Chapter 42: Publishing Fee:

New Year, new atmosphere. On the first day of the New Year, TV programs also have a new atmosphere.

Liu Hongmin stayed in the international student dormitory because he stayed up late yesterday. The international students strongly requested Liu Hongmin to teach them how to cook Chinese food for a few days. It was obvious that they were very interested in cooking.

The foreigners all thought Liu Hongmin was humorous and liked to communicate with him. They fried dough sticks while watching TV.

“International News” has been on the air for almost half a year. It is one of the few channels in China to learn about foreign affairs. Foreigners can occasionally see their own country on it, so they all like this program.

As I was watching, the scene suddenly changed to a bookstore.

“As the New Year approaches, Hong Kong bookstores are packed with people. Reporters learned from interviews that most of them are here to buy the Young Justice Bao collection. The Young Justice Bao is a collection of mystery novels written by Chinese writer Liu Hongmin. It was serialized in Hong Kong Ming Daily half a year ago and was soon adapted into a TV series by RTV, sparking a viewing craze…”

“Young Justice Bao is the most exciting mystery novel series I have ever read. Justice Bao is described in it as being extremely intelligent, comparable to Zhuge Liang…”

“I bought the collection after watching Shao Bao’s TV series. There are many illustrations from the TV series in the collection, which is very memorable…”

When the street interview was broadcast on TV, the international students belatedly looked at Liu Hongmin.

“Liu, this Liu Hongmin mentioned on TV should be you, right?”

“That’s Liu. I’ve seen Young Justice Bao on Weiming Lake, but I didn’t understand it…”

The foreign students gathered around and chattered, making Liu Hongmin feel overwhelmed.

“The dead set is broken! The dead set is broken!”

Liu Hongmin hurriedly stopped the conversation and said loudly, “It is indeed me up there, but I don’t know the specific situation. Please make way for me and let me see what is said on TV.”

Everyone immediately quieted down and made way for Liu Hongmin.

Unfortunately, the news has now moved on to the next one.

Liu Hongmin thought for a moment and said to the international students, “You should have heard about the history department some time ago. At that time, I was not in school. I went to Hong Kong to be a consultant for RTV. At that time, Sanlian Publishing House found me and wanted to publish “Young Justice Bao”, and I agreed. They wanted to publish a single volume while “Young Justice Bao” was being broadcast, and after “Young Justice Bao” was finished, they would promote the collection.”

“It looks like the collection has been released, and it’s selling pretty well. But I didn’t expect it to be on the news.”

The international students suddenly realized and then gathered together to discuss it.

“It seems that Liu’s book is selling well, otherwise it wouldn’t be in the news.”

“Of course, and I heard that this news is not something that ordinary people can get on.”

“Of course not everyone can get there. I heard that Liu’s book is a big seller!”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. What I mean is that the people who are on the news are all influenced by political aspirations.”

A bunch of foreigners were making wild guesses, and Liu Hongmin was speechless. What a political influence, the above just felt that the hot sales of the collection of less packages were a glory for the country.

However, this is really hard to explain. Liu Hongmin could only listen and smile. As a result, these foreigners thought Liu Hongmin had acquiesced. After all, Chinese people are modest and will not talk nonsense to others even if they have a powerful background.

Thus, a beautiful misunderstanding arose.

A few days later, Liu Hongmin received a letter from Cha Jianying. The letter was sent from Hong Kong. Cha Jianying went to Hong Kong just after Liu Hongmin returned to China, and the two went their separate ways. In the letter, Cha Jianying congratulated Shao Bao on the TV series being a hit in Hong Kong, and then congratulated Shao Bao on the single book being a hot seller in Hong Kong. Apparently, when she wrote the letter, Shao Bao’s collection had not yet been released.

At the end of the letter, Zha Jianying expressed her longing for Liu Hongmin. Liu Hongmin was touched. After several months of separation, he also missed this heroic girl.

A few days later, the letter from Sanlian Publishing House arrived. Yang Guiren talked about the hot sales of Shaobao’s books. Among the traditional Chinese versions, the best-selling single volume was the seventh volume, “Turning Dragon Robbery”.

“Turning Dragon” is about a cat replacing a prince, a story that is so famous. Liu Hongmin interpreted it in another way, but it still couldn’t match the charm of this story.

The single volume “Dragon Tribulation” sold more than 43,000 copies, which is more than 9,000 copies more than the least sold “Magic Phantom”.

The sales of the collection exceeded the expectations of Sanlian Publishing House. In just half a month, the first batch of 10,000 copies were sold out.

According to this sales volume, the number of prints of the seven single volumes is more than 8. According to the contract, Liu Hongmin can get % of the copyright fee.

Based on the print run of 70,000, the average price of single volumes and collections is about HK$10. Liu Hongmin can get HK$56,000 in copyright fees for each book. For seven books, the total is HK$392,000, which is rounded off to HK$400,000.

This is the result of Hong Kong alone. Once the TV series is sold to Green Island and Southeast Asia, the number of prints will at least increase several times. By then, Liu Hongmin will be worth millions.

hiss–

It’s only 1980, and I’ve achieved financial freedom already?

In the next few days, Liu Hongmin dreamed of sitting in a pile of money. He woke up laughing several times from his dreams. Fortunately, he was the only one in the dormitory, otherwise Xu Liancheng would definitely think he was crazy.

Although the 400,000 Hong Kong dollars had not yet arrived, Liu Hongmin was thinking about how to spend the money.

Buying a house became Liu Hongmin’s first choice, but it would take a lot of time. He didn’t want to wander around the alleys in Beijing, so he decided to wait for Zou Shifang to come.

The second option is investment. You can’t invest and buy these days because the economy is not fully open. But you can invest in the cultural industry. You can buy some cultural relics, stamps, and novel copyrights, and hoard them until the new century. They will multiply countless times.

However, investing in cultural relics requires someone to help identify their authenticity. Liu Hongmin had never even seen a few cultural relics before, so how could he understand this?
It would be easy to get stamps by then, and he happened to have a stamp album, and the fact that he was a stamp collector had already been publicized. As long as the monkey stamps were issued, Liu Hongmin would buy them in large quantities.

Speaking of monkey stamps, Liu Hongmin immediately got up from the bed and went straight to the post office.

“Comrade, have the zodiac stamps of the years I wanted to buy arrived?”

The comrades at the post office were very enthusiastic when they saw Liu Hongmin. “Here you are. I have helped you find the zodiac stamps and commemorative stamps of the past ten years. Especially this year’s monkey stamps. I have asked for 100 copies for you.”

Liu Hongmin immediately laughed and said, “Thank you very much.”

As he spoke, Liu Hongmin took out a Great Unity banknote and stuffed it into his hand.

“I’d like you to drink.”

The man looked around and found that there was no one around, so he put the money into his pocket.

“Please wait a moment. I will get you a stamp.”

(End of this chapter)