Literary Master 1978

In the history of American business, there is a great year of 1886.

In this year, David McNealy, a book salesman in New York, was pleasantly surprised to find that the perfume he gave away with the book was very popular with customers when he was selling "Selected Works of Shakespeare". So he founded the Avon Perfume Company with the name of a river in Shakespeare's hometown, "Avon";

In this year, Coca-Cola was born in Atlanta. Its products were very strange in shape and taste, but they were quickly accepted by the market;

In this year, the famous George Eastman developed the first automatic camera and named it "Kodak"...

If you want to find a year like 1886 in the United States in contemporary Chinese history, it must be 1984.

In this year, many companies that were once popular in later generations were born in this year.

On New Year's Day a few months ago, the old man who had been sitting in Yanjing suddenly decided to go to the south to have a look. The old man's visit to the south was spread throughout the country in the form of news.

Then the central government made another important decision, announcing "opening 14 coastal cities and Hainan Island to foreign investors". China's opening up to the outside world has expanded from point to surface, forming a pattern of opening up the entire coastal area, thus setting off the first major commercial wave since the reform and opening up.

In such a restless and enthusiastic year, the word "going into business" has become the most common word for all young or not-so-young people to talk about when they meet this year.

The national business boom is coming, "900 million people have fallen, and there are still 100 million looking for it." This jingle will start from this year and sweep across the entire Chinese land in the next few years.

"Those who repair brains are not as good as those who shave their heads" and "Those who make missiles are not as good as those who sell tea eggs" will also become the most common complaints heard in society.

Tao Yucheng belongs to the group of people who are not young in person, but young in heart. When he saw the young man in the unit resign and go into business, he couldn't help but be eager to move.

In such a rough era, there are many people who hold the same idea as him. In fact, they may not have any idea of ​​making a lot of money, but simply want to join in the fun.

Tao's father was always quiet at home, and he scolded his children so mercilessly, not to mention that Tao Yucheng was almost 40 years old.

This also shows how much he opposed Tao Yucheng's idea.

Although Tao Yucheng was usually heartless, he was embarrassed by his father's scolding in front of so many people at home, especially the children.

Seeing his face changing, Lin Chaoyang interrupted and said, "Brother, are there many people going to the sea now?"

With the step, Tao Yucheng's face looked better and he said, "I can't say many, but there are not a few. There are more or less one or two people in the units I can contact."

"This trend is really fast!"

Tao Yucheng listened to his words and seemed to have found a soulmate all of a sudden, "That's right! I think going to the sea will definitely become a trend in the future. Just like Du Feng, who makes thousands or tens of thousands of yuan a month, who would still go to work!"

"That's not the case. There won't be many people who can really make money and stick to it for a long time."

When Lin Chaoyang said this, he saw that the atmosphere at the table was much more relaxed, and said to Tao Yucheng: "Brother, going into business is a big deal, and we need to think about it carefully."

Tao Yushu also said at this time: "Yes, you and your sister-in-law are the only ones who work. If you quit, what if you fail?"

"Bah! Bah! Crow mouth!" Tao Yucheng looked at his sister with disdain, "Can't you say something nice?"

"Nice words don't sound good. You can't carry anything since you were a child. Going into business is not as easy as you think."

Tao Yushu continued to hurt Tao Yucheng's heart, making him feel more and more uncomfortable. In the end, he couldn't eat anymore and went out angrily to hide.

After dinner, when leaving the Tao family, Lin Chaoyang said to Tao Yushu: "Save some face for your elder brother. Xiwen and Xiwu are both grown up now."

"He dares to open a dyeing factory when he has a little bit of color. I'm really afraid that he will lose his parents' coffin money in a fit of anger."

"Everyone knows that you are kind, but you can't ignore his face at all."

Listening to Lin Chaoyang's words, Tao Yushu also began to reflect on himself, "Do you think I have lived too comfortably in the past two years? So I have a tendency to want to control everything?"

To be fair, Tao Yushu is indeed less tactful than in previous years.

"Maybe it's because I'm getting older, my personality has become more and more stable." Lin Chaoyang's words were very subtle.

Tao Yushu rolled his eyes at him, but did not refute him, but seriously reflected on himself.

"Actually, I feel the same way. Especially when it comes to my family, I seem to be getting more and more domineering. This is really wrong, and I have to change it."

The serious expression on her face made Lin Chaoyang recall the time when the couple was newly married, and he couldn't help but smile a little.

Two days later, Lin Chaoyang received the publishing fee for "Crossing Guandong" from Huacheng Publishing House.

The full text of "Crossing Guandong" is 645,000 words, which is a big book in this era. The standard of payment is 50 yuan per thousand words, which was agreed upon early on, and the total payment is 32,250 yuan.

With so many words and high payment standards, such a publishing fee is almost unique in the current Chinese literary world.

This is also the third payment of more than 10,000 yuan that Lin Chaoyang has received this year. The other two payments are the publishing fees for "The Ferry" and "The Wreath Under the Mountain".

Since its publication in November last year, the total sales of "The Ferry" have exceeded 1.55 million copies.

According to the 7% of the print run rate stipulated in the publishing contract between Lin Chaoyang and Huacheng Publishing House, Lin Chaoyang received 41,260 yuan when he settled the first payment in March, setting a record for the largest single payment since he started writing.

As for the single-volume payment of "The Wreath Under the Mountain", affected by the popularity of the movie, it has sold 2.1 million copies again in recent months, and the total sales have broken the record of 10 million copies.

This record is much slower than the sales record of the original work in later generations. The later "The Wreath Under the Mountain" was quickly adapted into various art forms such as drama, TV series, and movies within two years after its publication, and became popular in China.

Because of this all-round adaptation, the novel has achieved a sales miracle of tens of millions of copies in less than three years.

But after that, the sales and influence of the novel took a sharp turn for the worse.

In this time and space, Lin Chaoyang was not in a hurry to reach an adaptation cooperation. In addition to cautiously agreeing to Xie Jin's film adaptation request, he chose to refuse all other cooperation units that came to him.

The reason for his doing so is that frequent adaptations will overdraw the vitality of a literary work.

Rather than enjoying a short-lived glory like a raging fire, it is better to take a long time to extend the timeline of adaptation, abandon those low-quality adaptations, and use high-quality adaptations to allow the work to continue to gain new readers.

Now it seems that Lin Chaoyang's choice is correct. The speed at which "The Wreath under the Mountain" achieved sales of tens of millions of copies is a little slower than in later generations, but the stamina is much stronger.

At least in the past few years, relying on the influence of the movie, the sales of the novel will still grow rapidly.

This novel, which has been published for four and a half years, has brought Lin Chaoyang 15,746 yuan in royalties in recent months.

In addition to these three large incomes, Lin Chaoyang's previous works are also continuously generating income, ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 yuan, and from tens to hundreds of yuan.

Only one quarter of 1984 has passed, and Lin Chaoyang's writing income has reached an astonishing 96,000 yuan.

The royalties from Huacheng Publishing House have arrived, which also means that the publication of "Crossing Guandong" is approaching.

April 20th is the day when the second issue of "Huacheng" magazine this year is released and listed.

Since the publication of "Duzhou Ji" last year, which set a terrifying sales record of 2.08 million copies per issue, the sales of "Huacheng" have fallen a lot in the following issues.

By the first issue of this year, the sales volume was fixed at around 850,000 copies, which can be said to be a great improvement compared to the previous sales volume of 600,000 to 700,000 copies per issue.

Before this, the sales volume of "Huacheng" had been stagnant for a long time, so the people in the publishing house and the editorial department understood that the extra sales of more than 100,000 or 200,000 copies were inseparable from the influence brought by "Duzhou Ji".

The influence of a good work that can be passed down on to a publication is indeed huge.

Therefore, when "Crossing the Guandong" was about to be released, the publishing house and the editorial department had high hopes for this work.

Early in the morning, Li Shifei did not rush to work, but came to the Xinhua Bookstore near his home.

The bookstore was not open yet, but readers were already queuing up.

Nowadays, there are too many people who love reading. Whenever some well-known classics are put on the shelves, it is common to see long queues in front of the bookstore.

Li Shifei followed the end of the queue and chatted with the people in front of him. These people really wanted to queue up to buy "Huacheng".

In the last issue of the magazine, the editorial department had already announced the publication of "Crossing the Guandong". This 645,000-word epic will be published in two issues of "Huacheng".

If it were up to Li Shifei, he would like to release the full text of the novel and make a special issue.

Unfortunately, this can only be his wishful thinking. The content of "Crossing the Guandong" is almost equivalent to 2.5 copies of "Huacheng".

Whether from the perspective of the publisher, the readers, or the authors, this is not a good choice.

Li Shifei walked out of the queue and looked at the queue. He knew very well that a large number of people were queuing for Lin Chaoyang's name.

Among today's contemporary writers, Lin Chaoyang's appeal can be said to be unique.

Thinking of this, he was more and more grateful that his two trips to Beijing had successfully tied such a powerful writer for the publisher and "Huacheng".

Li Shifei didn't need to buy magazines, he just came to see the queue situation, and then went to the unit after understanding it.

He rode his bicycle past a newsstand less than 500 meters away from the publisher and found Lin Xianzhi standing opposite the newsstand and looking around.

"What are you doing?" Li Shifei stopped and asked.

Lin Xianzhi greeted him and said to him, "I want to see how the magazine is selling."

Li Shifei also became interested and asked, "How is it selling?"

"It's just opened for 20 minutes, and 5 copies of "Huacheng" have been sold." Lin Xianzhi replied excitedly.

"Oh my! That's a lot of sales. The quota must have been sold out in a day or two, right?"

"It won't last for a few days."

Both of them looked happy as they chatted while walking towards the publishing house.

When we arrived at the editorial office, the office was unusually noisy.

Every issue of the magazine was published, which was nothing special for the editorial office, but the difference today was that the magazine published "Crossing Guandong".

Since the manuscript of the novel was delivered to the editorial office a year ago, the editorial colleagues have read the manuscript one after another, and the evaluation of this novel was overwhelmingly high, which is extremely rare in the history of "Huacheng".

The overall artistic tone of "Crossing Guandong" is solemn and tragic. Reading it makes people sigh deeply about the unpredictable life and the vicissitudes of history.

For these professionals of "Huacheng", such a work is full of attraction.

The aesthetic feeling of touching and heaviness makes everyone feel deeply touched after reading the novel, and they can feel a kind of excitement and happiness from professional evaluation and feelings of branches and leaves.

When they think of having participated in the review of such a huge work that will inevitably occupy an important position in the history of contemporary literature, everyone in the editorial office will unconsciously feel a supreme honor and sense of accomplishment.

Just as Li Shifei said at the first editorial meeting after the beginning of the year: If we still have mistakes in basic evaluation and judgment of such a manuscript, then we are undoubtedly confused and blind.

Therefore, in the editing, review and proofreading of "Crossing Guandong", the editorial colleagues can be said to have taken out 120,000 points of seriousness and dared not slack off.

They were afraid that because of their own tiny mistakes, this almost perfect work would be flawed, which would undoubtedly be a blasphemy to the author's talent and hard work.

After nearly three months, "Crossing Guandong" has finally been published, and everyone is looking forward to the feedback and evaluation of this work from the outside world.

Writers, editors, critics, scholars, readers...all those who care about literature should come and see this novel, it will not disappoint everyone, it is destined to be recorded in history!