The 21st year of Tiansheng, December.

As the Chinese New Year approaches, the 30 students living in the bastion, except for a few who are too far away from home, most of them have to go home for the Chinese New Year.

Before these classmates returned home, Zhou Ming gathered them together and held a seminar.

A seminar on the "Zihua Bookstore" program.

The four brothers in the dormitory (Lu Wencai, Tang Junming, Sima Zhi, Yao Qingxiao), as well as the "comic master" Lu Zhao, "guitar master" Yang Lin, "novelist" Luo Qianqiu, "pop singer" Zhang Lu and others whom he excavated and trained... young talents gathered together.

In fact, Zhou Ming’s classmates are only in their 20s, very young, and each of them is not young, or in other words, most of them are from aristocratic families and have a high status.

For example, although his roommate Lu Wencai is not likable, with a sharp-mouthed and a vulgar face, he is actually a legitimate child of the Lu family in Beihai (county). Among the children of the Lu family, he ranks in the top five importance. Moreover, the Lu family in Beihai is one of the eight major families in Qingzhou. It is a giant family with a history of thousands of years, millions of acres of fertile land and tens of thousands of tribes. It is ten times more prosperous than Zhou Ming's Haiping Tian family.

Tang Junming is the "Donglai Tang clan" from one of the eight major families. However, he is not a legitimate child of the Tang clan, but he belongs to a relatively close branch. His family importance ranks about 30.

Sima Zhi is indeed the lowest-born among all his roommates. Although his father Sima Yuan is now a county magistrate, the Sima family is just a small landlord family with only a few hundred acres of fertile land. Once his father retires and retires, even the son of a small county magistrate can be suppressed.

The young talented man Yao Qingxiao was born in a business family. Logically, in this era of belittling merchants, his status should be relatively low, and he should be inferior to Sima Zhi. However, the "Book-Fragrant Yao Family" known as "a thousand years of books", controlled nearly 50% of the printing and bookstores in Qingzhou. Although he was born in a businessman, he was a book-Fragrant family and a cultural family! He was far from comparable to ordinary merchants.

In addition to these four roommates who are not young, they are also distinguished classmates from a large family, landlord class, and officials' children, as well as several children from poor families. Zhou Ming was quite moved. There is a saying that goes: A strong general must be born in the army, the prime minister must be born in the prefectures and counties, and many of the talents come from poor families!

People who are truly talented, talented and hardworking are really those poor families who come from poor families.

For example, "comic master" Lu Zhao, whose family is not well-off, only has 100 acres of fertile land at home. The tuition fee of Wenyuan Academy of thousands of charity per year has been overwhelmed by this rich peasant family. After three years of schooling, his family sold out all the fertile land. In the fourth year, if it weren't for Zhou Ming's support, he would probably have dropped out of school.

Moreover, this guy has no extraordinary talent in the imperial examination and literature exam, but his painting skills are indeed superb. His level of landscape painting has reached a great level... But no matter how high his painting skills are, he doesn't make any money. Famous teachers and paintings are of high qualifications. Your paintings may be sold at a sky-high price of hundreds of millions in a thousand years, but this painter is still a young man in his twenties. How many people will appreciate it? Who is willing to pay a high price to buy his paintings?

So after receiving the support of Zhou Ming, this brother Lu found that he was powerless in the imperial examination and was not well-known in painting. After seeing that it was profitable to draw comics, Lu Zhao decisively chose to transform. With his outstanding talent, he has now become the main writer of the comic "The Legend of the Three Kingdoms 108 Stars" with a monthly income of more than 100 jin. He was named "comic master" by Zhou Ming.

"Guitar Master" Yang Lin and "novelist" Luo Qianqiu are in a similar situation. They are both poor talents discovered by Zhou Ming in Wenyuan Academy. With a little training, they will definitely become emperor superstars in their respective fields in the future.

I would like to mention here that Zhang Lu, a "pop singer" and "fresh meat", is not from a poor family, but a maid from a big family. He has a low status and is bullied by the eldest son of a long family for many years. He originally wanted to change his destiny through the imperial examination, but through several concerts, he was recognized by countless people and found confidence that he had never experienced before, and then he became angry and decided to abandon the imperial examination (raising) and follow the song (hand), intending to become a "superstar" that everyone admires and become a person like "McCorkeson" (this is naturally the result of Zhou Ming's deception).

Seeing that he has so many powerful and wealthy children and poor talents under his jurisdiction, Zhou Ming will naturally take advantage of these advantages to vigorously promote this plan for the "Zihua Bookstore Plan".

He said to Lu Wencai and the others: "Brother Wencai, Brother Junming (I have called more than a dozen names in a row)... After you go back, I hope to use your respective abilities and channels to strive to open a bookstore in more than 150 counties and counties in Qingzhou and in each city within two or three months. The decoration will be done according to the design drawings I gave, the faster the better! As for the expenses, I will prepare a thousand stagnant of start-up funds for each of you. If it is not enough, you can write to me."

In this world, the purchasing power of copper coins is about 800-1,000 yuan, and one thousand yuan is equivalent to 1 million yuan.

With so much money, Zhou Ming asked these more than a dozen classmates to each be responsible for opening ten "Zihua Bookstores". The average cost of one is 100,000 yuan, so there must be no big problem.

"Boss, there is no need for money. I'm still missing this little money? Besides, I have shares in Zihua Bookstore, so why are you embarrassed to collect your money? Just give me the decoration design drawings, and nothing else is needed." Lu Wencai said.

"Yes, boss, we are in the most prosperous street next to the county government. We can only rent a shop for ten cents a year, and a thousand cents a year, which is too much."

"No need for Brother Zihua, it's just a few hundred stale coins. I think I can still pay it out."

Everyone refused.

Zhou Ming coughed twice and said in a tone of no rejection: "Please take it all. If you follow me to do something, it will naturally be difficult to get money from your parents and elders. If you spend their money, you will find it profitable and your equity will be entangled... Zihua Bookstore must be completely complete and belong to our industry! Therefore, you should spend this thousand stale starting capital carefully and strive to get things done. If there is not enough money, please ask me for it."

"All right……"

Everyone nodded, quite moved, and at the same time, their hearts were filled with a sense of pride and ambition to do a great career.

"Brother Qingxiao——"

Zhou Ming looked at the second person on the right and said, "Your task is the heaviest. Except for Zihua Bookstore, Qingzhou, the largest woodblock printing factory, you are troubled by the construction and recruitment of workers. I wonder if you can complete this task within three months?"

The printing factory that is equipped with Zihua Bookstore's plan is an important part of determining the success or failure of this plan. If Zhou Ming asked this plan to complete it himself, he would not know how many years would take just to hire those exquisitely crafted carving craftsmen (this craftsman has more than ten years of work experience and cannot be cultivated in a short period of time). Moreover, for reading books such as comics, a page of carvings can consume more than ten times the energy of carvings. And such craftsmen can find 100 of them in Qingzhou.

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

Therefore, he gave Yao Qingxiao a huge amount of 500,000 yuan, signed an agreement with half of the shares, and prepared to build a large printing factory covering an area of ​​dozens of acres, with the most advanced carving craftsmanship and thousands of carving craftsmen.

It is called: Zihua Printing Factory.

In fact, Zhou Ming did not completely understand the technology of woodblock printing. In the last copy of "The Lord's Disputes", there were printing workshops in the countless workshops he founded. The technology used was extremely advanced. He used a large number of [industrial machine tools] and hydraulic drive devices. Later, he also used [steam engines], plus some unique technologies, printing efficiency, and I don't know how many times ahead of this world.

During the period when Wenyuan Academy was in school, Zhou Ming privately discussed these technologies with Yao Qingxiao. After Yao Qingxiao got the design drawings and improvement suggestions he gave, he asked the family to try these drawings and suggestions. In less than two years, the printing efficiency of Yao Family Bookstore has been increased by three times, and the unit printing cost has been reduced by 50%! The printing quality is excellent, which greatly increases the market share.

So... all of this is linked together and complementary. The cooperation between Zhou Ming and Yao Family Bookstore is also an inevitable result.

Yao Qing nodded with a smile and said, "Brother Zihua, don't worry, I have sent the letter home long ago, and the new factory has broken ground. The equipment and craftsmen are ready. Within three months, Zihua Printing Factory will be put into use! It is a matter of one word to open dozens of Zihua Bookstores. Just wait for you to create some exciting works within these three months."

"good."

Zhou Ming nodded. Yao Qingxiao deserves the reputation of being a talented man. He is extremely talented and always has one step ahead in his work and will never procrastinate. Zhou Ming has a premonition that this roommate will definitely become his most capable assistant in the process of building an entertainment empire.

Don’t worry too much about hardware issues. So, how many content products of Zihua Bookstore can be produced in a short period of time?

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

For example, in "Story Club", Zhou Ming now has more than 300 novels of various strange stories, hundreds of jokes, jokes, etc. (it was all thought of by him when he was fucked). If it is published in the form of a half-monthly magazine, it can be published continuously for half a year.

There are many excellent articles and poems that have been selected into the "Zihua Collection of Essays", most of which were created by Zhou Ming and his classmates during their study at Wenyuan Academy, including dross and essences. In addition, Zhou Ming's mind [A Collection of Tang Poems and Song Poems] and [A Collection of Classic Ancient Literatures], some works are plagiarized and published in the form of a half-monthly issue. It is no problem to publish a hundred issues.

The most important "Comics", Zhou Ming, who has no works to plagiarize, can only create himself while training apprentices and assistants. As long as these apprentices and assistants are brought up, his tasks will be much easier in the future. As long as he proposes an outline and setting, someone will create the comics he wants to read based on these outline settings.

As for the comic works he has completed, such as "The Legend of the Three Kingdoms 108 Stars", with the help of "comic master" Lu Zhao, he has drawn the fifteenth volume; "Journey to the West to Suppress the Demons" by Zhou Ming himself has drawn the forty-fifth chapter... The two comic works have thousands of pages in total. If they are published in the form of a half-monthly magazine, the "Comics" magazine can be published in twelve consecutive issues.

However, there are still too few comic works, and the length of "The Legend of the Three Kingdoms 108 Stars" is too short, and it is not enough to continue to be released for six issues (the content and "Journey to the West to Suppress the Demons" each account for half). In other words, if the existing manuscripts are available, "Comic" can be released for up to three months.

After thinking about it, Zhou Ming said to Lu Zhao and two other comic apprentices: "Brother Lu, Brother Wan, Brother Jin, you have worked a little harder during this period and strive to draw the 30-volume "The Legend of the Three Kingdoms 108 Stars" within three months. The task is quite heavy, but don't worry, I will help you complete some of the work... Believe in yourself, when this comic is finished, I will give you more good stories. You will definitely like these stories very much..."

Such as "The Legend of Heavenly Book", "The Lotus Lantern", "The Legend of Nezha", "The Calabash Baby"... They will never finish drawings in their entire lives.
Chapter completed!