The Female Segment is Still More Profitable 

　　A person’s health is always better when young. It didn't feel uncomfortable to sit in front of the computer for three or four hours. Zhou Yuwen's throughput was not bad, about 4,000 words per hour.

　　He wrote more than 10,000 words in three hours.

　　However, novel writing really consumed too many cigarettes.

　　The desire to smoke would come up whenever he rested.

　　As a result, wearing big underpants, he hesitated for a long time in the convenience store downstairs, and finally didn't buy any.

　　Quit!

　　When young, he didn't know the importance of balancing of work and rest. After the age of 30, suboptimal health1 would be a minor issue, but when all kinds of gastric disorders arose, nobody could sleep with that pain.

　　After Zhou Yuwen was reborn, the main impression he had was that his young body was very good indeed. Compared to bearing the burden of thirty years, he really felt as light as a swallow.

　　Maybe it was welfare for reincarnators, but Zhou Yuwen felt that his current figure, five senses, and memory appeared to be significantly better than before.2

　　What used to require a good period of consideration now only needed a little prompt for the entire memory fragment to be fished out.

　　Zhou Yuwen was an ordinary person; in this life, he just wanted to be an ordinary existence.

　　Therefore, a controlled diet and regular exercise were essential.

　　From writing at two in the afternoon, at six o'clock sharp he went to the sports field for a run, originally thinking, “I haven't exercised for a long time, but I can still run for about a kilometer, right?”

　　In the end, when he started running, he couldn’t pump the brakes, and ran five kilometers in half an hour. The nearby runner panted and asked: "Young man, did you come back from the military?"

　　"Pretty much, I’ve just returned from the Hyperspace Infantry3." Zhou Yuwen said.

　　"???"

　　Rebirth certainly seemed to have brought some benefits.

　　With the college entrance exams over, there was nothing to do home but novel writing. Later, Mother Zhou asked him about his plans.

　　Zhou Yuwen said to just go to the third-tier college. Anyway, university’s just the beginning, and future success would still depend on himself.

　　Mother said, “As long as you’re happy.”

　　That's how things were settled.

　　Facing his decision, Mother Zhou was extremely reluctant to see the son she had raised about to leave, but she was also at ease.

　　As for Zhou Yuwen himself…

　　Alas, a thirty-year-old man really couldn’t get sentimental with his mother. The two basically just chatted for a while. Since childhood, Zhou Yuwen had not been good at expressing his emotions because of family reasons.

　　He had finally mustered the courage to confess to Su Qianqian when graduating from high school.

　　As a result, he was deceived by Su Qianqian for a whole year.

　　Actually, it couldn't be said to be deception, as if it weren't for Su Qianqian, Zhou Yuwen would not have been admitted to a first-tier university and then treated life as a game.

　　Thus, it’s not terrible to be a bootlicker4, but you have to seek advantages for yourself.

　　For their goddess, the greatest bootlickers would become talented in all aspects5, so if they weren’t wanted in the future, then the goddess would really have to be blind.

　　Anyway, in this life, Zhou Yuwen no longer felt anything for Su Qianqian.

　　Talking about romance with a thirty-year-old man?

　　He will only tell you that a certain technician of a certain club could be taken out with a little extra money6.

　　The July sun was scorching; the old air conditioner in Zhou Yuwen's room whirred as it blasted cold air.

　　Apart from running and other exercise, Zhou Yuwen's everyday life only included novel writing.

　　With 20,000 words a day, the novel entered subscription mode on the small website in 100,000 words.

　　Zhou Yuwen’s work was colorful7 throughout, and the readers were jumping with happiness.

　　He received an overwhelming amount of recommendation tickets8.

　　As soon as it was listed9, it reached the #1 Monthly Sales podium of the small website.

　　In 2010, that position of a small site didn’t give that much money, at most about 20,000 yuan10.

　　Zhou Yuwen felt that the money still came too slowly.

　　The main reason was that this kind of novel was embarrassing to write. Occasional dabbling would be fine, but if you really took it seriously as a job, sooner or later you’d be contacted by the police11. Was there any other way to earn money quickly?

　　Owing to his novel writing, Zhou Yuwen was added to an writers’ group chat, where a bunch of people exchanged ideas about their writing.

　　Zhou Yuwen, as the number one monthly seller, remained mysterious, not saying much, only taking a look every now and again to see if there were updated policies12.

　　Today, people in the group chat said:

　　"Money comes too slowly in the men’s segment13, the female segment is much more rewarding!"

　　"Isn’t that right, only 50,000 words are needed to get listed, the most important thing is that the subscription fees are twice as high as the male market!"

　　"Those women’s rewards14 are terrifying, tens of thousands at a time!"

　　"It's mainly because the female segment gets royalties for the physical books, while we male segment writers get nothing."

　　"The female market’s requirements are also low. I read some, and their writing is much more colorful than ours."

　　Zhou Yuwen saw them chatting happily over there, and thought to himself, was the female market really so lucrative?

　　He mused about it again, nowadays, writing for the female segment was indeed lucrative, moreover, another advantage was that the writer’s pay would never be in arrears.

　　"Oh, if I could write for the female market, I would do it for sure,” said someone in the group.

　　"You can't just write! You need a certain style!"

　　Seeing this, Zhou Yuwen couldn't help but smile.

　　What's so hard about writing a novel for women?

　　Isn’t it just one woman plus a group of men15?

　　An aloof bad boy, an obedient youth, and a gentle uncle16.

　　No matter what novel you wrote in 2012, you just needed to make it as kaleidoscopic as possible. What kind of literary style was needed?

　　Zhou Yuwen took a closer look, and found that it was really better to write for the female market. It remained inglorious to write on this small website, but the difference was women’s segment novels still had the opportunity to go to press.

　　Zhou Yuwen didn't need to copy anything at all, and just casually began writing.

　　Create a heroine, unremarkable. It’s still best for her to be from a single-parent family, where the father finds a stepmother, who is selfish and prejudiced, has a biological daughter, and gives all the good things to her own daughter.

　　Originally, the stepmother deliberately wanted to introduce her own daughter to the wealthy family at the banquet.

　　However, their son only wanted the protagonist.

　　Just when the scion was about to take the heroine away.

　　The bad-boy president suddenly appeared, and with a kabedon17, said, "Don't go! You are mine!"

　　Well, well… Zhou Yuwen sat there drinking soda as his ideas poured out. 10,000 words every morning for the Three Kingdoms erotica, and wrote the romance over there in the afternoon.

　　He felt that it was much easier to write for women than men.

　　For the male segment, he at least needed to check the background, while the female segment only needed catfights.

　　The heroine had a harem of countless twenty-year-old fresh meats willing to die for herself.

　　Zhou Yuwen wrote and posted 10,000 words on that day.

　　By 30,000 words, the editor came asking him to sign a contract.

　　At 60,000 words, the novel was listed, and as soon as it emerged, it shocked the whole audience18.

　　Zhou Yuwen also took a very provocative pseudonym – Mister Zhou!

TLNs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suboptimal_health

Though this may have superhuman/supernatural connotations, this novel is firmly grounded in reality and does not come into contact with any further xianxia/xuanhuan themes.

Also see this: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/cnc_gamepedia_en/images/2/23/RA2_Chrono_Legionnaire_Render.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20180801164541

Translated as bootlickers, lit. “licking dogs”, are a type of sycophantic men (increasingly common in CN novel depictions, and possibly real life) orbiting around women out of their league, in the hopes that they get lucky. One woman may ‘maintain’ multiple bootlickers (inverse is possible but idk), which she uses to maintain a perception of desirability. Note that bootlickers, according to a comment in the raws, act with the idea of “low investment seeking high returns”, and someone with good conditions doing so would be called a proper “suitor” instead.

Lit.: “proficient in the four arts of piano, Go, calligraphy, and painting”

Prostitution is ‘technically’ illegal in China :)

‘Colorful’ is a general anti-censorship adjective used to imply a degree of pornographic/obscene content.

On CN webnovel sites, “tickets” (though I guess “tokens” is a better translation) are the medium with which novel rankings are decided. They are generally divided into “recommendation” tickets, and “monthly” tickets. I am quite unfamiliar with the process but afaik recommendation tickets contribute to an overall persistent novel leaderboard (total # is ranked), while the monthly tickets only apply to a monthly leaderboard. Presumably normal readers get unlimited (or at least many?) rec. tickets, but only get one monthly ticket per month, and can only ever use one rec. ticket on the same novel, while the monthly ticket could be used on the same novel each month. Therefore, high rec. tickets= many new fans, while high monthly tickets=many continued followers.

From Baidu: “Listing means that the public version of the novel on the online novel website has obtained good results after signing the contract (called the A-level signing on Qidian), and it will be listed as appropriate. Except for special circumstances such as buyouts, generally speaking, authors of online novels can only get remuneration after their works are listed.” Basically when a book is “For sale” and not free-to-read.

As opposed to the top authors earning more than ten million yuan a month nowadays. Apparently the author of Douluo Dalu has earn a few hundred million over the years…

This is a common enough trope that I have reason to believe it actually happens lmao.

Of censorship

I use ‘segment’/‘market’ to refer to the divisions of a novel’s target audience. The segmentation by sex into male/female has proven quite controversial, as stuff such as male/male love is required to be put into the female segment, which also has no ‘sports’ category.

Akin to ‘donations’ on Twitch or just ‘Paypal me’ afaik.

Conversely, note that men’s novels are just one man and a bunch of women. However, the extent of the ‘harem’ is really different; reportedly the female market had novels such as “One woman and her 3000 male concubines” and “Reborn as the matriarch of an African tribe” haha.

From a comment: “One to conquer her, one to be conquered by her, and finally someone to whom she could confide everything. Women actually don’t want much.”

https://youtu.be/bQxLTSaTBKw?t=35

Original MTL was “detonate the audience”. You can imagine how I sweated after I realised, I had put this in google…