Urban Sims

Chapter 108
The [-]st year of Tiansheng, December.

As the Chinese New Year approached, most of the 30 or so students living in Bastion, except for a few who were too far away from home, had to go home for the Chinese New Year.

Before these students went home, Zhou Ming gathered them together and held a seminar.

Seminar on the "Zihua Bookstore" project.

The four brothers in the dormitory (Lv Wencai, Tang Junming, Sima Zhi, Yao Qingxiao) participated in the seminar, as well as the "manga master" Lu Zhao, the "guitar master" Yang Lin, the "novelist" Luo Qianqiu, "Pop singer" Zhang Lu and others... young talents gathered together.

In fact, Zhou Ming's classmates were all in their twenties, very young, and all of them were not young, or in other words, most of them came from aristocratic families with dignified status.

For example, roommate Lu Wencai, although his appearance is not pleasant, with a sharp mouth and monkey cheeks, and a wretched face, he is actually a direct descendant of the Lu family in Beihai (county). Among the descendants of the Lu family, he ranks among the top five in importance. It is one of the eight great aristocratic families in Qingzhou. It is a huge family with a thousand-year history, millions of acres of fertile land and tens of thousands of people. It is ten times more prosperous than Zhou Ming's Haipingtian family.

Tang Junming came from the "Donglai Tang Clan", one of the eight great aristocratic families, but he was not a direct descendant of the Tang family, but a relatively close branch. The importance of the family ranked in the top [-] or so.

Sima Zhi is indeed the lowest-born of all his roommates. Although his father, Sima Yuan, is now a county magistrate, this Sima family is just a family of small landlords, with only a few hundred acres of fertile land. , even a small county magistrate's son can overwhelm him.

Young talent Yao Qingxiao, who came from a family of merchants, logically, in this era of belittling merchants, his status should be relatively low, even Sima Zhi should be inferior. Fifty percent of the printing bookstores and a large number of bookstores, although they are businessmen, are from a family of scholars and culture!Far from being comparable to ordinary money-smelling businessmen.

In addition to these four roommates who are not young, and some distinguished classmates who also came from aristocratic families, landlords, and officials' children, there are also a few children from poor families. Zhou Ming is quite emotional. There is a saying that is good: fierce general It must be issued in the army, the prime minister must be taken from the state and county, and most of the outstanding people come from poor families!

Those who are truly capable, talented, and hard-working are mostly those from poor families.

For example, "Manga Master" Lu Zhao, his family is not well-off, and his family only has a hundred acres of fertile land. Wenyuan Academy's tuition fees of thousands of yuan a year can make this rich peasant family overwhelmed. After three years of schooling, his family He sold all the fertile land, and in the fourth year, if he hadn't received Zhou Ming's generous support, he might have dropped out of school.

And this man, in terms of imperial examinations, has no extraordinary talent, but his painting skills are indeed superb, and the level of landscape painting has reached the level of great success... But no matter how good the painting skills are, there is no money, such as famous teachers and famous paintings Things are all about seniority. Your paintings may be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars after a thousand years, but when this painter is only a young man in his twenties, how many people will appreciate it, and who is willing to accept it? Pay high prices for his paintings?
So this brother Lu, after getting funding from Zhou Ming, found that he was weak in imperial examinations and not well-known in Danqing landscape, and after seeing that drawing comics was profitable, Lu Zhao decisively chose to transform. With his outstanding talent, he has now become The chief artist of "108 Heroes of the Stars", with a monthly income of more than [-], was named a "Master of Comics" by Zhou Ming.

"Guitar master" Yang Lin, and "novelist" Luo Qianqiu are both in a similar situation. They are both poor talents that Zhou Ming discovered in Wenyuan Academy. As long as they are cultivated a little bit, they will definitely become masters in their respective fields in the future. Emperor Superstar.

It should be mentioned here that the "pop singer" and "little fresh meat" Zhang Lu was not from a poor family, but the son of a servant girl of a big family. Destiny, but through several concerts, he was recognized by countless people, and after finding the confidence he had never experienced before, he decided to give up the imperial examination (examination) and become a singer (singer), intending to become a "superstar" admired by everyone. Become "Michael Jackson" (this is naturally the result of Zhou Ming's flickering).

Seeing that under his banner, there are so many rich and powerful children with profound backgrounds, as well as talents from humble backgrounds. As for the "Zihua Bookstore Project", Zhou Ming will naturally use these advantages to vigorously promote this plan.

He said to Lu Wencai and the others: "Brother Wencai, brother Junming (calling more than a dozen names)... After you go back, I hope that you can use your respective abilities and channels to strive for 150 people in Qingzhou within two or three months. More than one counties and counties, in every city, opened a Zihua bookstore, and decorated it according to the design drawing I gave, the sooner it is completed, the better! As for the various expenses, I have prepared a thousand coins for each of you to start. Funds, if not enough, you can write to me."

In this world, the purchasing power of consistent copper coins is about 800-1000 yuan, and one thousand coins is equivalent to 100 million.

With so much money, Zhou Ming asked these dozen students to each be responsible for opening ten "Zihua Bookstores", with an average cost of [-] per family, so there must be no big problem.

"Boss, I don't need the money. I'm still short of this little money? Besides, I have shares in Zihua Bookstore, so how can I accept your money? Just give me the decoration design drawings, and nothing else is needed." Lu Wencai road.

"Yes, Boss, in our place, on the busiest street next to the county government, the rent for a shop is only ten guan a year. One thousand guan is too much."

"No need, Brother Zihua, it's only a few hundred pennies, and I think I can afford it."

Everyone refused to accept it.

Zhou Ming coughed twice, and said in a tone that could not be refused: "Take it all, you follow me to do some business, naturally it is not easy to ask your parents and elders to take money, spend their money, it will be profitable at that time, equity It will also be entangled...Zihua Bookstore must be completely complete and belong to our property! Therefore, you should spend the thousand start-up funds carefully and try to get things done well. If you don't have enough money, come to me again want."

"All right……"

Everyone nodded, quite moved, and at the same time, a surge of pride and ambition to do a great cause was stirred up in their hearts.

"Brother Qingxiao——"

Zhou Ming looked at the second person on the right and said: "Your task is the most arduous. Except for Zihua Bookstore, the construction and recruitment of the largest engraving and printing factory in Qingzhou will bother you. I don't know if this task will be completed within three months. Can you finish it?"

The printing factory supporting the Zihua Bookstore plan is an important part of determining the success or failure of this plan. If Zhou Ming is asked to complete this plan by himself, only those skilled engraving craftsmen (this kind of craftsmen have more than ten years of experience) work experience cannot be cultivated in a short period of time), he does not know that it will take several years, and, for books like comics with rich pictures and texts, engraving one page requires more than ten times the energy of the craftsman than pure text engraving. And this kind of craftsman, all Qingzhou, I don't know if we can find 100 of them.

Therefore, the "Scholarly Yao Family", which owns half of the bookstores in Qingzhou, has become Zhou Ming's most important help.

Therefore, he gave Yao Qingxiao a huge amount of 50 guan, signed an agreement with [-]/[-] shares, and planned to build a large printing factory covering an area of ​​tens of acres, with the most advanced engraving technology and thousands of engraving craftsmen.

The name is: Zihua Printing Factory.

In fact, Zhou Ming is not completely ignorant of engraving and printing technology. In the last copy of "The Lord's Dispute", among the countless workshops he founded, there is a printing workshop. The technology used is extremely advanced, and a lot of [ Industrial machine tools] and hydraulic drive devices, and later [steam engines] were used, plus some unique technologies, printing efficiency, I don’t know how many times ahead of the world.

Zhou Ming discussed these technologies with Yao Qingxiao in private when he was studying at Wenyuan Academy. After Yao Qingxiao got the design drawings and improvement suggestions from him, he asked the family to try them out based on these drawings and suggestions. In less than a day, the printing efficiency of Yaojiashufang has been increased by three times, and the unit printing cost has been reduced by 50%!And the printing quality is excellent, greatly increasing the market share.

So...all of these are interlocking and complementary, and the cooperation between Zhou Ming and Yao's Bookstore is also inevitable.

Yao Qing nodded with a smile and said: "Brother Zihua, don't worry, I have already sent the letter back home, and the new factory has already broken ground. The equipment and craftsmen are all ready. Within three months, Zihua Printing Factory , will definitely be put into use! Opening dozens of Zihua Bookstores is also a matter of one sentence, and I just wait for you to create more wonderful works within these three months."

"it is good."

Zhou Ming nodded. Yao Qingxiao is worthy of the name of a talented person. He knows people well. He is always one step ahead of others in doing things and never procrastinates. Zhou Ming has a premonition that this roommate will definitely be in the process of building an entertainment empire by himself In the process, become your most capable assistant.

There is no need to worry too much about hardware issues. Then, the core software issue-how many content products can Zihua Bookstore produce in a relatively short period of time?

This problem, under Zhou Ming's personal control, is naturally not a big problem.

For example, "Story Club", Zhou Ming now has more than [-] novels of all kinds of strange things, hundreds of jokes, jokes, etc. half a year.

There are thousands of poems, songs and excellent articles that have been selected into "Zihua Anthology". Most of them were created by Zhou Ming and his classmates during their study in Wenyuan Academy. There are dross and essence, plus Zhou Ming With [Encyclopedia of Tang Poetry and Song Ci] and [Encyclopedia of Classical and Ancient Prose] in my mind, I randomly plagiarized some works and published "Zihua Anthology" in the form of a semi-monthly magazine. It is no problem to publish a hundred issues in a row.

The most important "Manga", Zhou Ming, who has no work to plagiarize, can only create by himself while cultivating apprentices and assistants. As long as he brings these apprentices and assistants together, his task will be much easier in the future. With an outline and settings, someone will create the comics he wants to read based on these outline settings.

As for the comics he has completed, such as "The Legend of the 108 Stars and Heroes of the Three Kingdoms", with the help of "comic master" Lu Zhao, he has drawn No.15 volume; ", has drawn No.40 five... two comic works, the content adds up to thousands of pages, if it is published in the form of a semi-monthly magazine, "Manga" magazine can publish twelve issues in a row.

However, there are still too few comic works, and the length of "108 Heroes of the Three Kingdoms" is too short to insist on publishing six issues (the content is equal to that of "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons"). Manga can be published for up to three months in the event of a draft.

After thinking about it, Zhou Ming said to Lu Zhao and the other two manga apprentices: "Brother Lu, Brother Wan, and Brother Jin, you should work a little harder during this time, and strive to draw 30 volumes of "Three Kingdoms 108" within three months. "Stars and Heroes" comes out, the task is quite heavy, but don't worry, I will assist you to complete part of the work... Believe in yourself, when this comic is finished, I will have more good stories for you. These stories, you guys Will definitely like it very much...”

Such as "Tian Shu Qi Tan", "Lotus Lantern", "Legend of Nezha", "Gourd Baby"...they can't finish painting in their lifetime.

Lu Zhao and the others nodded. Their speed of drawing comics is indeed relatively slow now. Many techniques are not yet proficient, and it is very difficult to draw. But if Brother Zihua is there to guide them, their speed of getting started will definitely be greatly improved. Speed ​​up, if you can draw up to a hundred pages of comics a day like Brother Zihua, and draw fast and well, then they will all become masters of comics, and they can draw countless stories they want to draw... When you think about it, it's a very exciting thing.

　I feel like I am about to cry. I am very grateful to the leader "Miracle Xiaojian" for the reward. I am the first leader since I wrote the book. I never imagined that there will be such a moment. Thank you, thank you very much!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)