Chapter 242

Stone's voice was brimming with excitement. "Sixty thousand!"

Isabella looked puzzled. "What sixty thousand?"

"Daily sales! Yesterday's single-day sales broke sixty thousand copies!"

"It shattered the record held by 'The Weapon'!"

"No new book has reached this height in nearly twenty years!"

"Isabella," he said, his tone grave. "Your new book—it's a smash hit!"

This wasn't just regular success. It was explosive.

At first, Stone had been frustrated.

He anticipated the launch wouldn't be smooth sailing, but he never expected it to be this quiet.

An editor from a rival house, with whom he'd never gotten along, finally seized the chance to mock his declining judgment.

They sneered at him for signing a has-been author and pouring a huge marketing budget into a project doomed to fail.

Stone ignored the gossip.

He was busy figuring out where things went wrong.

He had read all of Isabella's work carefully.

Neither the subject matter nor the plots were lacking.

Every book had the potential to be a major hit.

They had specifically chosen what they thought was her best work for the debut.

Yet the result was unexpectedly poor...

It didn't make sense.

Was Isabella truly past her prime?

She had been absent from the thriller scene for a decade.

But "The Weapon" and "The Deserted Village School" were still on the bestseller lists, with steady monthly sales.

This proved her reader base still existed.

The more he thought about it, the more something felt off. He immediately called a meeting with the marketing team.

The content wasn't the problem. The author's reputation wasn't the problem.

The issue had to be the marketing strategy!

Sure enough—

Upon closer questioning, he discovered the marketing focus had been on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, which are popular with younger users.

But Isabella's core readership was primarily between thirty and fifty years old.

No wonder there was no splash. They had completely targeted the wrong audience!

He immediately adjusted the strategy.

He instructed the team to focus on book recommendation forums and literary discussion boards.

He even arranged for some offline advertising.

That very day, "Seven Days" sales broke ten thousand copies.

In the following days, they continued to climb steadily.

The real breakthrough came from a post two weeks ago by a blogger called "ChubbyReader".

[My dad, a math teacher who gets a headache from reading, is actually glued to a book, forgetting to eat and sleep!]

[Pic][Pic][Pic]

The three photos vividly captured a middle-aged man completely absorbed in reading, the book's cover clearly visible.

This blogger was famous for sharing funny stories about his father, who was more popular than the blogger himself.

Fans were shocked to see their familiar "laid-back dad" seriously reading a book.

Many grew curious and searched for the book's title.

They discovered it was a physical book with no e-book version available.

For most, curiosity ended there.