shuhuang!
The second person I want to give a special thank you to is the author of *Beast Taming: I Can Evolve Infinitely*, Desert Paramecium!
To continue where I left off, after I asked Senior Shuhuang for advice on the beginning of my story, the Beast Taming Text I wrote on an alternate account ended up being a miserable flop. After some painful reflection, I decided to drop the book to cut my losses. It was the first book I had ever dropped in my writing career.
When I was discussing it with my editor, Lan Guang, and reflecting on what went wrong, Brother Guang told me my writing ability was limited and that I couldn’t handle settings and plots that were too complex. He suggested I start with something more conventional and then build on that foundation to push my limits.
I realized that Senior Shuhuang thought my writing was fine because he’s a ’Great Boutique’ author. When he evaluated my work’s potential, he was subconsciously using the standards of a ’Great Boutique’ author as his benchmark. In reality, however, my own ability was far from meeting the criteria he was basing his judgment on.
And that’s how I got to know Brother Chong (though in terms of seniority, I should probably call him Uncle).
Brother Chong was a new author, and his initial 24-hour subscription count was only just over a hundred. But he worked steadily and consistently, eventually breaking one thousand average subscriptions. Brother Guang felt that his experience was more relevant for me to learn from.
We then had in-depth discussions that went on for several days, which ultimately led to my current book: *I Practice Point Addition Cultivation in the Beast Taming World*.
In fact, the first draft of the opening was awful. I had Brother Chong review and help me adjust it multiple times, and it wasn’t until ’Version 3.14’ that it was finally ready to meet you all.
He’s a very talkative person and would answer my simple questions with tons of industry jargon. Sometimes, I’d message him late at night, and he would reply right away.
I suggest you all give this author a follow. While the potential of his current book may not be that high, his understanding of the Beast Taming Text genre is exceptionally insightful. His next book will very likely be a huge hit.
I’ll make a bold prediction right now: one day, Desert Paramecium will be one of the standard-bearers for the Beast Taming Text genre!
The third person I want to give a special thank you to is my editor, Lan Guang.
Whenever Lan Guang comes up in our author groups, the general impression people have is "cool and aloof," "highly efficient," "not much of a talker," "a veteran big shot"...
But actually, Brother Guang isn’t aloof in the slightest. He’s incredibly warm-hearted and patient.
I’m a flop author. My previous two books had 40 and 400 average subscriptions, respectively. With numbers like that, I would have been completely invisible to most other editors. We would have only ever communicated for official business, and that’s it.
But whenever I consulted Brother Guang with questions, he would always answer patiently. I’d often ask just a couple of things, and he’d reply with volumes of text—so much that I’d have to scroll up and down our chat history just to take it all in.
If Brother Guang hadn’t been there to keep me pointed in the right direction, I’d probably still be lost, spinning my wheels on the wrong path, banging my head against who knows how many more walls.
(Of course, let’s not get too carried away.)
[About This Book]
Let me tell you all a funny story about the female lead.
Initially, I was talking with the great author Shuhuang, and he told me it was best not to have a female lead in a Beast Taming Text. Otherwise, her role in the story could easily conflict with that of the Pet Beasts.
I understood his reasoning, but I got my start writing romance novels, and it feels awkward for me not to write a female lead. The book I dropped at 100,000 words was a ’no female lead’ story, which proved to me that this wasn’t the decisive factor for success.
If I feel awkward while writing something, there’s no way the readers are going to have a good time reading it.
So, after weighing my options, I decided to keep the female lead. This also had the benefit of appealing to some of the readers from my old romance novels.
However, I was still afraid of provoking the ’no female lead’ faction of readers... so I was very restrained in how I wrote the female lead. I tried to minimize her appearances and keep the romantic subplot subtle. After all, in a Beast Taming Text, the Pet Beasts are the real stars.
To keep her from drawing too much attention, I intentionally delayed releasing her character card by two days, letting other characters get to the top of the ’heart’ rankings first. Then I went to my old reader group and pleaded with everyone, "Don’t give hearts to the female lead! Don’t give her hearts! Let’s keep it low-key..."
This went on until one day, during a casual chat, someone I remembered as being a firm ’no female lead’ reader told me, "Hey, your female lead is actually pretty good."
I was stunned. I asked him, "Wait, aren’t you a ’no female lead’ reader?"
He replied, "As long as it isn’t cringe, I’ll end up loving it. It’s not like it’s an absolute rule..."
I felt like a fucking idiot at that moment.
Afterward, I apologized to my long-time readers and stopped intentionally suppressing the ’hearts’ for the female lead. As a result, her ’heart’ count shot up to first place—by a landslide, no less. That was something I absolutely never expected.
So it turns out, Chinese people really do love a Bai Mao. (I was utterly shocked.)
Fortunately, the book has been fairly successful so far. To a top-tier author, these results would probably look like a flop, but for me, they represent an unprecedented new height, far surpassing my previous book.
Of course, I still have plenty of problems, like trying too hard with characterization, the plot not being gratifying enough, the pacing being too slow...
My biggest issue is the pacing. My greatest weakness has always been a lack of smooth pacing. I’m not decisive when I need to be, and I insist on slowly unfolding things that should be handled quickly, all of which creates a very poor reading experience. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
Going forward, I will make a conscious effort to overcome this slow pacing issue, though I know it’s not something I can fix overnight. So, until I manage to fix it completely, I’ll try to make up for it with my update frequency.
[A Few Words from the Heart]
This is the third time a book of mine has gone up for paid serialization in my writing career. Its performance is a definite cut above my previous two, but I still can’t say it’s particularly good. It’s still pretty trash, to be honest.
I did a ton of prep work before starting this book, and I’ve been writing with my full concentration. I pushed myself to run at full capacity, but this is still the best I could manage.
The week my book was given a trial recommendation slot, my mood was constantly low. My follower growth was extremely poor—even lower than some good books that were getting zero official promotion.
At the time, everyone, myself included, thought there was no way I’d get a second-round recommendation.
Then, at noon on Thursday, I checked my latest Chapter and saw that, six hours after I’d posted it that morning, it still hadn’t broken one hundred follow-up reads. That’s a very dangerous signal. For many books, that’s the point where you might as well just drop it.
