Back to 1997, I became the originator of online literature

Chapter 504 Popularity is Spreading

After ending his call with Dong Qianyu, Cao Sheng didn't put down his phone. Instead, he dialed Baojianfeng's number.

The call is connected.

Cao Sheng: "I uploaded my new book today, but it doesn't have a cover yet. Could you find someone to make one for you?"

These days, online novelists have to prepare their own covers when publishing their works online, but most authors don't know how to do it. They either leave the website's default cover on for a long time until the results are not ideal and they shut down the book.

Alternatively, you can find someone to help you make it.

Websites generally do not offer cover creation services.

Bao Jianfeng: "Okay, Mr. Cao! Please tell me your requirements for the cover! What kind of cover would you like?"

Cao Sheng: "Why don't you make a few and let me choose?"

Bao Jianfeng: "Okay! No problem, I'll send it to your email before I leave work today."

Cao Sheng hummed in agreement.

After making the call, he turned off his computer, got up, and went downstairs for lunch.

While eating, I was still thinking about the plot of "Cultivation Chat Group".

……

"Cultivation Chat Group" was just uploaded to Qidian this morning and has recently passed the new book entry review. In principle, readers should not be able to find this book for the time being.

Even searching for the book title "Cultivation Chat Group" in the Qidian search box yields no results.

This was a common phenomenon across all online novel platforms during this period.

The website's system isn't very fast; readers usually have to wait until the day after a new book passes the database review before they can find it on the website.

but……

There is a search method that can find a book as soon as it passes the initial screening process.

In what way?
It's very simple! Just click on the author's name. Clicking on the author's name will open the author's works page, which will display all the works under that author's name, including new books that were just approved for inclusion in the database today.

However, readers rarely use this search method in their daily lives.

When people search for books, they usually just search by the book title.

Of course, as the most popular top-tier writer in the industry, Zhongyuan Yidianhui's pen name is still searched by some readers every day.

Because compared to the titles of his various books, people have a deeper impression of the name "Zhongyuan Yidian Hui" (中原一点灰).

That morning, some readers were surprised to find that there was a new book under the pen name "Zhongyuan Yidianhui" when they searched for it.

—"Cultivation Chat Group"?
Hu Yihu is such a reader.

He prefers to read books for free. He has never paid for books on any website, nor has he registered a reader account on any website. As a result, he has no way to add his favorite works to his personal bookshelf.

He didn't even know that registering a reader account would result in a personal bookshelf.

This morning, as usual, he opened Qidian.com and searched for "Zhongyuan Yidianhui" to see if there were any updates to the book "The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts".

If available, he would search for free resources outside.

Getting something for free is his only option.

Even though he thoroughly enjoyed reading "The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts," he never considered spending money to read it.

Readers like him have always been the majority.

As he expected, this morning, "The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts" had not been updated yet, but a new book appeared on Zhongyuan Yidianhui's personal page.

"A cultivation chat group? No way? Is 'The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts' about to be finished? And they're already starting a new book? This, this..."

His expression was one of surprise, and he had a bad feeling.

He really enjoyed reading "The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts," finding it increasingly captivating and wishing the author could write it to 1000 million words.

But now?

This book is only a few hundred thousand words long? And they're already starting a new one?
"This book doesn't have that many subscribers, so why is it ending already? This... Holy crap!"

He was very upset.

I almost couldn't resist registering a reader account and going to the book review section to criticize Cao Sheng.

In the end, I gave up on the idea.

Because I'm too lazy to register an account.

"Cultivation Chat Group?"

Is this book good? Is it about cultivation? Isn't it traditional Chinese martial arts anymore?
He was a little disappointed, but out of confidence in the reputation of "Zhongyuan Yidianhui" (a brand name), he still clicked on the book. When he saw that there were only two chapters, he felt even more frustrated.

But out of curiosity, he read the introduction and then the main text.

In the first chapter, the male protagonist is pulled into a mysterious cultivation chat group, a setting that surprises him.

In Chapter Two, the male protagonist silently observes the chat group members' conversations and mentally labels them as "crazy" because they are discussing cultivation issues. He thinks that all the members in the group are mentally unstable and wonders when he can persuade them to stop indulging in their fantasies.

These two chapters are actually written in a rather bland style.

It's entirely from the male protagonist's perspective, observing the chat content of the group members.

There wasn't anything particularly exciting or thrilling.

But it completely captivated Hu Yihu.

Chat groups were something he had never heard of before; they were very novel to him, and he really hoped that QQ would actually launch this feature.

In addition, the fact that the male protagonist, who is just an ordinary college student, accidentally enters a cultivation chat group has also aroused Hu Yihu's anticipation for the subsequent plot of this book.

This opening made him feel very involved.

Because he is now a college student, his identity is exactly the same as the male protagonist in this book.

He quickly finished reading the two chapters of the main text.

After reading it, he muttered to himself, "As expected of Zhongyuan Yidianhui, you can still come up with something new in cultivation novels that have been written to death. Awesome!"

Although he thought Zhongyuan Yidianhui was awesome, he still didn't plan to spend money to read the book.

……

This morning, there were actually no readers like Hu Yihu.

However, compared to Cao Sheng's huge fan base, these people represent a very small proportion.

After all, this book hasn't made it onto any of Qidian's recommendation lists yet, and Qidian's official team hasn't done any promotion for it.

Baojianfeng plans to publicly promote this new book once the cover is finished.

Therefore, the vast majority of readers are still completely unaware that Cao Sheng has published a new book.

It wasn't until someone discovered the new book that they came to the book review section of "The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts" and mentioned it.

This reader's name is: Riding a Sword to Hell.

He posted the following message in the "Chinese Martial Arts Chronicle".

"Ah Hui has released a new book! The title is 'Cultivation Chat Group'!"

This is the post title.

The post read: "I just clicked on Ah Hui's name on a whim to calculate how many words he's written in the past few years since his debut. I was surprised to find that he published a new book today, titled 'Cultivation Chat Group.' The content is very novel. As expected of Ah Hui's work, it's always a masterpiece. Those who are interested can check it out!" This post quickly attracted a bunch of readers.

Comments sprang up like mushrooms after rain.

"Is this bullshit? This book is less than a million words long, and the plot has barely unfolded. And they're already releasing a new book?"

Holy crap! They actually released a new book?!

"Damn! I haven't even finished reading this book yet! Why are you writing a new one? What's going on?"

"The Cultivation Chat Group looks delicious! The beginning is really interesting! What should I do? Can Ah Hui write two books at the same time?"

"Huh? Wasn't Ah Hui supposed to be dating Qian Zhenyu these past few days? How did he find the time to write a new book? That's amazing!"

"Simultaneously generating scandals and releasing a new book? Is this an attempt to overshadow the scandals with the new book?"

"Cultivation Chat Group? Why does this title sound so strange?"

……

As time passed and more and more readers returned after reading the first two chapters of "Cultivation Chat Group," the trend of comments on this thread gradually changed.

For example: "The idea of ​​'Cultivation Chat Group' is brilliant! No wonder it's called 'Zhongyuan Yidianhui'! The cultivation theme can be written with such originality, and the chat group setting is really amazing! I seriously suspect that QQ is going to copy this idea."

"Is this a modern cultivation novel? The way it's written is quite interesting!"

"I suddenly wish Ah Hui could spend more time writing 'Cultivation Chat Group'!"

"The novels 'Cultivation Chat Group' and 'The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts' seem to have completely different writing styles! 'The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts' is concise and fast-paced, with decisive and ruthless action, but this new book, 'Cultivation Chat Group,' seems to have a particularly slow pace!"

"The new book is great! It's really great!"

……

The news is spreading little by little.

It gradually reached the ears of some authors.

Some of the readers were fans of Cao Sheng's books. They saw the news of Cao Sheng's new book in the book review section of "The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts" and then went to read the first two chapters of "Cultivation Chat Group".

For example: a broken blade.

He had only been writing for a short time, and before he started writing books, he could find a lot of faults in anyone's work. He always felt that this author was not good enough and that author's writing was terrible.

I have a very strong feeling: I could do it too.

Then, a few days ago, he officially entered the industry and tried writing online novels.

Then, I kept discovering that I still had a lot of shortcomings.

I often encounter situations where my words fail to express my meaning while I'm writing.

I often find myself unbalanced in my writing, writing too much about plot points that should be glossed over, and not enough about parts that should be detailed.

Wait, he discovers his own shortcomings almost every day.

That's why he's been reading Cao Sheng's works more frequently lately than before.

I often reread one of Cao Sheng's works from the beginning.

He recently approached it with a learning mindset.

In the past, when I read Cao Sheng's works from a reader's perspective, I always felt that Cao Sheng's writing style did not match his current fame.

Recently, he started writing online novels himself and gradually realized that his writing skills were far inferior to Cao Sheng's. The parallel sentences, inverted sentences, idioms, and obscure characters that he painstakingly wrote every day were not only extremely tiring to write and made him want to give up, but the readers' response also seemed to be not very good.

After comparing his work with Cao Sheng's, he gradually realized that a web novel can easily be over a million words long. If he were to use such fancy tricks in every sentence and paragraph, he would exhaust himself.

However, the reader's reading experience may be even worse.

He didn't expect Cao Sheng's "The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts" to be so popular, and it is now the undisputed king of popularity on the entire Internet. With less than a million words, Cao Sheng suddenly started a new book.

"Is 'The Romance of Chinese Martial Arts' going to end? With such high popularity, it's ending already? This is... this is too capricious!"

He muttered to himself as he searched for the new book, "Cultivation Chat Group".

After reading the two chapters of this new book, Duanren seemed to be deep in thought, as if a new world was slowly opening up before him.

"So cultivation novels can be written like this? Isn't there too much unnecessary dialogue?"

The straightforward and slow-paced writing style of the first two chapters of "Cultivation Chat Group" made him subconsciously feel that there was too much nonsense at the beginning of the book.

While reading these two chapters, he always hoped that the plot would move faster and faster, so that the male protagonist could quickly obtain cultivation techniques, elixirs, magic weapons, and other treasures from the cultivators in the group.

However, these two chapters were written at a leisurely pace, and surprisingly, so much ink was spent presenting the chat content of several members in the group.

Although he found the chat content of those members in the group quite interesting, it wasn't what he wanted to see!
There's a sense of frustration, like wanting to watch a Japanese adult film but downloading "Calabash Brothers" instead.

Nevertheless, he still thought the idea for the new book was excellent.

It successfully piqued his interest in reading further.

He was already wondering if he could imitate the book's concept and style to create a similar work.

"Cao Sheng is writing two books at the same time, so he definitely doesn't have much time to write each book each day. Therefore... although the idea for this book is very good, its update speed will definitely not be very fast..."

As Duanren muttered to himself, his eyes lit up.

His heart started racing.

Because he had a bold idea: if he could imitate and write a similar work, could he steal the fans and popularity of "Cultivation Chat Group" by updating it every day?
Will those readers who like this book but can't wait for its updates come to read my book to satisfy their craving?

He is a man of action.

Once the idea took hold, he decided to give it a try.

Anyway, his latest work isn't very popular, and he's been finding it increasingly painful to write, so he might as well cut it off and hurry up and write a new book similar to "Cultivation Chat Group".

Driven by this thought, he quickly created a new document and entered the new book title at the top: "Cultivation Chat Group".

"Cultivating immortality" and "cultivating truth" have similar meanings.

"Cultivation Chat Group" and "Cultivation Immortal Chat Group" differ by only one character, making them a perfect imitation.

Duanren is very satisfied with the book title.

This gave me more confidence.

……

There are other authors like this.

However, not every author is like Duanren, who, after reading the first two chapters of "Cultivation Chat Group," immediately had the urge to follow suit.

but……

Following trends has been a prevailing phenomenon since the birth of online literature.

Most online novel writers start by following the trend of a work they really like.

However, the current Qidian platform is filled with a large number of new writers.

To be precise, in the current online literature circle, the proportion of veteran writers is actually very small; the vast majority of writers are novices, and everyone is imitating and following trends.

Therefore, many writers who saw "Cultivation Chat Group" this morning couldn't help but start following the trend. Because Zhongyuan Yidianhui wrote "Cultivation Chat Group", these writers believed that the "chat group" theme would soon become popular.

So what are you waiting for? Hurry up and get on board!
(End of this chapter)