I am a literary giant in Japan

The next morning.

The headquarters building of Kitagawa Entertainment Co., Ltd., the editorial office area of ​​"Kitagawa Bunko", and an office.

"Kitagawa! Come over and take a look at this newspaper and these posts on the Yahoo Japan forum!"

Saito Reina, who writes under the pen name "Saito Reireko", skipped work from Kawade Shobo early this morning and secretly ran to the editorial department of "Kitagawa Bunko" to check the various data of her novel.

In Kawaide Shobo, she is the editor-in-chief, second only to the editor and above everyone else, with an annual salary of over 2000 million yen. She even walks with her own speaker, looking very vigorous.

But here, Rena Saito seems to have returned to her student days many years ago, as childish and cute as a fledgling college student.

She was holding a pile of freshly published newspapers in her hands, and on her computer was the Yahoo Japan Forum and the backend data of the editorial department of the Kitagawa Bunko.

Internal backend data shows that the online version of the Beichuan Library, which was just launched yesterday, has received over 3000 million valid visits.

This time, along with the online web version of "Kitagawa Bunko", there are also more than a dozen light novels of various types, all written by talented novelists that Kitagawa Hide recruited from the other four libraries by relying on his "personal charm".

Such a huge amount of traffic has greatly benefited these works. The worst light novel has received over 1000 million effective clicks.

If switched to the physical book model, this is equivalent to 1000 million effective readers' purchasing intentions for this book.

In terms of traffic alone, this is the publicity and promotion treatment that only writers at the "upper-class" level in the publishing industry can enjoy.

Because "Beichuan Library" is backed by Beichuan Entertainment and Beichuan Show, and also has the "plug-in guy" Beichuan Technology to support it.

Among the large number of netizens who came here yesterday, there were also many paying readers who were willing to try reading online.

The most popular of all published works, "Ring World 1: Bell", has a total of 12 chapters released, of which the first two chapters are free chapters and the next ten chapters are paid chapters.

The average word count of each chapter is about 8000-10000 words, and the basic price is 25 yen per chapter.

This is also the paid operation model that Kitagawa Hide learned from the online literature market that swept the world and completely destroyed the physical book market in the future.

The charges are not based on the book or the number of words, but entirely based on single chapter subscriptions.

After careful consideration, the staff of the Finance Department, Operation Department and other departments of Beichuan Library felt that Mr. Beichuan, who came up with this payment model, was truly a top business operations genius!
In this way, as long as the novel is long enough, the actual income of the company and the author will far exceed that of their peers who rely on the sales of physical books or solely on creative royalties.

The scariest thing is that, at first glance, paying readers will think that this payment model is particularly friendly to them.

Whether to buy, how much to buy, and who to buy from are all up to them. As long as they don't want to continue buying, no one can stop them.

This solves the problem of buying a magazine but only wanting to read one of the novels.

In fact, as long as readers gradually accept this payment model, they will gradually find that their investment in a novel is much higher than before, and their spending on literary entertainment is also much more than before.

This is like boiling a frog in warm water!

Of course, most people, such as Rena Saito who is now talking about this happily, have no idea that these things will be a terrifying shock to the novel market in the future.

The newspaper in her hand is the authoritative newspaper in the industry that reviews light novels, "This Light Novel is Amazing!". This newspaper was originally created to take advantage of the traffic of "This Light Novel is Amazing!", one of the "Four Heavenly Kings".

Unexpectedly, as the book progressed, it became popular overnight thanks to word of mouth from readers and the fact that these light novel critics are more down-to-earth than traditional literary critics.

Now, the daily circulation of "This Light Novel is Amazing!" exceeds 500 million copies, which is almost the same as that of a second-rate newspaper.

This is also the data evidence that Kitagawa Hide often uses to indirectly support his "electronic reading theory" and "the upcoming rise of light novels" and other statements.

"What's wrong? We have already informed the publisher of "This Light Novel is Amazing!", so there shouldn't be any criticisms against us, right?"

Kitagawa Hide was helping to analyze the impact of "The Call 1" on "Mass", and when he saw Saito Rena asking him to read "This Light Novel is Amazing!", he took it over.

“It’s not a negative comment, but an interesting review.

And these posts seem to be very interested in the horror novels we write.”

Rena Saito has read these reviews and posts carefully, and because she is sure that they are not traffic bought by Kitagawa Bunko, she finds them very interesting.

This was the first time she received a lot of feedback and comments on her novel, which made her feel happy that "I finally became a novelist."

When she was an editor, she watched her authors sometimes worried and sometimes happy because of comments, data, sales and other things. She could empathize with them, but she could never understand that feeling.

Now, she finally understood this emotion, which is why she acted like a child.

Kitagawa Hide smiled and didn't continue talking. Instead, he picked up the copy of "This Light Novel is Amazing!" and started reading.

Perhaps because they had given a heads-up, the newspaper deliberately left the front page blank and used the entire space to introduce the newly launched "Beichuan Library".

The review was written by Uno Tsukaihiro, a well-known critic in the light novel review circle, and co-signed by Maeda Ai, a very famous female critic in the physical review circle.

After seeing Maeda Ai's name, Kitagawa Hide suddenly understood why Saito Rena said it was an "interesting review."

Tsunehiro Uno is a very active young critic in Japan today. He mainly studies otaku subculture and has a wide range of interests in comics, animation, film, television and literature.

He was also one of the first critics to systematically review and explain light novels.

When light novels first began to gain popularity, the industry generally was not optimistic about them and looked down upon the subject matter.

As a result, the writers who write light novels, the companies and publishers that run light novels, the critics who review light novels, and even the artists who help draw illustrations will all be regarded as inferior in the industry, as if this resume is not very impressive.

It was under such circumstances that Uno Tsuenhiro resolutely devoted himself to the study of otaku subculture.

In "Dystopia of Motherhood", he puts forward the view that with the development of the Internet, humans prefer to tell their own stories rather than listen to other people's stories.

This is the core reason why light novels have risen rapidly, while traditional literary genres such as pure literature are becoming less and less popular among the public.

It is true that in terms of sales and commerciality, light novels must have unique advantages over pure literature, just like the impact that the short videos and short dramas that are being retold in later generations have on their "predecessors" such as film and television, online literature, and long videos.

But for literary works, in addition to commerciality, literary quality and practical significance are also very important.

Especially in Japan, where literary works are regarded as a guiding vane of the national spirit, no matter whether you write high-end pure literature or relatively vulgar light novels or mystery literature, many people will judge you and your work based on "whether your novel can bear this responsibility."

Uno Tsunehiro's views and opinions are sharp and outspoken, but somewhat one-sided, which makes him very unpopular with mainstream literary critics.

However, precisely because of these elements, he is very popular in the otaku subculture circle and is the well-deserved "number one in the world" in today's light novel review circle.

His partner in this review, Maeda Ai, is a well-known critic in the literary world.

She was born in Kanagawa Prefecture, graduated from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Tokyo in 1977, and completed her doctoral program at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Tokyo in 1985. Her advisor at the time was Professor Osamu Takeuchi.

She is a senior of Saito Reina and Yumeko. Maeda Ai currently teaches at the Faculty of Letters of Seikei University and Rikkyo University. She is a traditional academic literary research critic, and her research scope is modern and contemporary Japanese literature.

There have been rumors before that Maeda Ai’s research direction in recent years has gradually been moving towards “non-mainstream” popular literature.

Now she actually co-authored an article with a "second-rate" light novel critic!

Regardless of whether she was deeply involved in this manuscript or just signed her name on it, it has extremely far-reaching significance for the traditional literary criticism circle and the light novel literary criticism circle!

A university professor and literary critic of Maeda Ai's stature is not someone who can be moved by mere money.

Kitagawa Hide had previously tried to let Kitagawa Bunko spend money to buy traffic.

However, the literary critics who had criticized him fiercely in the previous years unexpectedly did not accept it.

In the past, they could criticize Kitagawa Hide and Kawade Shobo for money, and even if the money was enough, they could still confuse right and wrong like "Ichiro" and live purely for profit.

But all this is based on the "internal strife" in the literary world.

Light novels are "outsiders".

Even this group of trolls will tighten their belts when faced with "foreign invasion" and will never compromise with "outsiders".

This is probably part of what Japan calls the "literary spirit."

Therefore, the only literary critics that Kitagawa Hidenori mobilized were the "trolls" like Tetsutaro Mori, who were hired by Kitagawa Bunyu.

In fact, even Mori Tetsutaro, who has always been a brainless supporter of Kitagawa Hide, was somewhat reluctant to speak out on this matter.

He makes a living by writing literary reviews, and if he were to step out with his current status to help review "Beichuan Library", his reputation in the industry might plummet.

Having said that, considering that this was Kitagawa's request and that everything he had depended on Kitagawa, he still resolutely published several reviews to help promote Kitagawa Hidezo's new book.

I didn’t expect that Tetsutaro Mori was not one of the first to “try out new things”!
The article "On the Advantages, Disadvantages and Practical Significance of the Three Pillar Light Novels of Kitagawa Bunko" co-authored by Maehara Ai and Uno Tsukaihiro immediately aroused Kitagawa Hide's curiosity.

He had heard of Professor Maehara Ai, who was a true conservative intellectual.

When Kitagawa Hide first debuted, she was one of the people who received the most doubts.

Later, Kitagawa Hide overcame all obstacles and challenged the seven conservative "best in the world". She was also one of the big guys who stood up angrily to accuse him.

But Professor Maehara Ai is different from those stubborn and conservative intellectuals in one respect.

After the fall of Ichiro Tanizaki, she publicly commented on Hide Kitagawa's "The Dancing Girl of Izu" in an open literature class at Seikei University. This was also the first time she commented on it after reading it carefully.

In that open class, Maehara Ai praised the work generously, saying that "The Dancing Girl of Izu" is indeed a groundbreaking work in the history of Japanese literature.

Kitagawa Hide replaced Tanizaki Ichiro and became the "Number One in the World" and it is well deserved.

After that, whenever it came to Kitagawa Hide and his novels, Maehara Ai would give objective and fair evaluations and opinions, without making sweeping condemnations.

This type of conservative literati are still active in the literary world and have not been "overthrown" by new-school literati such as Kitagawa Hide because they are essentially literati, not politicians or businessmen.

Even so, Maehara Ai still did not give in on the issue of light novels or pure literature.

Kitagawa Hide has mentioned "electronic reading" and the "rise of light novels" many times before, and she has publicly expressed her denial and pessimism.

Such a big shot in the industry suddenly changed his tone, and there might not be anyone behind it deliberately, which really surprised Kitagawa Hide.

“The reason why humans progress is that they can endure anything except loneliness.”

“Ring 1: The Bell has the reading pleasure and thriller atmosphere of a popular novel, but it would be a pity to only read it as a horror novel.

I think its brilliant sci-fi nature was overshadowed by the so-called horror storm."

80% of this review is about "Ring World 1: Bell" written by Hide Kitagawa, and the manuscript also specifically mentions that this part was completely created independently by Ai Maehara.

Ai Maehara, who has an extremely sharp vision, felt the "unique sense of science fiction" written by Kitagawa Hide from Chapter 12, and even dug out the hidden main line in the novel -

The possible existence of "ghosts" and the source of their powers.

"I have consulted a lot of information, and some of the more authoritative documents record that 1,300 years ago, there was a practitioner in Japan named Eki Kokaku.

He was proficient in spells and magic, but because he offended the powerful in the court, he was exiled to Shamochi on Izu Island.

He taught advanced fishery and agricultural knowledge to the locals. The people on the island admired him very much and many of them were his followers.

In 699 AD, a stone statue with a small horn floated on the sea, so people enshrined the statue and worshipped it for generations.

In the Continued Nihonki, there is a description of the enfeoffment of Kokaku: On Dingcho, the enfeoffment of Kokaku was exiled to Izu Island. At first, Kokaku lived in Mt. Kuzuki. He was famous for his spells. He was a fifth-rank official in Korea and a teacher of Kwangjo. Later, he was hated for his ability and used evil spirits to seduce him. So he was exiled to a distant place. It is said that Kokaku could command ghosts and gods to fetch water and collect firewood. If he did not obey his orders, he would bind him with spells.

There is also a legend that when Eki Kokaku was exiled to Izu Oshima, he would walk to Mt. Fuji on the sea every night, and it is said that he even built the Qinglong Temple at the foot of Mt. Fuji.

The story of Yi Xiaojiao is very obscure, and most people who do not study folk culture will definitely not know him.

But if you look up this character, you will quickly discover that his so-called "spells" are manifested in modern times by granting individuals superpowers and spreading terror.

It doesn’t matter whether the story is true or not. What matters is that in this type of literature, the description of superpowers is more like a “virus” and the medium of terror is like the “spread of the virus.”

It looks like a fantasy story, but it is actually a science fiction story.

If we analyze it carefully, we can also find the literary quality of the first sentence in the review from the science fiction story:

An exploration of the scientific development of humans and loneliness.

"The academics are worthy of being the academics. If they continue to study like this, my underwear will be exposed by them."

Kitagawa Hide exclaimed, Maehara Ai's comments were indeed very close to the original intention and inner meaning of the "Ring World Series".

This is also why it is defined as "the most underrated science fiction novel".

The remaining 20% ​​of the review is Uno Tsukaihiro's evaluation of "The Grudge" and "Kara no Kyoukai".

His review style is imaginative, while Maehara Ai's review style is realistic and delicate. The combination of the two, seemingly incompatible, gives readers a whole new experience.

This is also one of the points that Rena Saito finds interesting.

Not only are they making progress, but all walks of life in the literary world are also being driven to progress!
And all this is brought by the man beside me!
He said that these three novels would definitely set off a wave of Japanese horror, and it seems that his judgment is about to be verified again! (End of this chapter)