Zhou Man turned around and ran away, "You go home and wait. I'll find you when I find it."
Mingda: ...She hasn’t had time to say that this bookstore is owned by two families. Also, it’s not time to go to the Yamen yet. Does this count as leaving early?
Zhou Man ran back to the Princess's Mansion, got into the study and began to search, "I remember seeing it in a book. There was a new paper-making method in it, so I bought it."
"But after reading through it, I found that the things recorded in it are very complicated. There is a printing method called movable type printing mentioned in it..." Zhou Man squatted in front of the bookshelf and rummaged through it, talking to Keke while flipping through it.
"Didn't we conclude that this method is not applicable?"
The sudden sound made Zhou Man sit down on the ground. She turned around and saw Bai Shan, dressed in casual clothes, standing in front of the innermost bookshelf with a book in his hand.
Bai Shan closed the book helplessly and stepped forward to help her up, "It's rare to see you being scared."
"What are you doing at home when you're not in the Imperial City at noon?" Zhou Man said angrily, "Don't you know that scaring people can kill them?"
Bai Shan: "...Since we were young, Bai Er and I have hid in dark places many times and tried to scare you, but we couldn't scare you even once. I thought you weren't afraid of people suddenly making noises. How did I know you were really scared?"
Zhou Man looked at him suspiciously, "Do you really not know, or are you just pretending?"
Bai Shan tried hard to maintain the expression on his face, but Zhou Man stepped on his foot, crushed it, and said through gritted teeth: "I knew it!"
Bai Shan hissed, hugged her and said, "My fault, my fault, please forgive me, I will never dare to do it again."
Bai Shan finally helped her find the book from the bookshelf, handed it to her, and asked, "Why do you think of this method?"
"Mingda said he wanted to open another bookstore. There are a lot of books on the book list, and Mingda gave away so many sets that the bookstore couldn't operate, so he wanted to open another bookstore."
Bai Shan frowned, "Do you want to use a new printing method in the new bookstore?"
Zhou Man nodded, "What do you think?"
"But we have deduced before that the new printing method may not be as good as the current one." Bai Shan said: "Movable type typesetting is too laborious and the cost is too high."
"I was thinking about this on the way back, but I think it's a little different. Maybe I can give it a try."
Bai Shan: "What's different?"
"Compared with when it was deduced more than ten years ago, there are more literate people now. You can also say that more and more people take part in the imperial examination every year, but the number of people recruited by the imperial court is still limited every year, so there are
A lot of people are unemployed."
Bai Shan: "...You want them to do typesetting? Are those scholars the ones who lack this kind of salary?"
Who can afford to study but doesn’t have a few acres of land?
Zhou Mandao: "There are always people who are short of this little salary. How many people take part in the imperial examination every year? If only one of these people enters the bookstore, one person a year, the bookstore can do a lot of things in a few years.
Already?"
When Bai Shan thought about it, it was true that today is different from the past, because after the popularity of women's education, private private schools also developed more vigorously, and more and more people were educated and literate, and not everyone rushed to take the imperial examination.
There are still many people who are literate and unemployed.
“However, the cost of hiring people who are literate will still be relatively high.”
"Oh, but books aren't cheap either. Those who are capable will get them. Let's not be too stingy on wages."
"Since your goal is to lower the price of books, you must control the cost of each book, including labor costs."
Zhou Man: "We won't know until we calculate this, so you think it's feasible, right?"
There was basically no way for Bai Shan to stop what Zhou Man wanted to do. Even if he felt that it couldn't be done, he would let the other party give it a try. He rarely directly vetoed it, and it was the same this time.
Bai Shan nodded and said, "You can give it a try and come to me if you need it."
Zhou Man closed the book happily and turned around to leave. Bai Shan held her back and said, "Copy the method on paper and send it away. It's better to keep the book at home."
Although he puts the book on the bookshelf without fear of others looking at it, there is still a difference between putting it in front of smart people.
Zhou Man agreed after thinking about it.
He turned to the page with printing and began to copy, "Mingda found the disciples of the Mo family. With them here, it should be much faster to figure this out. Then let them think about how to reduce costs."
Engraving, printing and typesetting do not require people who know too many words, or even people who can read, as long as they are printed one by one;
But movable type is different. People doing typesetting must not only know the characters, but also know every word, and even read the textbooks thoroughly, so that they will not make mistakes and be more efficient.
If the printing volume is not large, the cost of movable type typesetting will be too high. At this point, movable type is completely inferior to engraving.
But movable type also has extremely convenient features. First, as long as there are enough typefaces, the bookstore can typeset a new book very quickly. It does not have to be re-engraved word by word like engraving, which is very slow;
Second, if part of the characters is damaged during the printing process, the movable type can be quickly replaced with low cost. Unlike engraving, if one character is damaged, the entire version will be damaged, and the cost of repair is extremely high.
Zhou Man said while copying: "Another reason why I recommend movable type is that there are more and more people writing books now, especially stories and essays, as well as poems and manuscripts published by various literati. Throughout the Jin Dynasty,
Except for a few people, everyone else’s books are kept in bookstores and hired to be copied.”
"Why is this? Isn't it just because engraving is not easy, and the bookstore won't accept it if the quantity is not enough?"
For a new book, it doesn’t matter if someone like Bai Erlang has already accumulated a reputation. The bookstore will carve it out and reprint hundreds or thousands of copies every year. It doesn’t have to worry about bookstores and booksellers buying it, so only the bookstore can make money.
;
If a book written by an author can only sell a few dozen copies in the capital, then it will be sold to other places, with a total of only a few hundred copies. If the bookstore prints the engraving once, it will be invalid, and the cost of printing is too high.
Few booksellers are willing to pay this amount. Unless the author pays for it himself, most of the stories are actually copied by someone else.
It was a tradition for the children of the Zhou family to earn pocket money by reading and copying books. After they got good at handwriting and became proficient in writing, they could copy manuscripts of poetry collections and miscellaneous conversation books in the bookstore.
The price is a little higher than that of copies of "The Analects of Confucius".
Zhou Man copied down all the content about movable type printing, and then sighed sadly: "But I remember one Mid-Autumn Festival, I was drunk and mentioned that printing can be printed with just a few clicks. Please explain.
If Da insists on asking this..."
"Just say you saw it in a dream. It seems to be what the gods in the sky did."
"This is a lie at first sight."
Bai Shan: "But from your point of view, it doesn't appear to be false at all. Don't worry, she will believe you, because this is also true, but it is not the way of the gods in heaven, but the way of the underworld."
But the underworld doesn’t sound good, but the gods in heaven sound better.