CHAPTER 60: CHAPTER 56: FOR FAME, TO WHOM AND HOW SHOULD THE SONG BE GIVEN?

After ending the call, Chu Tian looked at his novel’s webpage with an indifferent expression, having read all that he wanted to. He couldn’t be bothered to continue and decided to close the webpage and browse the internet for some interesting scoops, especially eager to see if any prominent figures had slipped up.

Meanwhile, Qiu Ye was far from relaxed. She hung up the phone and rushed straight into the editor-in-chief’s office.

Her colleagues noticed her frantic demeanor. Many knew she had recently taken on a novel that was performing quite well. Seeing how frequently she entered the editor-in-chief’s office, some looked on with envy, while others showed disdain, no doubt cursing something internally.

In the office, after Qiu Ye had explained to the editor-in-chief the discussion she’d had with Nanmeng, even the editor-in-chief was taken aback.

He had never expected such a situation to arise.

"In that case, he said he had finished writing it, right? Go and ask him if he can send the novel to you instead of posting it himself. You’ll have to take on the extra work of setting up daily updates for him. Just make sure not to let him dump everything at once again."

"Okay, editor-in-chief, but isn’t 900,000 words too few? Do you think we could suggest he write a bit more?"

For a web novel, 900,000 words indeed aren’t much. Many books span several million words. Apart from those unexpectedly cut short, any author whose work performs well usually aims for two to three million words or more.

Some authors even write ten or twenty million words. Frankly, these mere nine hundred thousand words... even if he could just push it past a million, that would be something.

After all, the more they write, the more they earn. No one is a fool.

Qiu Ye’s idea was well-intentioned, and the editor-in-chief had considered this issue too, but ultimately, he shook his head.

"You can ask him, but I don’t think it’s possible. If it weren’t finished, that would be one thing, but since it’s already complete, all plots intact, forcing an expansion could easily lead to a shoddy continuation."

As a web novel editor, Qiu Ye might not fully grasp this. However, the editor-in-chief, having come from the era of print media, was very familiar with the practices of traditional writers.

A book, once finished, means it has been written comprehensively. At this stage, it’s better to plan a sequel than to radically alter the plot just to pad out the word count by forcefully injecting filler, which can easily destabilize the story and lead to a poor ending.

Isn’t this the same with TV shows?

A story that could be told well in fifteen or twenty episodes is forcibly dragged out to forty or fifty episodes, even sixty, filled mostly with fluff. Can it still be good?

How many have ended poorly and been criticized?

Hearing what the editor-in-chief said, Qiu Ye realized it was unlikely and just sighed, preparing to make another call to discuss further.

However, the thought of potentially receiving the entire book and seeing its complete version instantly swept her earlier gloom away!

When Chu Tian received another call, he was utterly baffled to hear they wanted him to send the entire book. It wasn’t until after the explanation that he realized he had seemingly done something foolish: updating over ten thousand words at once during his new book’s free promotional period, especially given its already limited total word count.

The readers were thrilled, but he was the one losing out.

As for the suggestion to write more, he didn’t even need to think about it. Where would he get such an ability? He was just a porter. He flatly refused.

"So when will you send the book over? Let me take a look, organize it for you, and set up a daily update schedule."

Send the book? I’d love to send it right now! After all, isn’t it great to have someone else do the work? The problem is, I can’t send it. The book is all here, but who knows when I’ll actually manage to type it all out? A converter would be fast, but one costs one hundred thousand Reputation Points and can only copy ten thousand words.

To copy everything, I’d need over ninety converters—that’s almost ten million Reputation Points! He glanced at his meager one million two hundred thousand Reputation Points, which he had accumulated over the past few days.

Without any major buzz or popularity, just relying on this slow trickle definitely isn’t enough.

But not all hope was lost.

Last weekend Xu Qingqiu had once again recorded an episode of "The Sound of Nature," and tonight, the second episode from the first recording session was to be broadcast.

Xu Qingqiu also had a new song he’d composed set to be released.

That should bring in another big wave of Reputation Points, more than enough to cover copying the entire book!

Thinking of this, he could only tactfully delay:

"Um, I might need to make some adjustments on my end. Can I send it to you tomorrow?"

"Sure, of course, that’s fine. You adjust first and send it to me before you leave work tomorrow. Just send it to my communicator."

"Okay, let’s do that."

He breathed a sigh of relief having bluffed his way through.

He silently congratulated himself. It’s a good thing I felt indebted back then and gave Xu Qingqiu two songs to thank her for her previous care. It seems like a good deed really does bring a good reward. Perfect!

However, such coincidences won’t always happen. It looks like I really need to gather more Reputation Points, just in case. You never know when they’ll be needed.

Moreover, he had already drunk the throat remedy twice, with a two-month interval in between.

The first bottle he had exchanged using Reputation Points, and the second bottle he had won in a lottery.

But he’d only won it once. In another half a month, he would need to take the third dose, so he had to exchange Reputation Points for a third bottle.

His voice was still a bit hoarse. He could talk normally, and it wasn’t as ear-grating as the sound of scraping glass anymore, but speaking still felt strenuous.

By my estimates, it would be great if I could recover within a year.

That might seem long, but compared to the doctor’s prediction of more than ten years, it’s actually very good.

Sighing to himself, Chu Tian began to think about how to earn more Reputation Points.

This time, there’s a song from the show, and the novel added a few thousand points. But who knows how much more I can get in the future?

From what I’ve seen so far, in terms of reach, audience size, or speed of gain, novels really can’t compare to songs.

If I want to quickly acquire a large amount of Reputation Points, it looks like I’ll have to rely on songs.

The key is, I can’t even think about singing for at least a year. Even if I could, I wouldn’t.

At most, I could learn from that ’Echo Brother’ guy and wear a mask? In any case, I don’t want to reveal my identity.

In that case, earning Reputation Points through songs will have to depend on someone else.

But the crucial questions are: who would get the songs? How would I give them? Xu Qingqiu?

Just thinking about that mission from the system makes me grind my teeth in frustration. It’s not about Xu Qingqiu; I just can’t stand how shameless that damned system is!

But whether it’s Xu Qingqiu or someone else, I ultimately need to manage these relationships properly. At the very least, I can’t keep giving away songs for free, especially since I’ve already registered the copyrights for the ones I have. If I want someone else to sing them without revealing my identity, authorization is the only way.

He had tried to find someone else before without success. He thought about it, searched online, and quickly found an authorization template.

In terms of copyright, a general copyright template should be enough.

In his past life, he was a Singer who had been in the industry for many years, signing and writing authorization documents countless times, whether granting permission to others or receiving it from them.

It was something I couldn’t be more familiar with.

After glancing over it briefly, he adjusted a few inaccuracies and added some content, and a complete authorization letter was ready.

He downloaded it to a USB drive and went to the printer. Seeing no one around, he printed several copies.

This time, he wasn’t like before, stupidly unable to understand the prompts and completely unaware of the difference between paper tray 1 and 2. He studied the settings carefully for a long time. Still, better safe than sorry, he thought, so he swapped the A3 paper in paper tray 2 for A4 paper before clicking print.

It doesn’t matter which tray it uses, as long as it prints out correctly.