Just as he was thinking, there was a knock at the door.

Pei Qian looked up and saw that Ma Yiqun had arrived.

Since preparing to establish Endpoint Chinese Web, Ma Yiqun had been busy.

Although he had already arranged for administrative, financial, and legal personnel, and the company’s main framework had been set up, how to actually operate the website was still up to Ma Yiqun to decide.

According to Pei Qian’s requirements, Ma Yiqun had purchased a ready-made website template and author backend from a resource site, bought the domain name www.zhongdian.com, spending over 300,000 yuan.

Since “Starting Point” didn’t exist in this world, people who registered the “Endpoint” domain name couldn’t possibly inflate the price too much. Plus, it was 2010, so domain names weren’t that expensive—they had gotten a small bargain.

Additionally, he had found website maintenance personnel, bought cloud servers, applied for authorization from relevant departments…

After a series of efforts, they had spent several hundred thousand yuan, and the preliminary preparations were basically complete.

Afterward, Ma Yiqun began to get busy.

First, he gathered all his employees and assigned them their work one by one.

These people were all senior schoolmates recommended directly to Pei Qian by Guo Wei. They were all humanities graduates with decent writing skills.

Ma Yiqun’s first impression of them was that they were all rather introverted and somewhat bookish.

This was normal, since these people were all unemployed.

If they had been eloquent and sociable, they wouldn’t have remained unemployed right after graduation until now.

Fortunately, these people had acceptable attitudes, so Ma Yiqun wasn’t too picky.

He understood clearly that when it came to web novels, it didn’t matter whether someone’s background was relevant or what their academic performance was like. Once they entered this industry, everyone had to learn from scratch.

This was both good and bad.

At least in Ma Yiqun’s view, these people’s basic qualities were sufficient.

After that, Ma Yiqun assigned some simple tasks.

With the website set up, the first thing was naturally to enrich the book library.

A novel website was a content website. Without content, everything was pointless, so the initial phase definitely required spending money to recruit a batch of authors.

If it were some particularly wealthy websites, they would definitely spend money to poach some famous authors, and might even poach them in batches. This approach could easily cost millions.

But Pei Qian had not chosen this path.

Although this approach would cost more money and the probability of failure was not low, famous authors were famous for a reason. Poaching them would bring immediate large amounts of attention to the website.

Between spending money on poaching famous authors or attracting struggling authors, Pei Qian thought for a moment and decided the latter had a greater chance of losing money.

After all, most famous authors who had made a name for themselves had genuine talent, while the probability of a struggling author becoming famous was actually very low.

Any aspiring author, even if temporarily struggling, would definitely choose to chase their dreams on large websites like Infinite Chinese Web to seek overnight success.

They wouldn’t run to a small website with an uncertain future just for a few hundred yuan in full attendance bonuses.

So, after comprehensive consideration, Pei Qian decided not to poach famous authors initially, but only use full attendance bonuses to attract some struggling authors. This was the most reliable approach.

Ma Yiqun’s initial task was mainly training and screening manuscripts.

These people knew little about web novels. Even those who had read web novels hadn’t studied them in depth.

Some of the most basic concepts, such as satisfying moments, pacing, themes—all of these had to be taught by Ma Yiqun step by step.

Only after they were taught adequately could these people become qualified editors, helping Ma Yiqun select manuscripts, guide authors in writing, and so on.

Now, Ma Yiqun felt it was time to report the current progress to Mr. Pei.

“Mr. Pei, the current situation is like this…”

After briefly introducing the current achievements, Ma Yiqun changed the subject: “Now we’re mainly facing two problems.”

“The first problem is that our editors’ current level isn’t high enough, and their understanding of web novels isn’t thorough.”

“They tend to select manuscripts based on the author’s writing style, and many of the selected manuscripts don’t qualify as proper web novels.”

“This point might be difficult to change in the short term. I can only teach them gradually.”

“The second problem is that the overall quality of manuscripts we receive is low. Forget about premium works—many manuscripts probably wouldn’t even get trial recommendations on Infinite Chinese Web, let alone be officially published.”

“The few excellent works, if placed on Infinite Chinese Web, would probably get at most 500 average subscriptions.”

“Of course, I’m not looking down on 500 average subscriptions. I’m just objectively stating this fact…”

Ma Yiqun felt uneasy saying this.

After all, he had written web novels before. As an author with only 30 initial subscriptions, he didn’t have much right to look down on authors with 500 average subscriptions.

But logically speaking, if the best author on a website only reached the level of 500 average subscriptions, that website would basically be considered dead.

After all, such authors could get 500 subscriptions on large websites like Infinite Chinese Web because of the large reader base. At Endpoint Chinese Web, these numbers would probably shrink tenfold.

The two points Ma Yiqun mentioned weren’t contradictory. Simply put, the authors’ level wasn’t good, and the editors’ manuscript review skills weren’t good either. The manuscripts they collected were unreadable.

Currently, the website hasn’t officially launched. Ma Yiqun mainly contacted struggling authors through various forums. Once they had collected enough manuscripts to sustain the website, they would officially launch.

After hearing Ma Yiqun’s account, Pei Qian’s expression remained calm, showing an “everything is under control” demeanor.

“Do you have any manuscripts? Let me take a look.”

Ma Yiqun took out a USB drive and handed it to Pei Qian.

It contained collected manuscripts, some signed, but most unsigned.

Pei Qian randomly opened a few manuscripts to have a look.

After reading them, he had only one feeling: they were eye-searing!

For the vast majority of manuscripts, he couldn’t read more than a chapter after a rough scan.

Not to mention things like satisfying moments or pacing—many people had problems with basic word usage and sentence construction. There were spelling errors, punctuation misuse, grammatical errors, logical confusion in the first three chapters, unclear themes…

In short, the problems were varied and numerous.

Pei Qian looked through them briefly. These manuscripts selected by Ma Yiqun for signing were barely the best of a bad lot. On other websites, they would still be doomed to fail.

It seemed that although Ma Yiqun had only 30 initial subscriptions, he still understood the basic principles of web novels.

This was within Pei Qian’s expectations. After all, although Ma Yiqun had low initial subscriptions, his public chapters were well-written and had gathered a group of readers.

Watching Pei Qian casually browse these manuscripts, Ma Yiqun couldn’t help but marvel.

Mr. Pei had such patience, actually being able to read through them…

After randomly selecting several manuscripts, Pei Qian felt relieved.

If future manuscripts were all of this quality, there was no way this website could succeed!

Good, keep it up!

He calmly removed the USB drive and handed it back to Ma Yiqun.

“No big problem.”

“As for the two issues you mentioned…”

“It’s fine if our editors’ level isn’t high enough. Just lower the standards for manuscript review. After all, our current focus is on enriching our library of works. People are just signing up for the full attendance bonus; there’s no need to be so strict.”

Ma Yiqun looked hesitant: “But… Mr. Pei, the full attendance standard you set initially was 1,000 yuan.”

“Infinite Chinese Web’s full attendance standard is 500 yuan. Some small websites do offer 1,000 yuan for full attendance, but that usually requires updating 10,000 words daily.”

“Our standard is 1,000 yuan for full attendance with just 3,000 words updated daily.”

“If we further lower the standards, I’m afraid the cost of full attendance bonuses alone will burn through a lot of money each month.”

Pei Qian shook his head: “It doesn’t matter. Supporting 500 authors would only cost 500,000 yuan per month—not much money.”

“We’re a new website. If our full attendance standard isn’t set high enough, why would anyone come write for us?”

“Besides, 3,000 words daily isn’t that easy to achieve for many beginners.”

“Don’t worry, as long as we collect enough manuscripts, talented authors will emerge.”

Ma Yiqun thought about it and felt that Mr. Pei’s reasoning seemed sound.

However, the probability of this happening was just too low…

Ma Yiqun thought for a moment and said: “Mr. Pei, there’s another issue. Currently, most employees’ workload is not saturated.”

“Because there aren’t many authors submitting manuscripts, the task of reviewing isn’t heavy. Even if our editors take time to guide authors in their writing, there will still be times when they have nothing to do.”

Pei Qian waved his hand: “That’s even less of a problem.”

“If there’s nothing to do, let them develop some hobbies.”

“Take yourself for example. When you have nothing to do, write some books yourself, enjoy yourself—isn’t that good?”

Pei Qian stood up and patted Ma Yiqun’s shoulder.

“Yiqun, don’t put so much pressure on yourself.”

Tenda’s principle has always been to work happily. If there’s work, be busy; if there’s no work, just develop some interests and hobbies. If there’s too much work, hire more people. It’s not a big deal.”

“Don’t try to accomplish everything at once. Take it slow.”

Ma Yiqun nodded: “Yes, Mr. Pei, I understand!”

Originally, he had been a bit impatient, feeling that Mr. Pei had entrusted him with such an important task, yet there had been no progress. Instead, they were burning through more and more money, and he was getting anxious.

But now, seeing Mr. Pei’s expression showing everything was under control, Ma Yiqun inexplicably felt reassured.

Indeed, following a good leader made one feel secure!