Chapter 904 Sold Out in Three Minutes!
“How did this happen?!”
In the president’s office in the headquarter of Dangran in the capital, a middle-aged man pounded the table angrily and questioned the people standing in the office. “Is our company so weak? How can our company’s website crash because of a book? What the h.e.l.l is going on? Tell me clearly!”
In an instant, all the people in the room fell silent and wore a bitter smile on their faces.
Who would have thought that Fang Qiu had such great public appeal!
The person in charge of the project stood up with a wry smile and said, “It’s really because there were too many people entering the pre-order webpage. Of course, not all of them wanted to buy the book. There must be some people clicking on the website out of curiosity. After all, Fang Qiu has been too popular this year. Recently, he has made three big events, so there are naturally many people interested in his book. We failed to antic.i.p.ate this, and it’s our fault.”
“Humph.” Hearing this explanation, the president snorted and said angrily, “Hurry up and repair it. This is too shameful!”
“Certainly. It’s in urgent repair and will be fixed soon.” The person in charge promised hurriedly.
Then the meeting was over and the staff went to repair the website.
The repair was complete soon.
The person in charge of the project even added two separate servers to ensure the pre-order website in a steady state.
The pre-ordering website naturally returned to normal after the repair.
All the people who were waiting to buy the book began to pre-order it.
The young man who was Fang Qiu’s fan and Chinese Medicine enthusiast refreshed the website and found that it was repaired. He immediately clicked to place an order.
“100,001?”
Seeing the number of his order after the order was made, the young man couldn’t help but be surprised as he said, “The book is really popular. More than one hundred thousand copies have been sold as soon as the website was repaired. My idol’s book is really great.”
In a Chinese Medicine school, a student immediately refreshed the website after receiving the notice that the website had been repaired. When he was about to place an order, he found that there was no pre-order b.u.t.ton on the website. Instead, there were two big words on it: Sold Out.
He took a closer look and saw a line of words: The first batch of 500,000 copies is all sold out.
Seeing that, the student was immediately angry.
“F*ck! I could have gotten it. This Dangran website really sucks! It went wrong during pre-order. Such a piece of junk.”
Besides the student, many people who failed to pre-order the book also began to complain one after another on the internet.
“Dangran, why didn’t you say in advance that the number of copies was limited? Your website even crashed. We could have gotten it but we didn’t. It’s so disgusting!”
“Five hundred thousand copies are sold out in the blink of an eye? Did you take them yourself?”
“Are you all so fast?”
In addition to complaining, of course, there were also people questioning.
“Has anyone successfully bought a copy? Is the sales volume fake? Is this hunger marketing?”
However, soon they were proved to be wrong.
Fang Qiu’s fans who successfully pre-ordered the book began to reply to those comments. Though their order numbers were not sequential, they covered the range from 10,000 to 490,000.
At the sight of this, those questioning people immediately fell silent.
This thing told them not to question things about Fang Qiu because they would be proved to be wrong.
The people who failed to pre-order the book were particularly envious of those who were showing their orders online.
At the same time, a person in the publis.h.i.+ng industry who was paying attention to this matter also took part in pre-ordering the book as soon as the website was repaired, only to find that all the copies were sold out.
He was so shocked that he screenshotted a picture and uploaded it to the WeChat group to tag everyone in the group.
Seeing the picture, everyone fell silent.
The sales volume they had estimated was far below the real one, and it seemed a little ironic now.
After a long while, someone replied.
“Miracle! Who won the bet?”
Seeing this, everyone fell silent again.
That was because none of them had won, including the person who bet 20 yuan on it. He was right about the sales volume but wrong about how long those copies would be sold out. There were still many people on the Internet complaining that they had failed to pre-order the book.
In fact, 500,000 should not have been the ultimate number, and the sales volume would have reached 600,000, or even 700,000 if there had been enough copies.
Everyone in the group knew that this time, they were slapped in the face by an unprofessional writer.
“This guy… is trying to create a miracle!” a big shot in the publis.h.i.+ng industry said in the group.
Everyone remained silent.
“Great, this is great!!!”
Seeing the words “sold out” on the pre-order webpage, Zhang Xingjie, in Complex Characters Culture Publis.h.i.+ng Company in the capital, immediately jumped up in front of his desk in surprise. He clenched his right fist and swung it a few times. He was in a state of great ecstasy and excitement.
This time, he won!
He really won in a fair and just way.
His publis.h.i.+ng company was resurrected!
His beloved career was resurrected!
The employees were also very excited outside his office.
They were also paying close attention to the pre-order and did not expect that 500,000 copies would be sold out in just three minutes.
This speed was simply unparalleled!
This was definitely a miracle in the publis.h.i.+ng industry, and they were the ones who had created this miracle!
“Beep, beep, beep…”
Just as Zhang Xingjie was extremely excited, the telephone on his desk suddenly rang.
Zhang Xingjie calmed down after hearing the ringing of his phone, suppressing his excitement.
“h.e.l.lo?”
Zhang Xingjie ran to his desk to answer the phone.
“Mr. Zhang, it’s me.”
A familiar voice came from the other end of the line. The voice continued, “I am Huang Yingnan from Dangran. You might be paying attention to the sales volume of the pre-order. This book is too popular. 500,000 copies are sold out in the blink of an eye. The first round of preorder has been an unprecedented success!”
“Yes, yes!” Zhang Xingjie immediately said with a smile. “I’m also very surprised. I thought Fang Qiu’s books would be popular, but I didn’t expect it to be so popular!”
“You didn’t expect it?
“Neither did I!
“Our website crashed because of him!” Huang Yingnan thought.
Then, he brought the conversation back to the topic.
“I’m calling you just to ask if there’s a second round of pre-order?”
“Well…” Zhang Xingjie gave a wry smile and said, “Mr. Huang, the first batch of copies have been pre-ordered. Now, I can’t even deliver copies to the offline bookstores in five days.”
“Then print more. How can you give up the money that you can earn properly?” Huang Yingnan suggested at once.
“Uh…” Zhang Xingjie frowned and was tempted. He immediately began to consider it carefully.
“Because this is Fang Qiu’s first book and it’s a new book, the printing requirements were very demanding. The printing factory of the previous six books could not print it in large quant.i.ties. Printing 500,000 copies in five days was the limit of their capability.
“But Huang Yingnan is right. How can I give up the money that I can earn properly?
“Wasn’t it just a book?
“I could contact a few more printing factories, spend more money and let them print at the same time!”
Thinking of this, Zhang Xingjie no longer hesitated. He gritted his teeth and said, “Okay! The second round of 700,000 copies will be available for pre-order at 8 o’clock tomorrow night. I promise you’ll be able to deliver those copies on time within five days!”
“Good! It’s nice working with you!” Huang Yingnan laughed with satisfaction and said. “I’ll arrange it right away!” Then, he hung up the phone.
After hanging up the phone, Zhang Xingjie was no longer as excited as before. Instead, he looked serious. He didn’t dare to waste any time and immediately called his staff for a meeting.
After the meeting, the staff didn’t dare to hesitate. They immediately took their luggage and got ready for a business trip, to visit the printing factories all over the country and talk about the cooperation!
By the time Fang Qiu finished selecting the place where he was going to see patients this month, it was already 8:10 p.m. Thinking that his book would be available for pre-order today, he immediately logged onto the website, ready to see how many people pre-ordered it.
He entered the webpage, only to find two gray words: Sold Out!
Seeing these two words, Fang Qiu was stunned.
“Have all the copies been sold out so quickly?
“Didn’t they say that physical books weren’t popular?”
Then he couldn’t help but laugh bitterly.
“I seem to have done something great again!”
Then, Fang Qiu gave up the idea of pre-ordering one and began to call the local Chinese Medicine Hospital where he was going to see patients.
The announcement of Dangran was officially released and was updated on their Weibo account at the same time.
Everyone saw the post.
“#Pre-order of Fang Qiu’s new book# The first batch of 500,000 copies were sold out in three minutes. It’s so popular! But the first round of pre-order was closed because we only printed 500,000 copies. However, the second round of pre-order of 700,000 copies will start at 8:00 p.m. tomorrow night. It’s no more than 24 hours left. Stay tuned!”
Seeing this, everyone was not shocked at first but they immediately started calculating the downtime of Dangran’s website!
“500,000 copies sold out in three minutes and it sounds awesome, but in fact, what’s more awesome is that the website had been shut down for two whole minutes. So, in fact, the 500,000 copies have been sold out in just one minute!”
“Dangran is really shameless. They even counted the downtime. How shameless!”
“Master Fang Qiu’s popularity is far beyond that of an ordinary writer.”
“Fang Qiu is awesome!”
“I hope that when the second round of pre-order is coming, Dangran’s website won’t crash.”
Gradually, everyone stopped criticizing Dangran and began to feel surprised about the selling speed of the copies.
Undoubtedly, among them, the most shocked people were from the publis.h.i.+ng industry.
“500,000 copies sold out in one minute?”
“Did I go back to the publis.h.i.+ng industry ten years ago?”
“No, even at that time, the most popular writers couldn’t make such a hit!”
“It’s too amazing! This is simply earth-shaking!”
“How is this even possible? How can anyone make such an achievement in this era?”
“A wolf is entering our publis.h.i.+ng industry.”
“No, I think he is more like a catfish.”
While some people were stunned, others were pessimistic.
“Although there is no doubt that the first round of pre-order is really impressive, aren’t they being a little too arrogant as they dare to put 700,000 copies online for the second round when 500,000 copies have been sold out in the first round.”
“Yes, the pre-order volume in the publis.h.i.+ng industry is getting less and less each time. The first volume is 500,000, and the second one will be no more than 300,000. Complex Characters Culture Publis.h.i.+ng Company and Dangran are blinded by the current success, aren’t they?”
“According to the current situation of the publis.h.i.+ng industry, 500,000 copies could be sold on the first day totally because everyone is curious about the book that Fang Qiu has published. After people’s craze, it will be difficult to sell another 200,000 copies. With sales volume generated by offline stores, the total sales can reach no more than 800,000.”
“Even if it’s about 800,000 copies, it will be the top seller of this year. Amazing!”
Obviously, those people in the publis.h.i.+ng industry were not optimistic about the second round of pre-order.
After all, they were more familiar with this industry than others. Naturally, they had their own thoughts and right to speak. However, it was not certain if the result would be the same as what they had thought.