Chapter 141: Reader Survey Form

After his usual workout the next morning, Zhang Ye went to the post office and mailed the letter.

After school that afternoon, he went straight to the publishing house.

Wang Mengzi had actually returned the day before, but Zhang Ye had thought it was too late to disturb her at home. Besides, he felt somewhat guilty. He had become Yuan Yuqing’s boyfriend—even if only as an act—and naturally felt awkward facing Wang Mengzi.

The publishing house was as busy and orderly as ever. It had already begun hiring, and several young editors and other staff members had joined the team, including an accountant.

“Quickly—are the reader survey results ready? Let me see them.” The moment Zhang Ye entered the publishing house, he strode in hurriedly and called out to Xu Jiang.

“They’re ready. The results from the first hundred readers are complete. We’re still formatting and calculating the results from the first thousand.” Xu Jiang nodded hastily, then walked to his desk and handed Zhang Ye a table he had prepared in advance.

Without bothering with formalities, Zhang Ye immediately began reading.

He had designed the reader survey after the relatively mature comic magazines of Japan. It included the reader’s gender and age, whether they were willing to purchase Fantasy Youth, their overall opinion of the magazine, and their rankings of the three novels they liked most in that issue, among many other questions.

What Zhang Ye truly wanted to see was the ranking of the three favorite novels. He needed to know which of the novels published in this issue had been most popular with the readers.

The figures on the chart were clear at a glance. Among the respondents, seventy-five percent were male and twenty-five percent female. As for age, zero percent were between zero and six, five percent between seven and twelve, twelve percent between thirteen and fifteen, thirty-one percent between sixteen and eighteen, and fifty-two percent over eighteen.

As for whether they would buy it: sixty-seven percent very much wanted to, eighteen percent wanted to, eight percent could not buy it for various reasons, and seven percent did not want to.

Overall evaluation: eighty-nine percent found it excellent, six percent thought it decent, five percent considered it ordinary, and zero percent disliked it.

…

First favorite novel: The Misty Journey, thirty-five votes; Magic, twenty-eight; Immortal Vanquishing, twenty-two; Legend of the Little Soldier, fifteen.

Second favorite novel: The Misty Journey, thirty-seven votes; Magic, twenty-nine; Legend of the Little Soldier, twenty; Immortal Vanquishing, fourteen.

Third favorite novel: Legend of the Little Soldier, forty-one votes; The Misty Journey, twenty-six; Magic, seventeen; Immortal Vanquishing, sixteen.

If all the preceding survey results had been within Zhang Ye’s expectations, the final result had completely taken him by surprise. Immortal Vanquishing, the work he had been most satisfied with, had unexpectedly received little recognition. Instead, The Misty Journey had surged ahead and claimed first place among the readers’ favorite novels.

As for Wang Mengzi’s Magic, publishing it serially in Fantasy Youth had actually been a mistake from the beginning.

Her novels leaned more toward romance and emotional relationships, and therefore appealed more strongly to female readers. Yet the survey made it obvious that Fantasy Youth had a predominantly male readership. Zhang Ye even suspected that those twenty-five female readers had submitted the survey and started reading Fantasy Youth largely because they liked Wang Mengzi.

After all, Wang Mengzi had become fairly famous throughout the country following the success of her previous book.

“Regardless, the first shot fired by Fantasy Youth has hit its mark.” Zhang Ye was filled with delight.

Of course, the survey also revealed something less satisfactory. Apart from his own novel and Wang Mengzi’s, not one of the others had won the readers’ approval. The first, second, and third places had all been completely occupied by their works. It had to be said that this had left Zhang Ye utterly astonished.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it. Wang Mengzi was already a well-known author, and both her writing and literary foundation had reached a certain level. As for Zhang Ye, the several novels he had written were all famous in later generations and were hardly inferior to Wang Mengzi’s.

Ultimately, their standards were simply far higher than those of the other authors.

Novelists of the present age—at least most of them, or perhaps the vast majority—wrote in a literary style that could barely be called fiction. At best, their works resembled autobiographies. Their language and vocabulary might be ornate, but when it came to storytelling, there was little that truly drew the reader in. At least in terms of appeal to younger readers, they were nowhere near as compelling as the online novels of later generations.

The decline of traditional literature and its generally low sales later on would be due in large part to its failure to genuinely cater to readers—to write what readers actually wanted to read. Instead, many writers indulged in self-pity, believing their talents had gone unrecognized and resenting readers for failing to appreciate them. When online novels were broadly embraced by the public, they did not learn with humility. They merely condemned and cursed them, calling online literature vulgar and cheap.

In truth, they simply had never seen through the matter.

People needed to read, whether in the past or in the future. Reading was humanity’s greatest source of knowledge. In earlier times, there had been no online novels, none of these supposedly vulgar works written to satisfy readers. Even poorly written traditional literature still had a vast audience. But the coming age of the Internet would bring that era to an end.

Of course, everything had both good and bad sides. The problems born from an age in which everyone could write would be serious as well. And while the enormous quantity of vulgar material might give rise to more readers, it would also make people increasingly aware of the preciousness of truly beautiful writing.

Zhang Ye possessed no profound literary cultivation, but he believed that combining the two might give rise to an entirely new literary age.

A novel was, after all, only a novel. At its core, it existed to entertain the public, not to educate or shape people. Schools, textbooks, classrooms, and the guidance parents gave at home were the proper places for education.

After finishing the reader survey, Zhang Ye turned his attention to the subscription figures for Fantasy Youth.

Those figures were what would ultimately determine whether Fantasy Youth could endure and prosper.

He entered Yuan Yuqing’s office, only to find that she was not there. Zhang Ye paid no attention to it. He simply walked over, sat down in her chair, pulled open a drawer, and began looking through the documents.

Sure enough, he soon found the figures he wanted.

“Five thousand three hundred and twenty-one annual subscriptions, two thousand four hundred and thirty six-month subscriptions…” Zhang Ye drew a sharp breath. Then he burst into excited laughter.

They had distributed thirty thousand copies of Fantasy Youth in total, yet had received more than seven thousand—nearly eight thousand—subscriptions in return. That amounted to between one-quarter and one-third of the total circulation. In other words, for every three or four people who saw the inaugural issue of Fantasy Youth, one had been persuaded to spend money on it.

Such a conversion rate was astonishing.