Can light novels be published to literary standards?After Utsudo shared her publishing experience in a Bahamut guild, she got a private message from an editor proposing a deluxe collaboration with a dozen-plus illustrations, events and merchandise — she thought it was a scam at first. In fact, the editor’s vision was to package light novels to literary standards and focus on whether the author deserves to be promoted. It was the first time she felt a Taiwanese light novelist could be treated with such respect.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

Meeting a benefactor on Bahamut

　　I met this benefactor on the Bahamut platform.

　　I’d been away from Bahamut for a while, and when I came back, things had changed; many of my close friends there had quietly left the platform. 

　　I felt pretty lonely, so I joined a guild that looked decent. After joining, I didn’t know how to get to know everyone; I figured the only help I could offer was my experience knocking around the publishing industry.

　　So I posted a bio and opened a Q&A thread about light novels. Unexpectedly, the response was enthusiastic, and it later turned into a talk (I covered that in an earlier episode). 

　　The morning after posting that thread, I received a private message.

　　I thought it was a cute, shy little lamb (?) coming to ask a question, but it turned out to be someone claiming to be an editor. Besides introducing themselves and the works they’d worked on, they asked whether I’d like to collaborate — as long as it was a story that expressed who I am, they could help me publish it, and to a super high standard at that. 

　　Shaped by this treacherous society, my first reaction was —

　　Daddy, I’ve run into a scam ring Q口Q

　　I’m already so poor and they still want to bully me, boo hoo.

The gap between pure commercial publishing and a deluxe collaboration

　　Let me first explain why I thought that.

　　Ever since my debut, I’d worked purely in the commercial model: finish the manuscript yourself, submit it to a publisher, and only if it’s accepted do you get a chance to publish. Forget interior illustrations — you’d probably get a cover at most. But this one said there would be not only a dozen-plus illustrations, but lots of events and even merchandise!

　　For a lightweight newbie like me, that was treatment for god-tier authors — it couldn’t possibly be for me. It was too good to be true, so of course I thought it must be fake; my eyes must be clouded by karma (channels a Zen master

　　But after talking further, I learned that this person wanted to use their abilities to give back to the publishing industry — a very special and noble vision. As for why they approached me, it seemed few active authors were willing to support newcomers, yet this industry really needs everyone to grow together…

　　At first I didn’t have such lofty ideals. I simply felt I’d hit many walls making my way in this business — it hurt and wasted a lot of time — and it would be nice to tell whoever might need it which walls hurt, or which paths are too narrow to squeeze through. But after talking with them, I realized I could do more, and maybe contribute a little to lifting up this industry.

The vision of packaging light novels to literary standards

　　In commercial publishing, I was used to shaving off parts of myself to fit the market. I never knew there was another world where your unique original shape is precious precisely because it shows who you are — literature.

　　Their vision is to package light novels to literary standards and to ask whether the author as a person is worth promoting, with the work itself secondary — because they believe every work has value, and literature’s true value lies in people.

　　It shocked and moved me — not only their ideas and their willingness to spare no cost to preserve the purest books worth promoting, but also because for the first time I discovered thatlight novelists in Taiwan can also be treated with such respect。

　　Because in commercial publishing, to put it bluntly, if you’re not popular you’re about the same asdisposable chopsticks(that’s me

　　Basically you have to rely on your own efforts. Typical publishers allocate resources according to your fame and influence, but that only leads to veterans dominating and newcomers struggling even more to survive.

　　For an industry to be strong, it needs a solid middle tier, doesn’t it?

Build your popularity online, but don’t lose yourself

　　But publishing is tough these days, and because publishers don’t want to lose money, they tend to look for works that are already popular online and approach them directly… So to break through now, building popularity online is essential. But I hope you won’t lose yourself or give up who you are just to please readers. A work without a soul is fast food at best — it can’t leave much of a ripple in readers’ hearts.

　　Of course, if what you’re after is being idolized by lots of people, there’s nothing wrong with that XD

　　At that moment I felt truly lucky. Maybe it was the pile of earlier misfortunes that let me stumble into such a wonderful connection. Having my work treated so preciously must be a blessing earned in a past life.

　　The work we’re collaborating on has several color illustrations and more than twenty pages of black-and-white illustrations, printed on premium paper (the name is too hard to remember, I forgot QQ). It hasn’t been published yet, and because the distributor changed, the editor is considering transferring it to another publisher — but I’m willing to keep waiting.　

　　There’s much more I could write, but let’s wrap this part up here~

FAQ

Further reading (in Chinese)

• Previous: #14 (in Chinese)
• Next: #16 (in Chinese)
• Start from the beginning: #01 — Utsudo’s debut
• Column introduction
• Utsudo’s books

About the author

Utsudo is a Taiwanese light novelist and novelist VTuber with more than ten years in the industry and 40 commercially published print books. Her novel 《遺失的情書》 received a 2022 Ministry of Culture youth creative award. The 《嘿！聽說妳在鬼島當作家》 series records her experiences as a novelist in Taiwan.

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