Rebirth 04: Starting from Taking an Unconventional Approach

At 8:30 a.m. the next morning, sunlight streamed through the half-drawn blinds into the conference room of the Qingniao Publishing House editorial department.

Han Fei arrived ten minutes early, poured himself a glass of water, and wrote down the four points of the meeting on the whiteboard with a marker:

1. Deploy the next phase of business expansion.

2. Launch a physical magazine publishing program.

3. Upgrade of technical systems.

4. Risk prevention and response.

Actually, the first point of the meeting should have been about funding, but since Wen Jie would also be attending, mentioning funding would inevitably lead to people bringing up the topic of unpaid wages, so it's best not to bring it up for now.

Zhang Ruiyi remained seated in the armchair behind the desk, listening to the conversation. She had been at the publishing house at eight o'clock sharp for two consecutive days, which made Han Fei feel uneasy about not paying her a salary.

The meeting room door was pushed open, and Zhang Meimei walked in carrying an enamel mug.

"Good morning, little boss, Ruiyi."

"Good morning," they both said in unison.

Han Fei smiled and said, "Please sit down, Sister Mei."

The staff gradually arrived. Lu Hai entered with noticeable dark circles under his eyes and a half-chewed bun in his mouth. Wen Jie, on the other hand, seemed to be in good spirits and had recovered as usual. He sat in the corner and opened his laptop.

The last one to enter was the veteran editor, Chen Jianguo. He closed the door, sat down in the empty seat by the door, adjusted his glasses, and looked at Han Fei.

"Good morning, everyone," Han Fei said. "Just the day before yesterday, we made history. In one day, we had 68,000 paying users and generated 680,000 RMB in revenue. This number is top-tier even in the entire SP (Service Provider) business. This proves that we are on the right track, and our efforts have not been in vain!"

A round of applause followed.

"However, I want to say that this is just the beginning. If we rest on our laurels now, it won't be long before someone climbs up on our shoulders and tramples us underfoot. So today's meeting is to clarify what we need to do next."

Everyone watched him in silence.

"Our first batch of 50 SMS messages has achieved a stable conversion rate of over 14%. This data gives us a clear signal that the market is far from being satisfied."

Han Fei tapped the first point he had written on the whiteboard with his index finger: "So starting today, we're going to launch a large-scale acquisition of phone numbers. Yesterday we found our first agent, Boss Zhou. Since the publishing house is short-staffed, Cheng Xu will be temporarily in charge of liaising with Boss Zhou, as well as other future agents, establishing ledgers, following up on number delivery, and tracking the quantity and quality of numbers entering the database each day. The source, location, and activation time of each number must be clearly recorded to facilitate accurate push notifications in the future."

"Leave it to me, cousin," Han Fei's distant cousin, Cheng Xu, replied.

"Boss Zhou will provide us with the first batch of new phone numbers this morning, about 100,000. Please keep an eye out for them."

"clear."

"Lu Hai, how many manuscripts do we have now?" Han Fei asked.

"Uh... We received 33 new manuscripts in the past two days, and we haven't finished reviewing them yet. So far, we've selected 12, and together with the previous 105, we have a total of 117 manuscripts that can be published."

Han Fei nodded: "Okay, speed up the manuscript screening process again to ensure there are enough works to support subsequent pushes. Also, there is still room for improvement in the current copywriting conversion rate. We must write multiple promotional copy in different styles for each piece and build a copywriting library. If we can't handle it all, we'll hire three more people. This task will be handled by Lu Hai."

Lu Hai grinned: "No problem, I'll go to the job market this afternoon to post my GG (Girlfriend) ad."

"Furthermore," Han Fei said slowly, emphasizing, "we need to have sufficient content reserves and build our own core author pool so that we can't be poached by others. Therefore, in the next month, we should sign all the top authors who emerge from the New Rural Fiction Competition, especially authors like Lao Huai who have already written hit works, as soon as possible."

"Uh," veteran editor Chen Jianguo blinked, "President, a long-term contract?"

"It's not just a long-term contract, it has to be an exclusive agreement. During the contract period, they can only write for Qingniao, with a guaranteed minimum fee, and additional revenue sharing based on the contract length. Do you understand?"

Everyone present nodded in agreement.

"Okay, next up is about print magazines." Han Fei pointed to the second point on the whiteboard.

Smiles and nods filled the meeting room. These editors, after all, still have a stronger emotional connection to print magazines, Han Fei thought.

"Everyone is familiar with the process of making a print magazine. I'll just pick a few key points to mention." Han Fei turned around and quickly wrote down six points on the whiteboard: content selection and layout, printing and cost accounting, ISBN and ISSN, establishing offline distribution channels, pricing and payback period, and promotion and collaboration.

"Content selection goes without saying; the key is the layout. A standard 64-page magazine (16mo format) can have about 1,000 words per page, totaling about 60,000 to 80,000 words. Our short stories are 10,000 to 30,000 words each, and we select 20 for publication each month, which must be serialized. This means we have to edit the manuscripts a second time, ending them at appropriate points and indicating the next installment. Also, we need to ask each author to write a unique author's afterword for the magazine, and pay them according to the word count."

Zhang Meimei frowned slightly: "President, why do we need to write an author's afterword?"

Han Fei smiled slightly: "This is what I meant by promotion and collaboration. Some readers might not buy the physical magazine if they know that the magazine's content can be viewed online at a lower price. Therefore, we must differentiate between online and offline channels to increase the collectible value of the physical magazine. Not only that, we also need to add the promotional text for the physical magazine at the end of the online version, and add the online subscription method to the back cover of the physical magazine, so as to achieve mutual support between online and offline channels."

Everyone looked on with a look of sudden realization.

"Okay," Han Fei said. "Regarding the other points, we can set the initial print run of the magazine at 10,000 copies. Teacher Chen, go and inquire with the printing plants we've worked with before. If the cost price can be kept below 2.5 yuan, we'll continue using them. We still have quotas for ISBNs and ISSNs, so don't worry. For offline channels, we'll start with Shanghai. Mei-jie will be in charge of this. We'll select 20 to 30 core outlets for trial sales, such as bookstores on Fuzhou Road Cultural Street, newsstands at the train station, and the shelves of large supermarkets. In the past, we had to beg people to enter our channels. Now that we have online data, we can make them beg us to enter. Maybe we can even get a discount on the entry fee."

A soft chuckle escaped the crowd. Chen Jianguo and Zhang Meimei nodded.

"What about the pricing?" asked Lu Hai.

Han Fei rubbed his chin with his index finger and thought for a while: "Tentatively set at 5.5 yuan."

"But 'Story Collection' only costs 4 yuan, and we're pricing it at 5.5 yuan. Isn't that too expensive?"

"It's not expensive," Han Fei said. "Our content is more engaging, and it has online popularity to back it up, so it shouldn't be too hard to sell. We also need to leave room for profit for our distribution channels. We usually wholesale to them at 6% of the retail price, which is 3.3 yuan per copy. If we can keep the cost per copy below 2.5 yuan, the first print run of 5000 copies will cost 12500 yuan in total. Even if we sell them all, the net profit will only be 4000 yuan."

Lu Hai put his hand to his mouth, lost in thought.

"But don't worry about the profits. Everyone knows that as long as sales are good enough, the profits will naturally increase as the number of reprints increases. Speed ​​up the preparations for the magazine and try to release the first issue within half a month." Han Fei's gaze shifted to Wen Jie: "Wen Jie, it's your turn."

Wen Jie looked up and turned his laptop towards the crowd: "Yesterday afternoon I reviewed the architecture of the existing system. The current single-machine deployment mode can support the current hundreds of thousands of users without any problem, but if the number of users increases tenfold or a hundredfold, it will definitely crash."

He pointed to the architecture diagram on the screen: "So I plan to do three things. First, split the database, storing user data, subscription data, and content data in separate databases to avoid excessive pressure on a single database. Second, introduce a caching mechanism, so that the reading data of popular works can be directly stored in memory, without having to query the database every time. Third, deploy load balancing, so that if there is a surge in traffic, servers can be added horizontally at any time."

"How long will it take?" Han Fei asked.

"The core architecture overhaul will take about two weeks. Subsequent expansions and optimizations of the user profiling system will be done as we run it."

Han Fei nodded and remained silent for a while, allowing everyone to prepare themselves mentally.

"Finally," Han Fei began, "and most importantly, once our model has proven successful, there will inevitably be those who follow suit, imitate, and even engage in malicious competition."

The atmosphere in the meeting room suddenly became somewhat heavy.

"First, there's the risk of content. As the number of submissions increases, I may not be able to personally review every single one. So everyone needs to pay special attention: from now on, every submission going online must undergo three rounds of review: initial review, secondary review, and final review. This review isn't about literary merit, but about compliance. Any content that goes too far or might cross the line will be returned for revision. Don't give any potential competitors any opportunity to find fault with us."

"Understood," everyone said in unison.

"Secondly, there are technical risks." Han Fei turned to Wen Jie. "Wen Jie, the system needs a disaster recovery plan. In case of an attack or server crash, it must be able to recover quickly. There are also data backups, and off-site storage must be done every day."

"It's already underway," Wen Jie said. "I'm also writing a monitoring script that will automatically trigger an alert if abnormal traffic or malicious requests are detected."

"Okay. Finally, there are external risks."

Han Fei's gaze swept across everyone's faces one by one. In a highly tense atmosphere, everyone stared at him, waiting for him to tell them something.

"Everyone is familiar with NetEase, right?" Han Fei said.

Everyone looked surprised and exchanged questioning glances.

"President," Lu Hai said, "you want to say..."

Han Fei nodded: "Wangyi has already noticed us. They even started investigating us secretly before our project went live."

"Ah!" Lu Hai was quite surprised.

"Wangyi..." Zhang Meimei said, "That's a real big company. They can do everything—portal websites, email, games. Most importantly, they have plenty of money, plenty of people, and plenty of technology. If they really set their sights on our area..."

She paused, not finishing her sentence, but everyone understood what she meant.

Lu Hai shook his head: "To be honest, I even submitted my resume to NetEase when I was looking for a job, but they didn't take me seriously. Their R&D center alone has over thirty people in the content recommendation team, all of them masters and PhDs from top universities. Our resources..."

"But they haven't even entered yet," Cheng Xu interjected.

"That's right," Han Fei nodded. "Their previous investigation was clearly to find out what we were up to before we grew big. The fact that they haven't entered the market means that either they haven't figured out what we're doing, or they haven't reached a consensus internally. The problem is that our model is already online, and they may soon discover the commercial value and potential of our model. At that time, if they want to enter the market, they can rely on their substantial resources to poach talent, buy articles, seize distribution channels, and replicate Qingniao Reading."

Lu Hai seemed to suddenly realize something, but his face fell with worry: "Then, boss,... can we handle this kind of opponent?"

"The reason I sign exclusive agreements with authors is to deal with this kind of competition," Han Fei said. "As for the answer to your question, it depends on two variables. First, how long it will take for us to build a content barrier that they can't catch up to even if they spend money; second, not just for NetEase, but also for all potential competitors, how long it will take for their smart people to see the commercial value of our model. The longer this window of opportunity lasts, the more advantageous it will be for us."

The group exchanged glances quickly, but no one offered any opinion.

Han Fei continued, "Competition is unavoidable. Today it's NetEase, tomorrow it might be Sohu or Tencent. As long as our model is proven to be profitable, those giants will eventually set their sights on this piece of the pie. This isn't pessimism, it's reality."

The editors exchanged glances. Lu Hai seemed to want to say something, but swallowed his words.

"But competition doesn't mean we'll necessarily lose," Han Fei said. "Our favorable window of opportunity might last six months, or it might only be a month. I don't know exactly how long it will be, but I do know that during this time, every author we sign, every phone number we acquire, and every magazine we sell adds another hurdle for them to overcome. So we should seize every second. By the time they finally figure things out and decide to enter the market, I believe they will see a bluebird that has already run far, far ahead, one they can't catch up to no matter how hard they try!"

The meeting room was silent for a few seconds, then applause came from behind the desk.

Everyone turned to look, then Zhang Meimei stood up and applauded, followed by Wen Jie, Lu Hai, Cheng Xu, Lao Chen...