After copying "Shattered Void", in order to find a reliable publishing house, Cao Zhiqiang decided to check out the surrounding areas first.
In the absence of Internet search, the only alternative is to go to a nearby bookstall or bookstore to look for various martial arts novels.
In the spring of 1983, the domestic cultural industry had not yet been fully liberalized at the source, especially printing plants. Therefore, although there were individual booksellers, there were not many. There were also pirated books, but not many. And
The variety of books at the private bookstall is very small.
At this time, if you want to buy books, especially martial arts novels, the most reliable way is to go to Xinhua Bookstores all over the country, and to rent books and read them, of course, go to the library.
There are self-employed people who set up street stalls to sell books, such as those on Gulou Street, but the books they sell are basically outdated magazines and newspapers, or some unorthodox books.
For example, so-and-so fights against a female devil, so-and-so fights against a female bandit, a sex group, dragon, tiger and leopard, etc., or some Shaolin Kung Fu, Wudang secret technique, or something like that
What qigong.
That's right, the individual booksellers who set up street stalls at this time didn't have any serious books because they couldn't get the goods.
why?
Because during this period, printing plants were almost all state-owned or collective, and they were all guided by policies, ensuring harvests during droughts and floods. They were not responsible for their own profits and losses, and had little economic autonomy. Of course, they lacked the motivation to pirate printing.
At this time, magazines and periodicals basically went to the post office, and books went directly to Xinhua Bookstores in various places. The distribution method was basically public-to-public, and rarely public-to-individual.
So if you want to set up a stall to sell books at this time, you don't even have the channels to purchase them. Regular books will not be sold to you easily.
Therefore, during this period, if you want to order magazines, go to the post office; if you want to read books, of course, go to Xinhua Bookstore.
Various government agencies, institutions, and companies also have internal publications, but the circle of such things is smaller, the content is boring, there is little circulation, and there is no value in setting up a stall.
If this is the case, what are the self-employed booksellers selling at this time?
Needless to say, 80% of them are parallel imports!
Various books smuggled from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as various smuggled or privately recorded audio tapes, are selling very hotly at this time.
Anyway, the relevant departments won't come to sweep you easily. Even if the relevant departments come to sweep you, as long as you run faster than others, there will be no problem.
So the people who dare to set up street stalls at this time are almost all running experts.
However, street stall literature would not really rise until after 1984.
Anyway, one day when he came to a nearby Xinhua Bookstore, he started reading martial arts novels.
He doesn't look at which martial arts novels are good, but which books have better quality and higher prices.
Especially copy down the names of publishing houses that publish martial arts novels.
In this way, he can select a relatively reliable publishing house in a targeted manner in the future, find the publishing house's address, and submit articles to this publishing house.
But just when he memorized the names of several publishers of martial arts novels and planned to go back to research, he suddenly found a young female salesperson in the bookstore lying on the counter writing something.
When asked casually, she proudly said that she was writing poetry and planned to submit it to "Poetry Magazine". She also said that a poem of hers had been selected before, and not only was it published, but she was also given a royalties of 20 yuan.
After chatting like this, Cao Zhiqiang found that the other party was very familiar with publishing, so Cao Zhiqiang's interest was aroused.
Through chatting with the female salesperson at Xinhua Bookstore, Cao Zhiqiang discovered that in this era, it would be very troublesome for a pure newcomer to write and publish martial arts novels from the beginning.
Instead, just like he did before, submit articles to magazines first and publish some poems, essays and short stories in other magazines to make money faster and more steadily.
Because martial arts novels belong to the book category, if they are to be published formally, they must have an ISBN.
ISBNs are now assigned by the Publishing Department to each publishing house.
This thing can be understood as food stamps and meat stamps, which are limited in quantity.
Generally, the larger the publishing house, the more book numbers it can be assigned, and vice versa.
Because there is a quantity limit, it is quite scarce.
Normally, if an unknown newcomer wants to publish a martial arts novel, the publisher will often not publish it for you due to various risks.
Even if the editor of the publishing house values your article and decides to publish it for you, he or she will generally not pay you much money. In most cases, the fee will be based on the amount of one thousand words, which is usually not higher than the ceiling of ten yuan per thousand words.
The most outrageous thing is that if you sell your work so cheaply for ten yuan per thousand words, the copyright no longer belongs to you, it belongs to the publisher.
Unless you are an old and famous author with a certain reputation and your own traffic, we will give you a relatively high buyout price, which is usually how much per 1,000 words.
As for the royalty system? What is that?
Therefore, when looking for a publisher to publish a book, the more famous the author, the better, because the more famous the author, the greater your bargaining power.
Take Jin Yong for example. Wherever he publishes books, he is in demand and can cut the biggest cake.
Of course, after all, it was changed, so there is still a publishing model at this time, which is that you pay for the book out of your own pocket.
In this case, you have to spend your own money to secretly buy a book number from the publisher in the early stage.
In addition, you have to pay for printing and distribution money, and even the labor costs for the staff to publish books for you. Anyway, you have to pay for all the initial expenses yourself.
If you self-publish, the more books you sell, the more you make, but if you sell less, you are the one who loses money, and the publisher will not lose money.
If you are very confident in your work, of course you can also engage in this self-publishing model, and the publisher will earn an intermediary fee.
In the early 1980s, this self-publishing model was not yet popular.
The main reason is that the initial investment in self-published books is too high.
Today's printing plants are not new. Once typesetting and printing are done, the minimum printing quantity requirement is 5,000 copies, and some large factories even require a minimum printing quantity of 10,000 copies.
Because there was no reliable computer input method for Chinese characters at this time, and there was no computer typesetting and printing. Typesetting and printing were very troublesome and were all done manually.
Including other expenses, you pay out of your own pocket, and the cost is at least 8,000 yuan, which must be paid to the publishing house in advance.
This expense is beyond the reach of ordinary individuals.
That eight thousand yuan is enough to open a small restaurant.
Unlike the 1990s, Chinese character input methods and typesetting technology have advanced. There are more printing plants and they have begun to take responsibility for their own profits and losses. The minimum printing requirements have also been reduced, which in turn has led to a reduction in the cost of publishing books.
Therefore, in the 1990s, many cadres and leaders who thought they were somewhat educated liked to publish books at their own expense to improve their qualifications.
Without him, with the market economy, publishing books has become cheaper.
Of course Cao Zhiqiang is confident in his martial arts novels, after all, they have been tested by time and the public.
Therefore, publishing a book at your own expense is undoubtedly the best choice.
Isn't this also a sign of respect for Mr. Huang Yi in his previous life?
However, at that time, he was not well-known and had little money, so it was impossible for him to publish a book at his own expense.
If nothing else, he couldn't afford eight thousand yuan.
He can only find a publisher first and have someone publish it for you, but in this case, the book will definitely sell at a low price.
This made it difficult for him to choose.
But the next day, I don't know if the system was affected in some way, but he actually signed in three magical things——
"Three Thousand Selected Modern Poems"!
"Selected Three Thousand Modern Short Stories"!
"Selected Three Thousand Articles of Modern Popular Science Knowledge"!
Well, "Three Thousand Selected Modern Poems" contains some award-winning or extremely popular modern poems.
Most of them are poems that only appeared after the 1980s and 1990s, including domestic and foreign poems, especially some later Internet celebrity poems, which account for a large proportion.
"Selected Three Thousand Modern Short Stories" is a collection of modern short stories.
They are basically all award-winning or extremely popular works, covering all kinds of genres, mostly science fiction novels.
For example, Ted Chiang's "Tower of Babel", "The Story of Your Life", etc.
As for "Selected Three Thousand Articles of Modern Popular Science Knowledge", they are some popular science articles.
It is not simply a dry introduction to popular science knowledge, but contains strict arguments and experimental data. Many of them are popular versions of Chinese and foreign professional scientific papers that only appeared after the 1990s.
For example, in the popular science article about genes that I submitted to Science Illustrated, many of the articles quoted from 3,000 pieces of modern popular science knowledge.
Otherwise, relying only on his own assumptions or the genetic memory of his previous life, without relatively rigorous relevant data and arguments, it would be difficult for him to gain favor in a relatively serious popular science magazine like Science Illustrated.
It’s really so easy to get by with a manuscript fee of 60 per thousand words.
In short, now that he had drawn these three things that could be called cheating, Cao Zhiqiang decided to take a break and not find a publishing house to publish his own martial arts novels. Instead, he continued to submit articles to various magazines to earn extra money and accumulate funds.
This time, he no longer changed his pseudonym from magazine to magazine like he did before, but published his works under the same pen name.
Making money is not the goal, the key is to maintain a pen name and gain fame.
Once you have gained popularity and funds, you can publish "Shattered Void" at your own expense.
In this way, he quickly plagiarized some works, all using the pen name "Qiangzi", and began to mail manuscripts to various well-known magazines.
For example, he copied some popular science articles of different types and mailed them to magazines such as "Science Illustrated" and "Science Literature and Art" under the pen name "Hadron".
I also copied some short stories of different types, also using the pen name "Qiangzi", and mailed them to "Reader's Digest", "Story Club" and other magazines.
These magazines all included his articles and still paid varying amounts of royalties.
It may be that the pen name "Qiangzi" has published too many works in many large magazines at the same time, and it has become famous.
In addition, the quality of the articles he plagiarized was better than the articles he had written before, and the royalties paid to him by various magazines were obviously higher than in the past.
Moreover, there are several magazines that want to invite him to be a columnist.
Since the timeliness of various large journals and magazines is not high, most of them are monthly.
Therefore, in order to make more money in a short period of time, Cao Zhiqiang collected enough publishing fees for "Shattered Void" as soon as possible. He also found some of the most impressive Internet celebrity poems among the 3,000 selected modern poems and planned to submit them to poetry magazines.
The first choice is "Seeing and Not Seeing".
But this time, Cao Zhiqiang did not mail it to foreign magazines.
He personally came to the headquarters of Poetry Magazine in Beijing, personally found one of the middle-aged male editors named Yu, and submitted the poem "Seeing and Not Seeing" in person, which later became an Internet celebrity.
The pen name is still "Qianzi".
This poem, in fact, its real name is "The Silence of Banzaguru Pema", which contains the line "You will see me, or you will not see me". It is also a poem that was widely circulated on the Internet in later generations, but in fact it was controversial.
Even if that poem is controversial in later generations, here, in the spring of 1983, he wrote it, and he is the undisputed original author.
At this moment, no one will compete with him for the copyright of this poem.
Although the literary quality of this poem is just that, the artistic conception is good and it is easier to understand.
Even for some ordinary people who are not well versed in poetry, they are easily touched by this poem and it is very easy to move people's hearts.
Most of the things in this world that are popular are the most profitable.
The editor was not a fool. He took a liking to his poem at first sight and agreed to publish it.
But the price is not high, only five yuan for a line of poetry.
At this time, it was the last twilight era of modern poetry.
For things like modern poetry, the price is not based on the price per thousand words, but based on the number of lines.
The more popular the poem and the more famous the author, the higher the remuneration per line.
For example, for sonnets, give fourteen lines the money.
Generally speaking, formal and large-scale magazines like Poetry Magazine have very high standards for the poems they collect, and they pay a lot of money.
For example, if a new author's work is included, a line of poetry will be paid three yuan.
For poems by slightly famous poets, one line of poetry is usually paid for about five yuan.
Five yuan per line was basically the upper limit of remuneration for newcomers' poetry at this time. No matter how high it was, it was for well-known poets.
Cao Zhiqiang is a pure newcomer who has never published any works before. If someone asks for your poem, agrees to publish it in the next issue of the magazine, and gives you five yuan per line, it is actually very good. This shows that the editor is very optimistic about his work.
Appreciate him.
In this way, Cao Zhiqiang earned 85 yuan from the poetry magazine for his 17-line modern poem "Seeing and Not Seeing".
Although the money was not much, it was less than three months' salary.
What really surprised him was that after the poem was published, it became an instant hit and quickly caused a huge response and sensation across the country.
Yes, he has written so many articles and submitted articles before, but none of them really became popular. At most, the royalties have become higher.
Fortunately, now, with just this poem, his pseudonym Qiangzi has become famous throughout the country!