"Royalty split?"
"Brother White, are you sure you want royalties?"
567 froze for a moment, not quite processing what he'd just heard.
No buyout, but royalties instead.
It might have been the most willful response he'd ever received.
"Yes, I'm sure," Huang Yifan confirmed again.
"Brother White, you really should think this through. I don't know how long you've been in the web novel scene or how much you understand the industry, but I'll be honest, writing isn't the rosy world people imagine. It's full of risk. Plenty of authors debut with a stunning hit, only to completely flop on their second book. Are you still sure about royalties?"
To be honest, 567 didn't even need to explain all this.
If Huang Yifan insisted on royalties, that meant there was zero risk for Lingdian.
Unlike a buyout, on the surface, buying out a novel seems like a great way to attract authors. But if the bought-out work flops, the money spent on the manuscript goes down the drain. Sure, if the buyout price is low, the loss is manageable, just a few tens or hundreds of thousands. But with high buyout prices, a single failure could mean millions lost. And this time, after Huanyue poached talent, Lingdian had no choice but to throw money into buyouts. A few more bad picks, and the whole company could go under.
Still, out of professional courtesy, 567 wanted Huang Yifan to think carefully.
"567, I've thought it through. If I hadn't, I would've accepted Huanyue's offer the moment they contacted me. Even their offer of 100 yuan per thousand words wasn't a small number, especially for a Level 1 author like me."
"Then why insist on royalties? Don't you prefer the security of a fixed payment?"
"Heh. 567, I should be asking you that. Doesn't a royalty deal work out better for Lingdian? Aren't you worried my second book might bomb and not even recoup the cost?"
"Good question."
567 answered frankly. "I offered you a price higher than the industry standard, and yes, it does strain Lingdian's finances a bit. But I really believe in your potential."
That was putting it mildly. If he were being completely honest, 567 would've said: the fact that I'm willing to offer you 300 per thousand words means I'm confident I'll earn it back from your second book. But of course, he couldn't say that to Huang Yifan. Even if he was being open, no editor would share the company strategy with an author.
Still, Huang Yifan had something to say in return.
"I have to say, 567, I feel the same way."
That one sentence stunned 567 into silence.
Staring at the chat window, seeing those words from Huang Yifan, 567, couldn't help but feel a surge of emotion.
He was reminded of 'The World Slanders Me'.
Of that thunderous, murderous poem 'The Song of a Man'.
Of that 10-day writing spree that culminated in the single-chapter essay 'Theory of Creation'.
Any one of those feats, if achieved by any other author on Lingdian, would earn boundless admiration.
And now, Huang Yifan had turned down a high buyout offer just to ask for royalties.
Just how much confidence would one need to decide that?
Even 567, who had seen countless authors, found Huang Yifan hard to read.
Maybe that unyielding pride was just one side of him.
The true foundation of his confidence lay in his talent, buried deep but impossibly bright.
"With that one sentence, I'm even more confident in you."
567 was deeply moved. "Alright, we'll go with royalties. I want to see what kind of masterpiece your second book will be. I'm looking forward to it."
"'Masterpiece' is an exaggeration. I'm just confident about it. But I'm still recovering right now, so I won't start the new book anytime soon."
"I know. You'll be ready by September 8th this year, right? I'll be waiting for you then."
After finishing the chat with 567, Huang Yifan returned to checking the unread messages on TT.
"Fanchen, are you there?"
"Fanchen, got any more Strange Tales?"
"If you do, send them over. The chief editor has approved raising your rate to 800 per thousand characters."
"Fanchen?"
"Fanchen?"
These messages were all from Liangcha, an editor at 'Midnight Talk'. Huang Yifan clicked through them, over a hundred in total.
Damn! This editor was seriously persistent.
With over a hundred messages piled up, he really couldn't ignore it anymore.
"Liangcha, I'm online now."
Not sure if Liangcha was actually online, Huang Yifan sent a message first, just in case.
…
One week later, Monday at 8 a.m.
After signing a high-priced contract with Sanyue, 'Suspense World' launched a full-blown promotional campaign to announce his return.
Sanyue, a name that felt both familiar and foreign.
Familiar, because he once drove readers of supernatural fiction wild.
Foreign, because it had been nearly ten years since he last appeared before them.
A mystery man who once took the scene by storm with a single novel and became a master of the supernatural genre.
A prodigy who was once ranked alongside Zhang Yun.
A madman who abandoned the supernatural genre at its peak to pursue wuxia instead.
And now, the former king had returned.
'Even Ghosts Despair'. Feel the charm of a true master. Next issue of 'Suspense World', don't miss it.
As the top supernatural magazine in the country, 'Suspense World' outperformed its competitors in both distribution volume and strategy. From the way they packaged and promoted Sanyue, that much was obvious. On launch day, after several rounds of pre-release marketing, 'Suspense World' hit the shelves with 'Even Ghosts Despair' as its main feature.
But 'Suspense World' hadn't expected this,
Despite the legendary name of Sanyue, his return didn't significantly boost their sales.
Still, the editorial team didn't panic.
Sanyue had the skill, but after ten years away from supernatural fiction, his fanbase needed rebuilding. Even with good writing, that didn't guarantee a sales spike. The reason they signed him was more for the buzz. And they didn't want potential talent going to rival magazines. Pulling Sanyue in helped demonstrate 'Suspense World' clout and attract more up-and-coming writers to submit their work.
What they didn't anticipate, though, was this:
Not only did Sanyue fail to boost sales.
On the first day, 'Even Ghosts Despair' hit the shelves, sales of 'Suspense World' dropped by 3.000 copies.
Maybe that didn't mean much.
Sales figures are never consistent; some issues do better, some worse. Sure, losing 3.000 on launch day was a surprise, but not unheard of. With magazines, it's often hard to pinpoint the exact cause of a sales dip.
But before the editorial team could fully digest that first day's loss, day two brought another drop, 5.000 copies.
Day three, down 3.000 more.
Day four, down 2.000.
Day five, down 6.000.
Day six, down 7.000.
Day seven, down another 10.000.
By the end of the week, 'Suspense World' had lost 34.000 copies in total. For the first time this year, their weekly sales dropped below 200.000, the threshold that defined a mid-tier magazine.
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