Chapter 200 - Satisfy the Full – Timers! (1/2)

As he was thinking about this, a knock on his door rang out. Pei Qian looked up and saw that it was Ma Yiqun.

Ever since they began preparing to create Zhongdian Chinese Network, Ma Yiqun had been very busy. Although arrangements for the administrative, finance, and legal staff had been made and the company’s framework was complete; Ma Yiqun still had to decide how the website would be run.

Ma Yiqun had already bought a website template and authors’ platform on the website for resources according to Pei Qian’s requirements. They bought the domain name ‘�� for three hundred thousand yuan as well.

Since Qidian had not yet been created in this world, the person who created the domain name ‘zhongdian’ could not sell the domain for too high of a price. What’s more, it was 2010. Domain names had not become expensive. One could say they got quite a good deal.

Apart from this, they had hired staff to maintain the website and bought a cloud server. They had also applied for authorization from the relevant authorities.

After doing all these things and spending hundreds of thousands of yuan, the initial preparations were more or less complete.

After that, it was time for Ma Yiqun to get busy.

First, he had to gather all his employees, in order to assign tasks to each of them. All of these people were seniors whom Zhang Wei recommended to Pei Qian. All of them graduated with majors in humanities. That meant they had a passable grasp on language.

Ma Yiqun’s first impression of them was that they all seemed a bit autistic. Most of them also looked like nerds. This was expected; none of them could find jobs until now. If all of them had the gift of the gab, they would not remain unemployed after graduation until

now.

Fortunately, they had good attitudes. Ma Yiqun was not that fussy.

He knew very well that it was not meaningful to discuss whether someone was suited to be in the online literature industry. It also did not matter whether one did well in school or not. Anyone who entered this industry had to start from scratch.

This was a good thing and a bad thing.

At least, to Ma Yiqun, these people met the fundamental requirements.

After this, Ma Yiqun assigned tasks to each of them. Once the website was set up, the first thing to do was to fill the library up. A website for web novels had to have content. Otherwise, it would be an empty shell. Thus, they had to hire a batch of authors as soon as possible.

Especially wealthy web novel sites would surely hire famous authors. They might even hire them by the batch. Doing this could cost them millions of yuan.

However, this was not the path Pei Qian chose.

Although this would allow him to spend more money, the chances of the website failing would decrease greatly. These authors were novel gods after all. If Pei Qian hired them, the website would draw people’s attention very quickly.

He could either spend money to buy novel gods over or attract failures. After some consideration, Pei Qian decided that the latter would allow him to lose more money.

After all, most novel gods who had become famous were genuine talents. To make gods out of failures, on the other hand, would be extremely difficult

Any author with aspirations would choose to chase their dreams on an established website like Infinite Chinese Network even if they were failing currently. All of them hope for their novels to rise to fame one day.

They would not write for a small website with a dim future for the sake of earning a few hundred yuan more.

Thus, after pondering over this for a while, Pei Qian decided not to pull novel gods over but work on attracting failing authors instead. This would probably be the more reliable way to incur losses.

Ma Yiqun’s job in these early stages was to train his staff and filter manuscripts. These people knew little about online literature. Even those who had read online literature had never read in depth about it.

Ma Yiqun still had to teach them the basic principles such as writing satisfying plots, finding rhythm, and developing the theme. These people could only become editors after Ma Yiqun was more or less done. Then, they could help Ma Yiqun with choosing manuscripts, guiding authors, and the like.

Now, Ma Yiqun was probably here to report their progress to Boss Pei.

“Boss Pei, this is the current situation…”

He briefly explained what they had achieved so far before changing the topic. “We have two main problems at the moment.

“First, our current editors are below standard. Their understanding of online literature is not quite there. They choose manuscripts based on authors’ writing styles. Most manuscripts they chose are not suited to be online literature. I think it’ll be quite difficult to change this habit of theirs in the short-term. I need more time to teach them.

“Second, most manuscripts we receive are low-quality. I’m not even talking about premium work. Infinite Chinese Network might not so much as try these manuscripts out, much less put them up on its shelves.

“A few of the manuscripts are very good, but even if you submitted them to Infinite Chinese Network, they would get five hundred subscriptions at the most. Of course, I’m not looking down on that number of subscriptions. I’m objectively assessing the facts…”

Ma Yiqun was beginning to feel guilty. After all, he had written web novels before. As an author with only thirty subscriptions, he did not feel like he had the right to look down on others if they could get five hundred.

Yet, he had to be logical. If the best author on a web novel site could only get five hundred subscriptions, the entire website was basically a failure.

After all, authors like that would be able to get five hundred subscriptions on Infinite Chinese Network because many readers visited that site. That number would probably shrink by ten times if the book were published on Zhongdian Chinese Network.

Ma Yiqun’s problems were not contradictory. All in all, the authors sucked at writing, and the editors sucked at vetting manuscripts. There was no way that the manuscripts they accepted would be readable.