Almighty painter

Chapter 119 Draft Contract
The golf ball rolls on the half-meter-wide artificial turf,

Osborne stretches out and swings his club lightly, the chrome trim on the club reflecting the light from the glass chandelier in the office.

When I was an MBA student at Stanford Business School,
Textbooks like to refer to giant groups like Scholastic as Empire (Empire) to describe their giant-like influence in the world.

Osborne loved the idea,
Scholastic's turnover last year exceeded the combined GDP of many small African countries, and it deserves its name as an independent business empire.

Whenever he stands in his CEO's office on the 41st floor of London's Financial Street Building and looks down at the busy crowd on the street below, a great sense of power will fill his heart.

If Scholastic is compared to an independent kingdom like the Holy Roman Empire,

It took Osborne half his life, and the early help from the Elena family, to evolve from a hard-working but ordinary "hardworking male bee" in the crowd downstairs to a person who can be responsible for the entire European business. The elector who speaks nine tripods.

This quaint office with its indoor golf course and crystal chandeliers is his personal palace.

Even in a few years, after the old CEO retires, he may be eligible to touch the throne of the entire group.

The premise of all these beautiful ideas is,
Osborne must deliver an amazing answer to the board of directors in the main business of the European region.

however,
At least judging from his resume in the past year and a half since he took office.

Osborne felt that in the eyes of the board of directors, his performance should be between qualified and good, probably not excellent, and had nothing to do with adjectives like stunning.

"Million sales, million sales... SHIT, those idiot accountants who only read reports in the office, really think it's so easy to make a bestseller with million sales! This is a fucking 100 million."

jingle~
Osborn was annoyed. He didn't control the strength of the shot. The golf ball bounced off the ground and hit the metal medal on the decorative tree outside the office. The metal medal collided with a loud ding-dong.

He threw the golf club on the sofa, walked over and bent over to pick up the small white ball, and stood in front of the ornamental tree.

[No.01 "Memoirs of the Second World War", Winston Churchill]

【No.02 "Train Bazaar", Paul Solu】

【No. 03...】

……

[No.57 "The Wilderness Where Elephants Call", Graham Meyer]

The small pine tree, covered with small decorative plaques like Christmas presents, is a permanent decoration in the private office of any senior management member of the company.

"Million Milestone" Memorial Tree,

Whenever the Scholastic Group publishes a best-selling book with an annual sales volume exceeding 100 million copies, a new commemorative plaque will be hung on the tree.

Today there are exactly 57 commemorative plaques.

57 epic bestsellers have built the cornerstone of the group's huge business map in the past 70 years.

Osborne, as the vice president in charge of publishing and sales, under his leadership, the annual sales volume of printed books in Europe is no worse than that of the previous vice president.

However, he lacks enough bright fist works.

What Osborne needed was a production that would climb up a memorial tree.

Since he took office,
The best-selling book currently created is the new version of the autobiography "Green, Clay, Grand Slam" by tennis king Federer, which sold a total of 82 copies last year.

This is already a super invincible bestseller in the publishing industry, but it is not enough for Osborne's ambition.

Especially in the face of the two blockbuster works launched in North America last year-a memoir of a former president with an annual sales volume of 130 million copies, and the 150-year-old illustration book "The Wilderness Where Elephants Call" written by children's author Meyer. Compared with the sales of [-] copies, it looks bleak.

After the former president retired, it was a Yankee custom to make money by publishing books every day. The publishing house was willing to spend a lot of resources to promote it, and the society also liked to buy it. It is not surprising that it can sell millions of copies.

And "The Wilderness Where Elephants Roar" is a model of strong joint publishing with good writing and good illustrations.

The New York Times Book Review commented that it has "meaningful words, warm illustrations, and profound ideas. It is a classic that makes children laugh and adults cry."

It even topped the North American book sales list for 62 weeks across the year.

Last year, the group's board of directors was in charge of the North American region's project team responsible for the publication of "The Wilderness of Elephants Calling". The amount of the year-end bonus provided was usually only seen on the horse racing lottery.

"No.58 "The Little Prince", how beautiful it sounds..."

Osborne chanted something to the "Million Milestone" memorial tree, then shook his head and laughed dumbfoundedly.

He knew it was impossible.

Although the sales volume of "The Little Prince" has been prosperous for a long time, the total annual sales volume in Europe is only around one million copies.

and,

There are also translations from different publishing companies competing for the market.

The group expects to print millions of copies of the new edition of "The Little Prince", but that is the total sales volume of the entire future sales cycle, not a one-year task.

When the project was established, the board of directors expected Scholastic to grab a market share of around 30.00% in the first year.

That is to say, the new version of "The Little Prince" sold about 30 copies, and it can probably rank nearly two hundred in the book printing market in Europe.

This number is already huge.

Even... In Osborn's view, it was a bit too high.

In the past five years, especially since he took over the project, the traditional printed book market has been shrinking due to the impact of the epidemic and Amazon e-books.

The economic situation in Europe as a whole is average, and fewer and fewer people are willing to pay high prices to buy such collection books.

Moreover, although "The Little Prince" is very popular, the market is not endless. Hundreds of millions of copies have been sold, and the cake of total sales is getting smaller every year.

Osborn felt that if it sold 15 to [-] copies in the first year, it was actually considered a successful bestseller.

unfortunately,

The board's original target of annual sales of 30 volumes remains unchanged.

This put a lot of pressure on him, and he even wanted to give up on himself a little bit.

He was ready for the book to fail.

This is also the reason why Osborne made up his mind to agree to Anna's request.

If this is really a book that has a chance to sell millions of copies a year—even if Osborne owes the Elena family's kindness, he is unwilling to hand over such an important project to an online illustrator.

Even so,

The decision to include Detective Cat in the book project also caused Osborne a lot of controversy in the group.

"Mr. Director? Mr. Director? Sorry, you can't go in now."

Suddenly, the secretary's voice came from the door.

next second,

No one rang the doorbell, and the door of Osborn's office was pushed open very roughly.

"No, no, no!"

A man with a goatee on his chin and a pair of gold-rimmed Gucci glasses on his nose stormed into his office.

The man pushed the secretary away to the side, while shaking his fingers, with anger in his eyes, he looked like an angry bull.

"Osborne, I don't understand the company's decision at all. You must not bypass me and hire some goddamn detective cat. I'm going to file a formal protest with the board."

Osman frowned.

He waved his hand to signal the secretary standing at the door of the office, and the secretary, who was in a dilemma, withdrew.

"Director Charlie, what happened?"

Anyone who has the authority to take the VIP elevator to the 41st floor of the building without an appointment is the core leadership of the group, and Charlie Oliver is one of them.

He is the top person in charge of the art department of the group in Europe and the art director of the publishing house.

"I'm angry that you don't respect me!"

The art director seemed to have been greatly insulted.

He stood in front of Osborn, stared into Osborn's eyes, and snorted on the vice president's face.

"There must be some misunderstanding..."

"Don't play me a fucking fool here, Osborne, I'm talking about The Little Prince."

The art director took out his mobile phone from his pocket, opened the group's official account, and called up the new Twitter it just posted.

"I am the art director of Scholastic, why did I need to check Twitter to find out that the project of "The Little Prince" was entrusted to a cheap online artist."

"Don't fucking say you didn't do this. Osborne, are you insulting my IQ? FUCK, is that bitch your mistress, or your illegitimate daughter. Let an online artist, come and participate For such an important project, it's just ridiculous."

He has worked in the group for so many years.

Even though Scholastic has some outsourcing projects all the year round and will cooperate with various world-renowned illustrators, it is the first time he has seen a non-mainstream online artist.

Osborn took a step back, avoiding the art director's spit on his face.

Director Charlie is not strictly subordinate to him.

In terms of position, the opponent is indeed slightly lower than himself by half a rank, but after all, Osborn is only the vice president of the European region, and Charlie is the direct descendant of the president of the European region, Hill.

The art department is also very independent.

Basically, Director Charlie belongs to the king of his own one-third of an acre of land, and he doesn't have much respect for Osborne.

Office politics have always been serious in such a large company.

"She's been very popular recently. Have you heard the new podcast of Detective Cat and Mr. Sloth? Even Curator Tonks recognizes Detective Cat's professionalism."

Osborne pretended nothing had happened.

He knew that for such a blockbuster project as "The Little Prince", without the consent of the art director, he decided to hand it over to a certain online artist. There was a problem in the process of this matter.

But he also knew it, like he thought Anna was crazy.

If a formal office document is issued, Director Charlie will definitely not sign and agree.Osborne can only choose to cut first and then play.

Mr. Sloth's podcast is a bonus.

He was still troubled that he couldn't make up an excuse, but he didn't expect Anna to share an art podcast with him in the early hours of the morning.

Detective Cat not only performed very well on the above, but was well received by the audience, and was even recognized and respected by Director Tonks of the Taylor National Gallery.

This is more or less a reason for further cooperation.

"So what? I have a lot of online painters of this level."

Director Charlie doesn't like that.

He is the leader of the art department, and he has a lot of opinions on the behavior of Scholastic Group, which likes to let the fat water of external artists go to outsiders for such a major project.

This is equivalent to giving the most delicious fat in the territory of Lion King Charlie to the wild lions from outside.

If the goatee had a choice, he would not be happy.

It's just that the illustrators who can generally make Scholastic cooperation groups are not easy to work with.

Charlie pounced on him, but he might not be able to bite him.

He couldn't say anything either.

But the detective cat... this is not a majestic foreign lion, at most it can be regarded as a sickly wild cat, and she is worthy of grabbing food with Lao Tzu?
"Catch a lot? You should have watched Mr. Hyperion's video, are you sure you want to grab a lot? Director Charlie, if you can find an illustrator similar to Jane Arnold. I will say something immediately Not to mention, give "The Little Prince" to your art department. As long as you can guarantee to reach the annual sales target set by the board of directors."

Charlie opened his mouth and tried several times, but he couldn't say a word "good".

In front of legendary artists like Jane Arnold or Andy Warhol, Charlie didn't even have the courage to raise his paws.

He knew that if he agreed at this time, Osborne would definitely give up "The Little Prince" to Charlie.

But then?
He knew the group's target of 30 copies, and if the target sales volume was not reached, Osborn would definitely put the shit on his head without hesitation.

"I can't achieve it, but Detective Cat can achieve it? Even if Jane Arnold rejects our cooperation invitation, if you invite Detective Cat, it's better to let the Wehrlein studio that was originally planned to do it. We have already had a few This is the experience of cooperation, and we have negotiated a good intention contract with the other party."

Charlie was unwilling to give up such a large order easily.

"Weillein Illustration Studio... Well, I heard that you have a good relationship with the boss there?"

Osborn was a little eccentric.

"Shit, Osborne, be careful I sue you for defamation."

Charlie took a wary step back.

The painting circle is a networked society,

Just like Anna was able to make a call to Osborne, Director Charlie has some unspeakable friendship with the current first-line illustration studio, Wehrlein Studio.

Different companies have different regulations, and even the art directors of some publishing houses will blatantly hand over all the contracts to their studios in which they hold shares.

With Scholastic Group's relatively strict rules and regulations and internal review.

Director Charlie is definitely not daring to swagger and hold shares in some studios, but the exchange of interests is unavoidable.

The boiled duck flew away,

That's why Director Charlie was so angry when he found out that Osborne had entrusted "The Little Prince" to an online illustrator.

"Well, anyway, it's a trial draft contract. Let Detective Cat send a sample draft first? If the drawing is really not good, we will only take a few small-scale static landscape paintings and hand them over to Detective Cat. The main drafts are still handed over to Detective Cat. Wehrlein, it is not without precedent for multiple painters to complete a set of works at the same time."

This is the safest idea that Osborn has come up with so far. There is no delay in the two, and the benefits are shared, and he has also explained to Anna.

of course,

The premise is that Detective Cat can at least draw a general story.

"But……"

"Don't take it too far Charlie, I'm the one in charge of this project."

"Well, you are the boss."

Director Charlie was silent for a few seconds. He felt that it was not difficult for him to make mistakes in the trial draft, so he said angrily, "But if there is a problem with Detective Cat's drawing, you will be responsible."

(End of this chapter)