This year's National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival fell back-to-back, making for a combined seven-day holiday.
Liu Zhou had no plans to travel during this long break and simply went home to stay with his family.
In his past life, Liu Zhou's life had been rather monotonous and slow-paced. Whenever he had free time, he would go out to explore, eventually visiting almost every famous scenic spot both at home and abroad.
Later on, as he watched his parents retire and gradually grow old, he traveled less and preferred spending time at home with them.
However, his parents in this current life were not the retired, gentle elderly folks of his memories; rather, they were still in their prime, ambitious, and career-driven middle-aged couple.
Thus, while his parents were thrilled when Liu Zhou arrived on the first day, their enthusiasm held up decently on the second, and started to fade by the third, until eventually, Liu Zhou became a nuisance that neither man nor beast could stand to be around.
It was a good thing Liu Zhou was still young; otherwise, with the added pressure of urging him to get married and setting him up on blind dates, he felt he would have lost his mind.
After a week of eating his mother's home-cooked meals, Liu Zhou returned to school feeling fully recharged.
The moment Liu Zhou arrived at school, the mailroom attendant informed him that there was a letter for him.
Guessing it must be a reply from the *Mengya* magazine in Modu, Liu Zhou retrieved the letter with a sense of hopeful anticipation.
Upon closer inspection, it was just as he had expected.
With a happy smile, Liu Zhou tore open the envelope.
The letter was brief, mainly stating that his novel *Shining for One Thing* was well-written and that the magazine planned to publish it. They hoped Liu Zhou could make a trip to Modu to discuss details and sign the contract, kindly offering to reimburse his round-trip travel expenses.
If he didn't have the time, they hoped to discuss it over the phone instead.
Going to Modu was out of the question; classes were starting tomorrow.
Checking the time and seeing it was still before the end of the workday, Liu Zhou immediately went off-campus and called the number listed in the letter.
"Hello, you've reached the *Mengya* magazine office."
"Hello, is this Editor Qu He? I'm Liu Zhou."
When mailing his manuscript, Liu Zhou hadn't used a pen name in the author field; he had simply used his real name.
Hearing Liu Zhou's response, the person on the other end immediately turned enthusiastic.
"Liu Zhou, hello! I've been waiting for your call for three days."
"The school was on holiday these past few days, so I went home."
"I understand. Do you have time to make a trip to Modu?"
"I probably don't. Is there anything we can just discuss over the phone?"
"No problem at all. We just have a few questions to confirm with you on our end."
"Go ahead."
"Are you one hundred percent sure this novel is your original work?"
"That's right."
Liu Zhou didn't feel offended by the question; he knew this was standard procedure for magazine offices, and it would have to be written into the contract later anyway.
"How many words are you planning for this novel?"
"Around 180,000 words. I already have over 30,000 words stockpiled here."
After briefly chatting about a few questions, they moved on to the topic both sides cared about most: the author's remuneration!
At this time, there were primarily two ways to pay manuscript fees: one was a flat rate per word, and the other was calculated based on royalties.
In the past, payments were almost always made using the first method. For breaking through to the second path, they had to thank Wang Shuo—he was the one who had paved the way for the broad community of writers.
Since Liu Zhou's novel was a full-length book, the magazine would first serialize it in *Zhongzi*, and if the response was strong, they would also release a standalone edition.
Therefore, if the opportunity arose to publish a standalone book, Liu Zhou could collect money from both sources.
The serialization payment was straightforward; new authors were uniformly paid fifty yuan per thousand words.
The most important part was the royalty for the standalone edition.
Even though the magazine couldn't be certain whether a standalone edition would be published, they weren't going to leave such an obvious loophole, so they would agree on the payment method for it beforehand.
For the standalone edition, Liu Zhou naturally chose the royalty system.
Most authors had a royalty rate between five and ten percent, while a small minority could get higher, with the most famous ones reportedly securing fifteen percent.
However, Liu Zhou could forget about that; there was no way the publishers would enter into a gamble with him to sign a tiered royalty agreement.
He was still a completely unknown newcomer, and he needed the *Mengya* magazine for promotion, leaving very little room to negotiate the royalty rate.
Editor Qu He offered six percent.
This royalty rate wasn't high, but Liu Zhou had no objections.
After everything was settled, Editor Qu He said, "If there are no issues, I'll mail the contract to you over the next two days. Please keep an eye out for it."
"Alright, but I'd like to ask, when roughly will my novel start serialization?"
"Barring any unexpected issues, it will start publishing in the second half of this month's issue."
When the *Zhongzi* magazine was first founded, it was a semi-monthly publication. Later, in the 1960s, due to tight paper supplies, it was changed to a monthly publication, and then suspended for a period of time.
After resuming publication, it remained a monthly, but starting this year, they finally reissued it as a semi-monthly.
Liu Zhou hadn't expected his novel to start serialization in the magazine so quickly. Large magazine offices like this typically finalized their content a month or two in advance.
Of course, this was a good thing for Liu Zhou. It showed that the other party valued his novel quite a bit, and it meant he could get his manuscript fees sooner.
"Then how many words will you serialize per issue? I'd like to have a general idea."
"We serialize about 5,000 words per issue, publishing around 10,000 words a month. If it's fully serialized, and given your estimate of 180,000 words for the novel, it will take eighteen months."
Editor Qu He's words caught Liu Zhou by surprise. He hadn't expected it to serialize for so long, which somewhat disrupted his plans.
In his past life, he had merely been a magazine reader and had never paid attention to how long a novel took to serialize.
If this were on a web novel platform, the author would be flamed to the skies by readers!
An 180,000-word novel updated over eighteen months? Did you think readers would pamper you like that?
Yet, as it turned out, there were indeed authors who proved that readers would actually pamper you!
"Does it have to serialize for that long? Can we increase the word count per issue a bit?"
This was genuinely the first time Editor Qu He had ever encountered an author asking to update *more*, but he still patiently replied, "That probably won't be possible for now; much of the content for the issues has already been locked in. However, magazines often don't serialize the entire book. Usually, once we've serialized about half or more than half of the content, we wrap up the serialization and then decide whether to release a standalone edition based on the response."
Liu Zhou began to understand. If the response to the serialization was good, a standalone book would be published; if the response was poor, it might be pulled.
Seeing that Liu Zhou had gone quiet on the other end, Editor Qu He continued, "Based on my experience, your novel is very engaging. Several of our editors think it's quite good, and there's a high probability it can be published."
He didn't speak in absolute terms; although he genuinely thought the novel was good, no one could ever predict book publishing for certain.
Liu Zhou didn't mind this too much. He believed in the quality of his novel and trusted the other party's professionalism; he was just surprised to find out that he would have to wait a while to get his money.
"I have no other questions, then."
After hanging up the phone, Liu Zhou let out a sigh of relief.
Although the outcome differed slightly from what he had envisioned, at least the first step of his grand money-making enterprise had been taken.
Many things really required personal experience to truly understand; who knew there were so many unwritten rules in this industry?
Now, he didn't need to worry too much about the novel anymore. He just had to write a bit every day according to schedule, and given their serialization speed, he had plenty of time to spare.
The only thing he needed to worry about now was learning directing skills.
Before the break, Liu Zhou had already obtained the class schedule for the Directing Department at the Beijing Film Academy. It still conflicted somewhat with his own major's class hours, but there was no help for it—skipping class was inevitable. As long as he didn't fail his exams later, his head teacher would probably help him sort it out.
Meanwhile, in an editorial office at the *Mengya* magazine in Modu, Editor Qu He also let out a long sigh of relief after hanging up the phone.
He had joined *Mengya* ten years ago and could be considered a veteran editor at the magazine.
The *Mengya* magazine was founded in July 1956 and was Mainland China's first original youth literature publication.
Having weathered many storms, it set sail anew after the 1980s, and Qu He had watched the magazine grow and expand step by step.
This year, as *Mengya* developed better and better, the higher-ups decided to revamp it.
Not only did they change the magazine to a semi-monthly publication, but they also opened up multiple new columns, attempting to carve out a larger territory in the fields of youth and juvenile literature.
As a veteran of the magazine, Qu He was entrusted with the heavy responsibility of screening youth literature.
To this end, the magazine specifically recruited a batch of young people, and Qu He also managed a five-person editorial team.
Although the magazine had been continuously soliciting contributions in *Mengya* and had received some submissions, Qu He found them all mediocre.
Coupled with the fact that very few people wrote this genre, the youth literature column had been lukewarm for the past half-year, practically a stagnant pool of water.
This made Qu He feel extremely anxious.
He even used his personal connections to commission pieces from familiar authors, only to be rejected or given verbal promises that never materialized into actual manuscripts. He knew those were just polite ways of turning him down.
It wasn't until he saw Liu Zhou's *Shining for One Thing* that Qu He's frustration completely vanished.
Although this novel was only 50,000 words in, it still displayed outstanding writing and exceptional storytelling ability, paired with a touch of science fiction that made people feel like their imaginations had been blown wide open.
It was love at first sight for this novel.
So he immediately wrote a reply to the author based on the address, and upon seeing that the author was actually a literature major at the Central Academy of Drama, he felt even more confident.
During the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays, he had only taken two days off—National Day itself and the Mid-Autumn Festival—and had spent the rest of the time waiting for Liu Zhou's return call.
Today, he had finally received the call, and he had been worried that this novel might get snatched up by another magazine.
Fortunately, everything went smoothly.
Qu He personally prepared the contract to be mailed to Beijing, proofread the manuscript once more, and then walked toward the editor-in-chief's office.