Chapter 40: Beginner's Lecture Hall

Within a week, Rizhao completed the reorganization of the editorial department and launched online training courses. With a profound understanding of Zhao Zejun's intentions, the very first step of the training targeted the vast community of online writers.

The inaugural lecture of the online classroom officially commenced.

"Introduction to Web Novels: The Crucial Importance of the First Three Chapters"

"With the development of web novels, stories spanning millions of characters are now commonplace. Novels of several hundred thousand characters can only be considered short stories. Therefore, across these thousands of chapters, the importance of the first three chapters far outweighs everything else...

The most common pitfall for novice authors is dedicating large swathes of the first chapter to introducing the worldview and power system they have constructed...

No matter how brilliant your subsequent plots may be, readers' patience is limited. The internet offers a vast ocean of novels, giving readers an overwhelming range of choices. Consequently, within the first tens of thousands of characters, you must capture their attention—this can be through conflict or a compelling cheat-like advantage (Golden Finger)...

As a writer, signing a contract is the basic threshold and a necessary condition for earning decent pocket money. Think about this from an editor's perspective: an editor manages dozens or even hundreds of writers, reviewing hundreds of books a day. Do they have the energy to read a story past the one-hundred-thousand or two-hundred-thousand-character mark?...

This concludes today's lecture. Next session's topic: Introduction to Web Novels Part Two: The Artful Use of the Golden Finger.

Friendly Tip: The upcoming lecture is of exceptionally high value, compiled and edited from the relevant quotes of Zhao Zejun, the godfather of web novels, by Editor-in-Chief Rizhao himself. Stay tuned!"

...

The effect of the first lecture was astonishingly good!

Zeyue's internal staff joked that after browsing the internet for so many years, this was the first time they had ever seen a forum post flooded with endless praise and not a single complaint.

"Oh, so that's why I could never get a contract! Turns out the editors didn't even read past my opening chapters! So depressing!"

"I make this mistake all the time. Looks like I need to pay attention from now on!"

"Amazing, you can actually summarize techniques for writing novels!"

Amidst the sea of comments, Blood Cloud, a prominent web novel god-tier author, stepped forward: "I support this! Let more newbies who love writing learn from this and avoid detours. Thanks to the editors at Zeyue!"

"Spotted a wild god-tier author!"

"Headpats!"

...

The link to the masterclass was prominently featured in Zeyue's homepage navigation. The post's view count broke one hundred thousand on its very first day. A quick search on Baidu showed multiple search result pages redirecting to it, with Qidian prominently among them for reposting the article.

Brand-new officials are known to make sweeping changes. Riding the momentum of the masterclass, Zeyue Chinese Network publicly published the "Zeyue Three-Year Development Plan" to readers, authors, and industry peers across the entire internet.

Within three years—meaning by the year 2006—the company would strive to achieve the "Three Hundreds":

First, break "one million" registered paying users;

Second, secure over "one hundred" writers with a monthly income exceeding ten thousand;

Third, cultivate top-tier industry god-tier authors with individual annual incomes exceeding "one million."

This plan had originally been submitted to Zhao Zejun by Rizhao. While it served as corporate development goals, it also functioned somewhat like a military pledge to repay Zhao Zejun's trust.

Under the current industry environment, these three "one hundred" goals were terrifyingly ambitious.

If memory served correctly, after Qidian was acquired by Shanda with an injection of tens of millions, it relied on Shanda's financial and resource backing to achieve these three goals by 2006. It was precisely from that moment on that the web novel industry officially shed its marginalized status and emerged as a "valuable" industry in the eyes of true capital.

However, in the previous timeline, Zeyue did not exist. Ever since Qidian launched its VIP subscription system in 2003, it had stood alone as an absolute monopoly. Most importantly, Qidian was acquired by Shanda in 2005, gaining the backing of Shanda's formidable capital injection.

Back then, Shanda was practically one of the largest internet companies in the country, and Chen Tianqiao himself sat firmly in the position of the richest person in China.

Qidian changed hands twice successively—once to Shanda, and once to Tencent. The acquiring parties were industry giants and billionaires of national standing. The reason Zhao Zejun chose the web novel industry as his point of entry was, to some extent, following in the footsteps of these billionaires.

The fact that two successive richest men had set their sights on making money in this industry was enough to prove its immense potential.

Yet, in the current web novel market, Huanjian had withdrawn, leaving Zeyue and Qidian to split the market evenly. Zeyue held a slight lead, but it was not yet enough to crush Qidian and dominate the martial world of online literature.

The support Zhao Zejun could offer Zeyue was nowhere near comparable to what the billionaires could bring.

During a private chat with Zhao Zejun, Rizhao candidly admitted that this grand objective was mostly a gimmick used to publicize Zeyue, grab eyeballs, motivate the website's staff concurrently, build momentum for Zeyue, and establish the image of an industry leader.

"Aim for the highest, and you'll reach the middle; aim for the middle, and you'll fall to the lower." By setting the goals exceptionally high at the very start, even if they fell short of the three "one hundred" targets later on, achieving three "eighties" or even three "fifties" would still be an extraordinarily impressive feat.

"Rest assured, you do your utmost, and I will support you with all my might. As for what level we can ultimately reach..."

Zhao Zejun smiled mysteriously, pointed at the proposal on the desk, and said, "Perhaps it will turn out even better than either of us can imagine!"

...

In 2003, ADSL networks were popularized in major cities across the country, and the internet entered thousands of households. Within a year, the number of individual netizens grew at a geometric rate, surging from over twenty million at the end of 2001 and early 2002 to eighty million, and breaking the two-hundred-million mark over the following two years.

"President Zhao, let's put this long-term goal aside for a moment. Our most pressing priority right now is hiring people," Rizhao said with a wry smile.

The editorial department needed to be specialized. According to previous plans, at least eighteen editors were required, yet Zeyue currently had only nine, most of whom were part-timers. Mathematically speaking, there was a massive vacuum solely in the editorial department.

Aside from editors, Zeyue was, after all, a company with some scale now and required routine administrative staff.

Then there was the newly established "Operations Department," which was responsible for commercial operations. It currently had two primary tasks: publicizing Zeyue and expanding the peripheral business of novels, such as simplified and traditional Chinese publishing and various adaptations.

This department was essentially a shell, with Rizhao as its sole member, leaving him spread impossibly thin. For instance, traveling to other cities to coordinate publishing meant a business trip lasting several days—what was to happen to the mountain of tasks left behind?

Additionally, Song Yun's technical team had also put forward staffing requirements.

Out of the few members who initially formed the technical team, only three remained at Zeyue today; some had graduated, while others were too overwhelmed with academics to spare time for part-time work. Although the current R&D workload wasn't heavy, Song Yun believed that since Zeyue was fundamentally an internet-technology-based enterprise, a weak technical team was detrimental to future business expansion.

At the same time, website development involved security issues, and excessive turnover among technical personnel would pose massive hidden risks to website safety.

Putting all these miscellaneous issues together, it boiled down to one sentence: we need to hire people.

Zhao Zejun delegated the recruitment work to Song Yun, targeting student part-timers primarily from the University of Science and Technology.

Hiring part-time students from the university had many benefits. First, Zeyue's office was located right beside the campus, making it very convenient. Second, Zhao Zejun had a selfish motive: his impressions of the University of Science and Technology from both lifetimes were quite favorable, and the quality of its students was famously high nationwide. Third, he hoped to keep Zeyue's team young, ideally cultivating talent firsthand starting from their student days.

There were plenty of university students looking for part-time work; as long as the compensation was adequate, there shouldn't be any problems. Song Yun conducted Zeyue's recruitment through the "Internship Jobs" section of the university's campus forum. Many companies also recruited through campus forums, making this section arguably the most convenient channel for university students to find jobs, aside from large-scale graduation job fairs.

With just a slight adjustment now, the interviewers included one more person: Rizhao.

While Song Yun was busy hiring people and Rizhao was swamped with business operations, Zhao Zejun finally managed to free up some time.

Final exams were approaching, and he was dangerously close to failing his courses this semester!