Chapter 30

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Penguin Publishing Company, marketing department.

Stoner and Walter, the two editors, were nervously monitoring the real-time data of popular books on the Internet.

“How is it? How much of a chance does Dunbar’s ‘Ghosthand’ have this time?”

“According to our calculation, his chances of winning is zero.”

“Are you kidding me?! How can it be zero?”

“‘Candle in the Tomb’ and ‘The Lost Tomb’, which are ranked at the top, are rising too fast. We’re ranked last in popularity and it’s only a fraction of their ratings.”

“Maybe these two books are faking their numbers.”

“If they can be popular, why can’t we?”

Stoner and Walter decided that the first two books were only popular because of marketing and other means, so they had to use their own marketing ways to counter it.

Penguin Publishing Company was the world’s leading publishing platform.

As long as they poured resources into and advertised a book, even if the content was rubbish, it would still be pushed to readers and would be at the top of the best-seller list.

This was Penguin Publishing’s ability to make money.

“Are you sure you want to use our outsourcing marketing platform?”

The so-called “outsourcing marketing platform” was just a euphemistic way of saying they wanted to hire internet trolls.

Their way of doing things was simple and crude.

If “Ghosthand” was not popular enough, they would throw money at it until they reached their desired level.

Walter made a phone call to the service outsourcing company that they worked with.

It was a leading company in the black market in the United States called The Traffic Players.

Rumors even spread that Trump’s election campaign was fully contracted by that company.

This meant that as long as the money was right, they could make you a president, let alone a mere book.

Twitter was their main battlefield. They were extremely good at operating through multiple accounts and multiple threads.

They would find plenty of internet trolls to like and retweet comments, then create their own hashtags so as to get into the hot topics and increase the popularity of specific information.

They even promised that they could get into the top 10 trending topics on Twitter.

The editors gave the order. “Do it!”

The marketing team then took action.

“Machine No. 10,000-19,999 is in operation. Operation completed. Current likes: 90,000.”

“Machine No. 20,000-29,999 is in operation. Operation completed. Current likes: 160,000.”

“Machine No. 30,000-39,999 is in operation. Operation completed. Current likes: 80,000.”

..

There was an account tied to every machine, and every 10,000 accounts were controlled by one employee.

They had hundreds of thousands of such accounts.

Traffic Player was a company that was around for many years, so they were proficient in this business. They managed likes, retweets, and comments, and had humans behind each account working part-time to read and post comments so that it was more realistic compared to bot accounts.

Thus, the results that they obtained were more substantial on the popularity rankings.

Penguin Publishing’s order was not small, so Traffic Player used all they had.

“Alright, alright! It’s about time!”

They watched as the popularity of “Ghosthand” slowly returned to the readers feed and there was a climbing trend.

Tom, the boss of Traffic Player, took a deep puff of smoke and said, “I thought it’ll be harder, but I guess there aren’t many good novels nowadays. I’ll leave the rest to you guys. Jerry, keep an eye on it and remember to increase traffic regularly to stabilize the numbers.”

With the large injection of funds from Penguin Publishing, “Ghosthand”, which originally went unnoticed by people, quickly became popular.

It was at the top of the list and was even slightly better than “Candle in the Tomb” and “The Lost Tomb”.

Fans of these two works were in separate camps and viewed the other as the enemy.

They even warned each other not to mention the other’s work so that the other camp would not gain popularity.

Although there were a lot of fans that were very fond of both books, no one dared to say anything as the situation escalated and was on the verge of breaking out. They were afraid that if they said a few words of mediation, they would be deemed a traitor on both sides.

Before the voting for the Fall Cup officially began, the entire social media was focused on the rankings.

Temporarily, “Ghosthand” was the most popular book with more than three million likes.

The second and third most popular works were oscillating between “Candle in the Tomb” and “The Lost Tomb”.

The two works hovered between 2.8 million and 2.9 million likes.

They gradually caught up with each other.

..

Finally, at 6:00 pm, it was time to vote.

While the online real-time voting was being counted, the judges had already arrived at the hotel one after another and began to comment on the shortlisted works.

“Good evening, everyone! It is my honor to be the host of this Fall Cup Finals. My name is Hades, the Director of the English Literature Department at the University of Iowa. Please allow me to introduce our VIPs here today. They are all well-known figures in the literary world. First up, Ms. Sherry Young. Of course, I’m sure there’s no need for further introductions. She’s the current President of the University of Iowa and the Poet Laureate of the United States! Next, we have Ms. Sakazaka, Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Iowa. She’s also an honorary member of the Hollywood Film and Television Observation Team. The sponsor of this year’s Fall Cup is, Penguin Publishing Corporation, and representing them today is the Executive Vice President of the Atlantic Region, Mr. Jeffrey. Last but not least, Ms. Lilith, the editor-in-chief of Rainforest Publishing Company under Amazon, the world’s largest online bookstore.”