Rebirth of the courtyard, the start is 80s

Chapter 8 How Writers Are Made
After copying "The Shattered Void", in order to find a reliable publishing house, Cao Zhiqiang at the time decided to check around first.

In the absence of Internet search, the only way to do it is to go to the nearby book stalls and bookstores to search for various martial arts novels.

In the spring of 1983, because the source of the domestic cultural industry had not been fully liberalized, especially the printing houses, although there were individual booksellers, there were not many, and there were also pirated books, but not many, and There are very few types of books in private bookstalls.

At this time, if you want to buy books, especially martial arts novels, the most reliable way is to go to Xinhua Bookstores all over the country, and to rent books, of course, go to the library.

There are self-employed book stalls selling books, such as Gulou Street, but the books they sell are basically outdated magazines and newspapers, or some unscrupulous books.

For example, such-and-such battles against female devils, such-and-such battles against female bandits, meat gangs, dragons, tigers and leopards, etc., or some Shaolin skills, Wudang secret skills, or something What qigong.

That's right, there are no serious books at the individual booksellers with street stalls at this time, because they can't get in.

why?

Because during this period, almost all printing factories were state-owned or collective, and all of them were in command of policies, guaranteed income during droughts and floods, had no self-responsibility for profits and losses, and had little economic autonomy. Of course, they lacked the motivation to pirate.

At this time, magazines and periodicals basically went to the post office, and books went directly to Xinhua Bookstores in various places. The distribution method was basically business-to-business, and there were few public-to-individual ones.

So at this time, if you personally want to set up a stall to sell books, you don't even have a purchase channel, and regular book sellers will easily not sell them to you personally.

Therefore, during this period, if you want to order magazines, you go to the post office; if you want to read books, of course you go to Xinhua Bookstore.

There are also internal publications such as various government agencies and enterprises, but the circle of such things is smaller, the content is more boring, there is no circulation, and there is no value for setting up a stall.

That being the case, what are self-employed booksellers selling at this time?
Needless to say, most of them are parallel imports!

All kinds of books smuggled from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as various smuggled or privately recorded audio tapes, are quite popular at this time.

Anyway, the relevant departments don't come to sweep easily, even if the relevant departments come to sweep, as long as you run faster than others, then there is no problem.

Therefore, those who dare to set up street stalls at this time are almost all good runners.

However, it will be after [-] that street stall literature will really rise.

Anyway, one day when he came to a nearby Xinhua Bookstore, he began to read martial arts novels everywhere.

He doesn't look at which martial arts novels are good, but which ones have better quality and higher prices.

In particular, copy down the names of publishing houses that publish martial arts novels.

In this way, he can select a relatively reliable publishing house in a targeted manner in the future, find the address of the publishing house, and submit a manuscript to this publishing house.

But just as he memorized the names of several publishers of martial arts novels, and was about to go back to study, he suddenly found a young saleswoman in the bookstore, lying on the counter writing something.

When asked casually, she proudly said that she was writing a poem and was planning to contribute it to "Poetry Magazine". She also said that one of her poems was selected and not only published, but she was also paid 20 yuan for the manuscript.

After such a chat, Cao Zhiqiang found that the other party was very familiar with publishing, so Cao Zhiqiang's interest was aroused.

Through chatting with the female salesperson of Xinhua Bookstore, Cao Zhiqiang discovered that in this era, it would be very troublesome for pure newcomers to write and publish martial arts novels from the very beginning.

Instead, as he did before, he first contributed to magazines and published some poetry, prose and short stories in other people's magazines to make money faster and more stably.

Because martial arts novels belong to the category of books, if they want to be published formally, they must have an ISBN.

The ISBN is now assigned to each publishing house by the Publishing Department.

This thing can be understood as food stamps and meat stamps, all of which are limited in quantity.

Generally, the larger the publishing house, the more ISBNs it can get, and vice versa.

Because of the limited quantity, it is quite scarce.

Normally, if an unknown newcomer wants to publish a martial arts novel, the publishing house will often not publish the book for you considering various risks.

Even if the editor of the publishing house values ​​your article and decides to publish it for you, they will generally not give you much money. In most cases, they will pay you according to the amount of thousands of words, which is usually not higher than the ceiling of ten thousand words.

The most outrageous thing is that if you sell the work so cheaply, the copyright is not yours, but the publishing house's.

Unless you are a well-known old author and famous writer with your own traffic, you will be given a relatively high buyout price, usually how much is a thousand words.

As for royalties?What it is?
Therefore, if you want to find a publishing house to publish a book, the more famous the author, the better, because the more famous the author, the greater your bargaining power.

Take Jin Yong for example, he is popular wherever he publishes books, and he can cut the biggest cake.

Of course, it has been changed after all, so there is still a publishing model at this time, that is, you pay for the book out of your own pocket.

In this case, you have to spend your own money to secretly buy an ISBN from the publishing house in the early stage.

In addition, printing money and publishing money all have to be paid for by you, and even the labor costs for the staff to publish the book for you have to be paid by you. Anyway, all kinds of expenses in the early stage are paid by yourself.

If you publish at your own expense, if you sell more books, you will earn more, and if you sell less, you are the one who loses money, and the publisher will not lose money.

If you are very confident in your work, of course you can also engage in this self-publishing model, and the publishing house earns an intermediary fee.

In the early 80s, this self-publishing model was not popular yet.

The main reason is that the initial investment in self-publishing books is too high.

Today's printing factories are not later. Once typesetting and printing, the minimum printing volume requirement is [-] copies, and some large factories even have a minimum printing volume of [-] copies.

Because there is no reliable computer input method for Chinese characters at this time, and there is no computer typesetting and printing. Typesetting and printing are very troublesome, and they are all manual.

Counting other expenses, you pay out of your own pocket, and the cost will be at least 8000 yuan, which must be paid to the publisher in advance.

This fee cannot be afforded by ordinary individuals.

With that 8000 yuan, it is enough to open a small restaurant.

Unlike the 90s, the Chinese character input method and typesetting technology have both improved. There are more printing factories, and they are beginning to be responsible for their own profits and losses.

So in the 90s, many cadres and leaders who thought they had a bit of culture liked to publish books at their own expense to improve their standards.

Without him, the market economy is now, and publishing books is cheaper.

Cao Zhiqiang is of course full of confidence in his martial arts novels, after all, they have passed the test of time and the masses.

So publishing a book at your own expense is undoubtedly the best choice.

This is also respect for Mr. Huang Yi in his previous life, isn't it?
However, at that time, he was not well-known and had no money at hand, so it was impossible for him to publish a book at his own expense.

Not to mention anything else, he couldn't afford 8000 yuan.

He can only find a publishing house first and ask someone to publish it for you, but in this way, the book will definitely be sold at a low price.

This made it difficult for him to choose.

But on the second day, he didn't know if the system had been affected in some way, but he actually signed three magical things——

"Three Thousand Selected Modern Poems"!
"Three Thousand Selected Modern Short Stories"!
"Three Thousand Selected Articles of Modern Popular Science Knowledge"!
Well, "Three Thousand Selected Modern Poems" contains some award-winning or popular modern poems.

Most of them are poems that appeared after the 90s and [-]s, including domestic and foreign, especially some later Internet celebrity poems, which account for a large amount of space.

"Three Thousand Selected Modern Short Stories" are some modern short stories.

Basically, they are award-winning boutiques or super popular boutiques, which contain everything, most of which are science fiction.

Such as Ted Chiang's "Babel Tower", "Story of Your Life" and so on.

As for "Three Thousand Selected Articles of Modern Popular Science Knowledge", they are some popular science articles.

It is not a simple dry talk about popular science knowledge, but strict arguments and experimental data, many of which are popular versions of Chinese and foreign professional scientific papers that appeared after the 90s.

For example, in the popular science articles about genes that I submitted to Science Pictorial, many of them contained [-] references to modern popular science knowledge.

Otherwise, it would be very difficult for him to gain favor in a relatively serious popular science magazine like Science Pictorial at this time, just relying on his own assumptions, or the genetic memory of his previous life, without relatively rigorous relevant data and arguments.

It's really so easy to pay the manuscript fee of sixty thousand words.

In short, since he had picked up these three things that could be called cheating, Cao Zhiqiang decided to wait for a while, not to find a publishing house to publish his own martial arts novels, but to continue to submit articles to various magazines to earn extra money and accumulate funds.

This time, he no longer used the same pseudonym to publish his works under the same pseudonym, instead of changing the pseudonym of a vest in a magazine as before.

Making money is not the goal, the key is to maintain a pseudonym and gain fame.

When the popularity and funds are available, I will publish "Shattered Void" at my own expense.

In this way, he quickly plagiarized some works, all using the pseudonym "Qiangzi", and began to mail manuscripts to various well-known magazines.

For example, he copied some popular science articles of different types, and mailed them to magazines such as "Science Pictorial" and "Science Literature and Art" under the pseudonym "Qiangzi".

I also copied some short stories of different types, and mailed them to magazines such as "Reader's Digest" and "Story Club" under the same pseudonym "Qiangzi".

All these magazines have included his articles, and they still pay varying amounts of royalties.

It may be that the pseudonym "Qiangzi" has published too many works in many large magazines at the same time, and it has become famous.

In addition, the level of the articles he plagiarized was better than the articles he wrote before, and the fees paid to him by various magazines were obviously higher than in the past.

Moreover, there are several magazines that want to invite him to be a columnist.

Since the timeliness of various large periodicals and magazines is not high, most of them are monthly.

Therefore, in order to make more money in a short period of time, Cao Zhiqiang collected enough for the publication fee of "The Broken Void" as soon as possible, and found some of his most impressive Internet celebrity poems among the [-] modern poetry selections, and planned to contribute to poetry magazines.

The first choice is "Seeing and Not Seeing".

But this time, Cao Zhiqiang did not mail the foreign magazines.

He personally came to the headquarters of the Poetry Magazine in Beijing, found one of the middle-aged male editors surnamed Yu, and delivered the later Internet celebrity poem "Seeing and Not Seeing" in person.

The pen name is still "Qiangzi".

This poem, in fact, is actually called "The Silence of Banzaguru Pema", which contains the line "You see me, or you don't see me".

Even if that poem is controversial in later generations, but here, in the spring of 1983, he wrote this poem, and he is the well-deserved original author.

At this moment, no one will compete with him for the copyright of this poem.

Although the literariness of this poem is the same, but the artistic conception is good, and it is easier to understand.

Even for some ordinary people who are not well-trained in poetry, they are easily moved by this poem, and it is very easy to move people's hearts.

Most things in this world, the popular ones, are the most profitable.

That editor was not a fool either, he immediately took a fancy to his poem and agreed to publish it.

But the price is not high, only five yuan for a line of poetry.

This time is the last twilight age of modern poetry.

Things like modern poetry are not charged according to the thousand words, but according to the number of lines.

The more popular the poem, the more well-known the author, the higher the pay per line.

For example, for sonnets, give the money for the sonnets.

Generally speaking, regular large-scale magazines like Poetry Magazine have very high poetry standards and pay a lot of money.

For example, if a new author's work is included, a line of poetry will be paid three yuan.

The poems of some well-known poets usually cost about five yuan for a line of poetry.

Five yuan per line is basically the ceiling for the remuneration of newcomers' poems at this time, and no matter how high it is, it will be a well-known poet.

Cao Zhiqiang is a pure newcomer who has never published a work before. If someone wants your poem and agrees to publish it in the next issue of the magazine, he will give you five yuan per line, which is actually very good. This shows that the editor is very optimistic about his work and is very happy. Appreciate him.

In this way, Cao Zhiqiang earned 17 yuan from the Poetry Magazine for his 85-line modern poem "Seeing and Not Seeing".

Although the money was not much, it was less than three months' salary.

What really surprised him was that after the poem was published, it became an instant hit and quickly caused a huge repercussion and sensation throughout the country.

Yes, he wrote so many articles and contributed articles before, but none of them really became popular. At most, the manuscript fee has become higher.

It's good now, just with this poem, his Qiangzi's pen name is famous all over the country!

Red so suddenly, so quickly.

This is really unexpected.

(End of this chapter)