Literary Master 1978.

Chapter 373 Destined to be remembered in history
One of the great years in American business history was 1886.

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 among customers when he was selling the "Selected Works of Shakespeare". So he founded the Avon Perfume Company after the name of a river in Shakespeare's hometown.

This year, Coca-Cola was born in Atlanta. Its products seemed very strange in shape and taste, but they were quickly accepted by the market.
This year, the famous George Eastman developed the first automatic camera and named it "Kodak"...

If we were to look for a year in contemporary Chinese history like 1886 in the United States, it would definitely be 1984.

In this year, many companies that later became popular were born.

A few months ago on New Year's Day, the old man who had been staying in Yanjing suddenly decided to visit the south. The news of the old man's inspection trip to the south was spread across the country.

Subsequently, 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 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 passionate year, the word "going into the sea" has become the most common word on the lips of all young or not-so-young people when they meet each other this year.

A national business boom is coming. "Of one billion people, nine hundred million have failed, but one hundred million are still looking for business." This jingle will start this year and will sweep across China in the next few years.

"The one who repairs the brain is not as good as the one who barbers" and "The one who makes missiles is not as good as the one who sells tea eggs" will also become the most common complaints in society.

Tao Yucheng is one of those people who is not young in appearance but young at heart. When he saw the young men in his unit resigning and starting their own businesses, he couldn't help but be tempted to do the same.

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 has always been a man of few words at home, and he is even less likely to scold his children so mercilessly, not to mention that Tao Yucheng is almost forty years old now.

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

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

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

With the stairs, Tao Yucheng's face looked better and he said, "I can't say it's a lot, but it's not a small number either. In the units I can get in touch with, there are more or less one or two people like that."

"This trend is spreading really fast!"

Tao Yucheng listened to his words and seemed to have found a soulmate. "That's right! I think going into the sea will definitely become a trend. 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 aren't many people who can really make money and stick with it for a long time."

Lin Chaoyang said this, and seeing that the atmosphere at the table had become much more relaxed, he said to Tao Yucheng, "Brother, going into business is a big deal, and we need to think long and hard about it."

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

"Pah, pah, pah! What a crow's mouth!" Tao Yucheng looked at his sister with disdain, "Can't you say something nice?"

"It's not nice to say that. You've been unable to carry anything since you were a child. It's not as easy as you think to start a business."

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 find some quiet time.

After dinner, when they left 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 is a man who dares to open a dyeing factory when he has a little knowledge of the world. I am really afraid that he will lose his parents' money in a fit of anger."

"Everyone knows that you have good intentions, but you can't ignore his face at all."

Listening to Lin Chaoyang's words, Tao Yushu began to reflect on himself, "Do you think I've been living too comfortably these past two years? So I tend to want to control everything?"

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

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

Tao Yushu rolled his eyes at him, but did not refute him. Instead, he began to reflect seriously.

"Actually, I feel the same way now. Especially when it comes to my family, I seem to be becoming more and more overbearing. This is definitely not right, and I have to change it."

The serious expression on her face was somewhat cute, which reminded Lin Chaoyang of the time when the couple was newly married, and he couldn't help but reveal a relaxed smile on his face.

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

The full text of "Crossing the Guandong" has 64.5 words, which is a very large book in this era. The standard of remuneration was 50 yuan per thousand words, which was agreed upon early on, and the total publishing fee was 32250 yuan.

The number of words is large and the remuneration standard is high. Such an amount of 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 are the publishing fees for "The Boat Crossing" and "The Wreath under the Mountain".

Since its publication in November last year, the total sales of "The Boat" have exceeded 11 million copies.

According to the publishing contract between Lin Chaoyang and Huacheng Publishing House, which stipulated a 7% print run royalty fee of every 3 copies, Lin Chaoyang received a total of 41260 yuan when he settled his first royalty fee in March, setting a record for the largest single royalty fee he had ever received.

As for the revenue from the single volume of "The Garland under the Mountain", influenced by the hit movie, it has sold 210 million copies again in recent months, and the total sales have broken the record of million copies.

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

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

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

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

The reason he did this was that frequent adaptations would overdraw the vitality of a literary work.

Instead of enjoying a short-lived glory, it is better to take it slow and steady, 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 last few years, thanks to the influence of movies, the sales of novels will continue to grow rapidly.

This novel, which was published four and a half years ago, has again brought Lin Chaoyang 15746 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 three to five thousand yuan to dozens or hundreds of yuan.

Only one quarter of 84 had passed, and Lin Chaoyang's income from writing had reached a staggering 9.6 yuan.

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

April 4th is the day when the second issue of Huacheng magazine this year is released.

Since the publication of "The Boat Crossing" last year, which set a record of 208 million copies per issue, the sales of the subsequent issues of "Flower City" have dropped a lot.

By the first issue of this year, sales had stabilized at around 85 copies, which is a significant improvement compared to the previous sales of to copies per issue.

Prior to this, the sales 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.

A good work that can be passed down will indeed have a huge impact on a publication.

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 went to the Xinhua Bookstore near his home.

The bookstore hasn't opened yet, but there are already readers queuing up.

Nowadays, there are so many people who love reading. Whenever some well-known classics are put on the shelves, long queues outside bookstores have become commonplace.

Li Shifei followed the end of the line and chatted with a few people in front of him. It turned out that these people were queuing up to buy "Huacheng".

In the previous issue of the magazine, the editorial department has announced the publication of "Crossing the Guandong". This 64.5-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 is just his wishful thinking. The content of "Crossing the Guandong" is almost equivalent to 2.5 copies of "Flower City".

No matter from the perspective of the publisher, readers, or authors, this is not a good choice.

Li Shifei walked out of the line and looked at the people queuing up. He knew very well that a considerable number of people were queuing up because of Lin Chaoyang's name.

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

Thinking of this, he was even more grateful for his two trips to Beijing, which successfully tied down such a powerful writer for the publishing house and Huacheng.

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

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

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

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

Li Shifei also became interested after hearing this and asked, "How are the sales?"

"We've only been open for 5 minutes and we've already sold copies of Flower City," 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 more than a few days."

Both of them showed joy on their faces as they talked, and walked towards the publishing house while chatting.

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

There is nothing special about the release of each issue of the magazine for the editorial department, but the difference today is that the article published in the magazine is "Chuang Guandong".

Since the manuscript of the novel was delivered to the editorial department years ago, colleagues in the editorial department have read the manuscript one after another, and the evaluation of the novel has been overwhelmingly high. This situation is extremely rare in the history of "Huacheng".

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

For these professionals at Huacheng, such works are full of attraction.

The aesthetic feeling of being moved and heaviness will inevitably touch everyone deeply after reading the novel, and they will also feel a kind of excitement and happiness from the professional evaluation and feelings of branches and leaves.

When everyone in the editorial department thinks about having participated in the review of such a monumental work that is bound to occupy an important position in the history of contemporary literature, they can't help but feel a sense of supreme honor and 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 manuscripts, we would undoubtedly be confused and blind.

Therefore, in the editing, reviewing and proofreading of "Crossing the Guandong", the editorial colleagues can be said to have put in extremely great effort and did not dare to slack off in the slightest.

They were afraid that even the slightest mistake on their part would tarnish this nearly perfect work, which would undoubtedly be a blasphemy to the author's talent and hard work.

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

Writers, editors, critics, scholars, readers...all those who care about literature should come and read this novel. It will not disappoint you and it is destined to go down in history!
(End of this chapter)