You Will Be Found

Chapter Ten

My first novel Sweet Misunderstanding, on one the romance web novel sites, had finally found its way. Viewers were flocking to the story. Thousands of them. This was what greeted me when I arrived home after my visit with Grant, Joan and Sir Percival in the city park. I was elated, but confused. This shouldn't have happened like this, nor this fast, without paying large sums for publicity.

I investigated, googled "Sweet Misunderstanding", checking out any news about the story and 'Little Birdy' its author. What I found was that one of the new blogger/reader reviewers I had emailed my novel to, had just reviewed it and a celebrity had made a comment on her blog about my book. It was an offhanded comment about the strong female lead that they enjoyed reading. One small tiny comment from a B-grade celebrity and my book was launched into the stratosphere!

I was excited. So excited. Then an email arrived shortly after I finished liking the celebrity comment on the book reviewer's site. It was from a friend of the reviewer, who was apparently recommended by the book blogger/reviewer. They wanted to sign me up for a limited seasonal contract for Sweet Misunderstanding. The offer was good, but not that great. When I thought about what Bekka used to get paid for my novels in the past lifetime, I felt that I could do better than this.

I replied back to the editor and said I'd like to see how things go for a bit first. She'd know I wasn't happy with the offer she'd presented. Hopefully she'd see greater value in my book and up her rates.

I finished the evening by uploading another ten chapters to Sweet Misunderstanding and reading the huge number of reviews I'd already received on all three web novel platforms. Some responses were really lovely and made me giggle and smile. Others were making unrealistic demands. They were unrealistic as I'd already written the next eighty chapters and had no plans on changing them.

A few asked for more chapters to be uploaded, and I responded that I'd uploaded another ten for their pleasure, thanking them for liking my novel. It was fun, pretending to be a happy-go-lucky author, responding to my fans. I'd never had a chance to do this in my first life.

The next morning, after soggy noodle breakfast (last night's dinner that I saved), I received another two emails from the other two web novel sites offering exclusive contracts with better rates and conditions than the first. I knew they would ask for an exclusive contract for the story as I already knew it would do so well. I just didn't expect it to go so well so quickly.

I replied to all three platforms saying that I had three offers and I was happy to give them the opportunity to renegotiate before I made my final decision. I mentioned that I already had the first one hundred chapters complete, with two more books ready and almost complete in the series. I also mentioned that I completed the editing myself to a professional level and I wouldn't require any extra services under their care. This would hopefully let them see that I was going to be a ready-made, easy care package as an author.

This seemed to work. Within an hour I had three new contract offers with far better rates than I thought I'd get. When I went to see how the novel was doing on each of the web novel sites, it had far outpaced my expectations, even knowing how well it did the first time around. It turns out, celebrity endorsements were this powerful!

Out of the three contacts, one offered a down payment in advance for the complete one hundred chapters, providing they viewed the whole novel before signing. They wanted to check out the goods first. I emailed them back that I had a copy of the whole novel in with my lawyer and under copyright application, and that they were happy to view it before they signed. I kindly reminded them that the novel was up on three other mainstream web novel sites if they wanted to make verifications of this. This worked and they replied back straight away to "please go ahead and sign the contract, we are happily waiting for you to join our prestigious team"... Yeah, this wasn't my first rodeo.

I'd heard horror stories where unsuspecting new authors sent in their whole scripts only to find it uploaded and making huge amounts of money under someone else's name. Not only could they not prove that it was their manuscript, but there would be no further contact with the 'editor' involved with the theft. It happened so many times that it even had it's own listing under Wikipedia.

I decided to go with this web novel site anyway and sent them details of my account along with the signed contract. I also asked them to keep the first fifty chapters free before adding the 'pay-to-view' features, as I didn't want to frustrate readers too early in my career. Some web novel sites start charging after the first twenty chapters. I've even seen the feature added after six chapters. I promised the platform that "Little Birdy" would stay exclusive under their website for future novels if they extended me this grace. That seemed to work and they accepted my request. It just so happened that this was the same web novel site that published Sweet Misunderstanding the first time as well. I expect that once the story has hit the one million views they would ask for that exclusive clause in writing.

The thing was, writing under "Little Birdy" did not preclude me from signing up to another website with a new nom de plume. I smiled at this. As long as any exclusivity clause or contract negotiated under the "Little Birdy" pen name, then I could write as many novels and such under any number of names.

I smiled as I recalled just exactly how many novels I'd ghost written in my previous lifetime.

I spent the afternoon out in a local small green way, drinking tea from my Thermos bottle, and writing down notes in the back of my art book, listing the number of books and web series that I could write up and rattle off by heart. I decided that I would find an internet café tomorrow, with my last few dollars left, and spend the day writing up another two sets of web novels and send these to the other two platforms with a counter offer to their rejected contracts. I'd write under one site as "Little Lizzy" with a cute lizard avatar, and "Little Rosey" with an Empress Josephine rose as my avatar. It was an old heritage rose that I had taken a fancy to during my last lifetime. Incredibly hard to come by, but easy to grow.

Happy with my plans, I spent the evening drawing and painting my new avatars and posting the finishing products up on my freelance page and signing up to new author nom de plume emails.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~This is an ORIGINAL webnovel by author JV Findlay. Feel free to support her work over on ko-fi.com/jvfindlay ♥~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~