stupid_villain

Depends. How popular were you before the hiatus?

You'll probably need to update daily until you get featured on the Daily Updates section, as that would be the main way for you to gain new viewers at the moment. You could also participate in some of the review swap threads with other authors to try to get some feedback.

If you're confident in your story's quality, then you could write a few more chapters and then join the Discord to ask curator Edgbarry if your story can be featured on trending originals for a few days. That tends to be very good for views, and it can also be the make-it or break-it moment for novels to gain popularity. Worst case scenario is he says no if you ask him to feature it, so there's really nothing to lose.

Ultimately, it's popularity that determines if a story can get contracted or not. If your book becomes popular, then your chances go up significantly. However, only the most popular stories get offered a contract without asking. To my knowledge, most authors actively ask for a contract through Discord. Then they give you an application to fill out and they check your story's stats to make a decision on whether to offer one or not.

As for how popular you have to be? Hard to say, as that's up to Webnovel to decide. I actively asked for a contract with my book and got one. Around that time, my story had peaked in popularity somewhere around #40 in the original rankings after trending a few days. My book was also the #1 original in the horror/thriller section, which is kind of niche, so that may have also been a factor. Also, rankings can be misleading as well, as you could have a lot of dedicated voters and few readers or you could have the complete opposite with few voters and more readers. That's why there's a popularity list of rankings in addition to power stone rankings.

On an additional note, there are some stories that rise in popularity slowly whereas others instantly shoot into the top ranks. As an example, my book was originally the winner of the Steampunk writing contest. Despite winning, I only had 37 power stones and was rank 402 at the time. From there, I got trending for a few days as a reward for winning the contest, but even then I wasn't particularly popular. My books rank at the end of following weeks were: 172, 113, 97, 97, 86, 54, 40. It was around here that I asked for a contract, and I had gotten that high due to trending a 2nd time. I believe the 2nd trending was much more helpful, as I had more chapters and a good cover by then.
On the flip-side, I've also seen a book get insanely popular in a writing contest in its first week, managing to go so far as to enter the top 25. It immediately got contracted, but the book's popularity dropped like a rock after and I don't see it in the top 100 anymore despite it still being updated daily. So things can really go either way.

I hope all that info helps your decision =p. If you decide to write a new story instead, you may want to check out writing contests. They can be a big help for boosting popularity in the early stages. However, it's a double-edged sword, as writing a brand new story based on a new theme you didn't know ahead of time can easily lead to plot-holes and poor early chapters (what happened to my story). You can also write offline and off of Inkstone, and then wait for a writing contest theme to come along that your story fits. Then you basically get to cheat the system by entering with a well-planned story with lots of chapters, haha. However, that does require patience =p.

      SnoozySloth first of all, thank you for the attention mate. I really appreciate.

      So it all comes down to marketing and a good story. It's better to try and resuscitate the novel until I can ask for a contract
      I'll also start one offline in case the first one is not successful.

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