Words Upon Release

First of all, the book goes on sale at noon tomorrow!

At present, it has nearly 8,000 favorites. Generally speaking, the ratio of favorites to first-day subscriptions is within thirty to one. For better-performing books, it may be in the teens—or even in the single digits. For weaker ones, it can be somewhere in the thirties.

My follow-through readership really is not that strong, so I’ll use the worst-case ratio of forty to one. That would give me around 200 first-day subscriptions.

As everyone knows, I don’t have much of a backlog. I write during my lunch break at the company and again at night.

So I’m not capable of a massive update. There will be four chapters tomorrow. As usual, I’ll set a goal: if first-day subscriptions exceed 200, I’ll add one extra chapter for every additional 100 subscriptions.

But I truly can’t promise anything beyond that. I don’t want everyone to think I’m someone who breaks his word—that would be rather unfortunate.

I’m not trying to play the victim, either. To put it plainly, if you can make more money, it means you’ve written well; if you haven’t written well, you make less. That’s simply how it works!

If the results are poor, I’ll do my best to read more and write more. Naturally, my writing will improve, and the results will improve along with it.

If the results are already fairly good, then I should be even more serious, maintain my standards, and keep working hard instead of becoming complacent.

Now, a few simple words about the book itself. At first, I had planned to write a straightforward romance, with Ji Yun, Chu Qingchan, and Chu Fengyi as the heroines, and have the protagonist ultimately choose among them.

But one day, my boss bought a set of twelve zodiac animal statues and placed them in the office. The moment I saw them, inspiration struck.

That was when I came up with this bold idea: twelve female characters representing the twelve zodiac animals, forming a true harem of twelve.

It has actually been very difficult. Designing stories for twelve individual characters alone is no easy task.

Besides, I originally wrote xianxia fiction, so this style is quite different from what I’m used to. I wrote two such novels before: one was signed but failed, while the other performed fairly well until I drove it straight into a ditch with the adult scenes.

Later, under this new account, I wrote two fantasy novels as an attempt to explore a different genre, but their results were poor.

This year, after joining a new company, I’ve been busier with work. Most of the time, I finish writing, give it a quick read-through, and publish it immediately.

That’s why quite a few homophonic typos have appeared. Thank you all for your patience, as well as for pointing them out along the way!

Finally, I still hope everyone will support me with a first-day subscription!

If the results are decent, I may consider writing a story set against a Japanese backdrop featuring the twelve constellations for my next novel. Of course, if you have other suggestions, leave them in the comments and I may consider those as well.

With that, I wish all my readers and their families good health and happiness!

May all the single men find their own Ji Yun! And may all the single women never encounter a scumbag like Xu Lin!

Huang Chan
Thursday, May 13, 2021