Chapter 410 Witnessing Species Diversity

“What’s the matter?”

“Writers Press?”

The manager’s voice sharpened eight tones.

He works in the cultural industry, so he naturally knows that Writer’s Publishing House is a leading first-tier publishing house in the country.

The first edition of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” in New China was published by Writers Publishing House.

There are also famous works such as “Lin Hai Xue Yuan”, “Song of Youth”, “The Great Changes in Mountains and Villages”, etc., which were all released under their hands.

Although Writers Publishing House was officially restored a few years ago after Buzz Buzz, it is still unable to compete with Renwen Publishing House, a leader in the field of literary publishing.

But a magazine being out of stock and unable to be approved for two days is not a mistake that a publishing house of this size can make.

“Are you kidding me? Is this really Writer’s Publishing House? Not a fake one?” the manager wondered.

“Of course it’s true.”

The comrade from the publishing office was a little speechless. “Don’t you think about it? Apart from Writers Publishing House, which publishing house dares to use such a name for its publication, People’s Digest?”

“This shouldn’t be the case. How could Writers Publishing House do their work like this?” the manager felt surprised.

No. 2, Shatan North Street, Writer’s Publishing House.

The president and editor-in-chief of the publishing house, Cong Weixi, also found it strange.

“You mean to say that within a week of the People’s Digest’s publication, the publisher’s order for 100,000 copies was sold out?”

“Yes.”

Comrade Yao Xiaoyu, the leader of the publishing house, wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked out the window.

There were crowds of people downstairs.

It is a hot and humid season in the capital city right now.

But the group of people below seemed not to feel the scorching heat of the sun. They were rubbing shoulders with each other and making a lot of noise.

“I won’t leave if there’s no order today!”

“How can your Writers Publishing House be out of stock? Who would believe that? No one can live in peace without the goods.”

“We are not here to cause trouble, we just want the goods.”

“.”

Yao Xiaoyu sighed.

Starting from a few days ago, Xinhua Bookstore Distribution Office has been calling their Writers Publishing House to ask them for orders for People’s Digest.

The employees of the publishing house were stunned when they heard this.

“People’s Digest”?
Our stock here is 0!
How can I send you orders if I don’t have any stock?

The response was to let them wait, and the matter was delayed without being resolved. As a result, by this morning, the situation had become even more serious.

Not only the publishing house’s phone was flooded with calls.

Seeing that the call couldn’t be connected, the people from the publishing house simply blocked the door of their publishing house.

Not only the issuing office, but also the shipping stores in Beijing sent people to look for it.

The purpose of coming here is very consistent:
I want People’s Digest!
Whether it is Xinhua Bookstore or a shipping store, people want to make money.

So many readers in the store specifically asked to buy People’s Digest, but they don’t have it in stock?
If it were just one or two, it would be fine.

That’s hundreds and thousands of readers!
With the advancement of marketization, all companies are carrying out reforms and contracting this year.

It’s not easy to make some money.

Seeing the money right in front of your mouth but not making it into your pocket, who wouldn’t be anxious?
Moreover, there are some readers who are very picky and will not give up until they can buy People’s Digest.

People went to complain about them.

This caused the leaders to call and inquire about the matter, and they got criticized.

When I asked the publishing house again, they asked them to wait a little longer.

Wait?
Waiting for your grandma!

I simply took my bag and headed straight to the Writer’s Publishing House at No. 2 Shatan North Street.

As a result, the courtyard of the Writers Publishing House suddenly became lively, with a large number of people pouring in, clamoring for publications.

This movement naturally attracted Cong Weixi’s attention.

Cong Weixi was a little puzzled. “Is this still a problem? It is of course unrealistic to solve all the orders in a short period of time. Let’s use a delaying tactic first. Transfer the remaining goods from the warehouse and distribute them to them. Let them take some back, and then we will print more immediately.”

It is common for publishing houses to come across extremely popular publications or single-volume books.

This strategy is basically used.

Yao Xiaoyu touched his nose, looking a little embarrassed.

“President, we no longer have People’s Digest in our warehouse.”

“No?”

Cong Weixi frowned, “What do you mean by no?”

Yao Xiaoyu said awkwardly, “We sold them all out. We can’t get any more copies. We only printed 100,000 copies of this magazine in its first run, and we sold them all directly to Xinhua Bookstore.”

“Store grain to prevent famine, raise children to prevent old age. After this battle, are you not thinking about the next one?”

Cong Weixi was a little angry, “This is a mistake on our part! What were you thinking? This has never happened before!”

“Don’t be angry, don’t be angry, just listen to me.”

Yao Xiaoyu explained: “Well, our publishing house was already under tight production schedule, and each of our printing houses had its own production schedule. At that time, we thought that we should first give 100,000 copies to Xinhua Bookstore, and then look at the sales situation and print more copies if necessary.

No one expected that the People’s Digest would sell so quickly, and it caught the comrades off guard.”

In fact, according to common sense, there is nothing wrong with Yao Xiaoyu and his colleagues’ work arrangements.

Doing so would not add burden to production tasks, nor would it have to worry about poor sales of People’s Digest causing too much loss to the publishing house, thus killing two birds with one stone.

In addition, in the subconscious of many editors, even if “People’s Digest” is a supplement of “People’s Literature”, how well can the first issue of a magazine sell?

Who could have imagined.

One hundred thousand publications were refined in an instant!

There was no time at all for the writers and publishing houses to react.

“Ugh.”

Cong Weixi sighed, and said with a look of disappointment: “Hurry up and print more copies. Stop the publishing task of the Contemporary Fiction Library for now, and give priority to printing a batch of People’s Digest.”

“Has the Contemporary Fiction Library been discontinued?” Yao Xiaoyu was surprised.

The Contemporary Fiction Library is a series of books launched by their Writers Publishing House.

It is also a key task assigned by the China Writers Association.

We stopped this and started printing People’s Digest.

That’s really like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

But right now, it seems that there is no way to have the best of both worlds.

It is important to deal with these troublemakers downstairs first.

If anyone has to blame someone, it’s because the Writers Publishing House didn’t think it through when they assigned the task, which is why they are in such a passive position now.

“Ah, this Jiang Xian, it’s fine if he’s famous for writing novels, but how come a magazine of his can be so popular?” Yao Xiaoyu muttered.

Yard No. 6, Cuihua Hutong.

“Comrade, these are your letters again.” The postman handed a large bag of letters to Zhu Wei and smiled, “These are all. Your magazine is really popular. I have been visiting you frequently these past two days.”

“Isn’t it?”

Zhu Wei sighed.

These two days he comes out every now and then to receive a bunch of letters.

How can this be called being an editor? This is called being a laborer!
“You have to talk to Editor-in-Chief Jiang later. We need to set up a mail room, otherwise I won’t have time to review manuscripts.” Zhu Wei returned to the office with a bag of letters and said to Zheng Yuanjie who was sitting on a chair.

Although he complained, he was actually quite happy in his heart.

The overwhelming number of letters from readers in the past two days reveal a message:
Their People’s Digest is on fire!
Zheng Yuanjie was not busy with his Fairy Tale King these days, so he came to Zhu Wei to read the letters from readers. “Have you received a thousand letters in the past few days?” Zheng Yuanjie asked.

“Yes, there must be a thousand of them.” Zhu Wei said, “I can hardly put any more space here, and there are still not a thousand of them?”

“I think so too.”

Zheng Yuanjie looked around and sighed, “There are so many letters in the first issue. I think the editor-in-chief will have to find another yard to store the readers’ letters, otherwise there will be too much space.”

“A special yard for letters?”

Zhu Wei laughed out loud, “Old Zheng, you really deserve to be a fairy tale writer. You are really bold. You can even think of such a luxurious thing as buying a house and putting a letter in it.”

“.”

Zheng Yuanjie said nothing, but lowered his head to open the letter. The letter in his hand was a bit thick. It was sent by a worker comrade. It was not a simple participation in the lottery, but a letter of praise:

“Hello, comrades. I am an ordinary fitter at the SY City Machinery Factory. I borrowed some letter paper and envelopes from the factory today. I want to tell you something from my heart.”

“I came across People’s Digest by chance in the factory reading room the day before yesterday. I was just going to flip through it, but I didn’t expect that I couldn’t put it down after reading it.”

“During lunch break, I was sitting by the lathe reading a magazine. I didn’t even hear the bell for lunch. It was only when the workshop director tapped me on the shoulder that I realized what was happening. I told him to laugh at me, saying, ‘A bookworm has gotten into a lump of metal.'”

“I couldn’t finish reading it during lunch break, so I hid the magazine in my toolbox and took it home after get off work. I read it over and over again at night under the light of a 15-watt bulb.”

“I particularly like the story about Mr. Yuan. I didn’t expect there are scientists who work in the fields like farmers every day.”

“Now this publication has quietly spread in the workshop, and workers are scrambling to borrow it. Li, the propaganda department officer, even copied poems from the publication and posted them on the blackboard.”

“It’s really amazing that a magazine can let everyone hear poetry amid the roar of machine tools.”

“Finally, I hope you can publish more stories of scientists’ struggles. We workers need this kind of spirit to build the ‘four modernizations’.”

“In addition, it would be even better if we could add some simple science and technology knowledge columns. Everyone has different levels of education, but everyone wants to improve themselves.”

“One more suggestion: Can you print the characters a little bigger? Old Zhang and other masters have a hard time reading small characters.”

“——Best regards!”

Zheng Yuanjie happily read the letter of praise from the worker comrade, and saw a sentence neatly added in blue-black pen at the end of the letter:
“I also enclose a half-pound food coupon. I hope you will accept this token of my kindness and buy a cup of tea for the editor to soothe his throat.”

Sure enough, when I looked inside the envelope, I found the appropriate half-pound food coupons.

“My readers are so enthusiastic!”

Zheng Yuanjie, who had just joined the editing profession and was holding food coupons, was so moved by the enthusiasm of his readers that his eyes became moist.

Feeling the encouragement from readers, he felt motivated to continue publishing the magazine!

“No one? No one?”

Hearing someone shouting at the gate again, Zhu Wei sighed, “Yes, there must be another letter from a reader.”

“coming!”

He agreed and strode to the door, only to find that it was not the postman but a few young people in their early 20s.

“This is the editorial office of People’s Digest.”

“Yeah.” Zhu Wei nodded, “Anyone have anything to do?”

“It’s okay.”

Several young people smiled and said, “We just came to ask you if you can give us some bicycles?”

“deliver?”

“Didn’t you say at the back of your magazine that you were going to give away bicycles?” another young man shouted.

“.”

Zhu Wei was speechless. “We are doing a lottery. We will pick one person from the readers who answered the questions. If you want one, go back and write to us. There is a chance that you will be selected.”

“Write a letter? Write a bullshit.”

A young man said with a scoundrel look, “We have come all the way here, their letters are not as sincere as ours, you might as well just give it to us.”

“That’s right.”

“Give it to us.”

The others followed suit and made some noise.

Zhu Wei was a little angry, “Aren’t you guys playing rogue?”

“What’s going on?”

The young man had a sense of idiocy. “Who are you calling a scoundrel?”

“That’s right, why are you still cursing? Your editorial department is too unfriendly.”

“Tui! You dare to slander us working people? Believe it or not, I will smash your door.”

“How dare you!” Zhu Wei was a cultured man, how could he deal with this bunch of troublemakers? He was so angry that his veins were throbbing.

A short man rolled up his sleeves and said, “Hey, either hand over your bike today, or we will…”

His voice stopped abruptly.

I saw a policeman in uniform walking over.

“What are you doing? Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“.us.”

Several young men immediately became intimidated and could not utter a word.

“Don’t think I don’t know who you are!” Ding Ruicheng shouted angrily, but felt relieved in his heart.

Ding Ruicheng is the director of the police station in Cuihua Hutong.

The leader of the district’s public security department specifically told him to pay special attention to the courtyard at No. 6 Cuihua Hutong.

The reason for the special care is very simple.

This yard belongs to Jiang Xian.

Who is Jiang Xian?

Friends of the Police!

The movie “The Sancha Lane Robbery” made many of these police officers feel proud and stand up straight in front of their relatives and friends.

Today, Ding Ruicheng wandered here for some unknown reason and happened to run into these few short-sighted young people.

“Comrade, this is the situation.” Zhu Wei explained the whole thing to Ding Ruicheng.

“Oh.”

Ding Ruicheng’s eyes were as big as bells.

“I see.”

“Looking for trouble!”

“All of you, untie your belts and come sit with me inside the station.”

Ding Ruicheng grabbed a young man who looked like the leader with his big hand, and the young man immediately begged for mercy with a sad face.

“Uncle, please forgive me, I don’t want to die.”

“What were you doing so early? If you have anything to say, let’s talk later!”

“Oh, I’m still young. I’m the only child in my family. I haven’t fulfilled my filial duties to my parents yet, wuwuwu.”

The leader burst into tears and snot, and the remaining young people lost their backbone. They timidly untied their belts and shoelaces, held up their pants and slipped on their shoes, and followed Ding Ruicheng to the police station dejectedly.

The neighbors who came out to watch the fun were shocked by this scene.

“He was really arrested?”

“Just say that you can’t pass through the gate of that yard.”

“Oh, how can these kids be so blind? Whose kids are they?”

“I don’t know.”

For a time, the rumor that No. 6 Courtyard was a confidential unit spread even more wildly in Cuihua Hutong.

(End of this chapter)