Chapter 843: Arrogantly Sprinkling Salt

The Chinese New Year is just a few days away, and the hottest topic in the Chinese Literature Society recently is of course the year-end bonus.

In recent years, the survival environment of the domestic publishing industry has not been optimistic. Compared with many of its peers struggling to survive, Guowen Publishing House has been living a very comfortable life.

The Finance Department has become the place that most people visit recently, and everyone wants to find out about this year's bonuses and benefits.

In fact, there is nothing to worry about welfare. It’s just food and drink expenses. Even if the price is a little higher, they are still dead things.

Bonuses are different, they are real money, and once they are paid out, it is several months' salary, which is a considerable sum for every working family.

The collection of salaries before the New Year is a feature of state-owned enterprises and public institutions that has been passed down since their early years.

On the afternoon of the 27th day of the twelfth lunar month, many editors watched the bank's car drive into the gate of the Guowen Publishing House. Everyone knew that the car was loaded with their salaries and bonuses.

After the car entered the yard, there was a commotion in the community.

Ten minutes later, all editorial offices and departments received a notice to line up to receive their salaries and bonuses. Everyone had a smile on their face, and they could not suppress the excitement in their hearts.

I've been waiting for a whole year, why am I looking forward to the New Year? Aren't we just waiting for this bonus?

In front of the Finance Department's office, everyone lined up in an orderly manner.

The first young man who received the money was checking the money with shining eyes, and several people surrounded him impatiently.

"Hey, how much? How much?"

The young man was busy checking the money, and was afraid that he had forgotten to count it, so he handed over the salary slip in his hand and said, "Look for yourself."

The others took the pay slip and glanced over it.

There is a bonus item on everyone’s monthly pay slip, but the bonus this month at the end of the year is different from usual bonuses.

They finally scanned the bonus column, 3,260 yuan.

"How many months? How many months?" someone asked.

A few months refers to the bonus equivalent to a few months' salary. There are hundreds of people in Guowen Press, with different positions, titles, and work content, so the amount of bonus is naturally different. But based on past experience, it is basically based on each person's salary and multiplied several times.

Someone calculated quickly and blurted out: "Four months!"

The team that was just chatting casually suddenly became lively.

"Four months? That's higher than last year."

"Book sales were poor this year, so I thought the bonus would be smaller."

"This is nothing. Movie companies and TV companies get hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in dividends. How much do we get?"

"Look at you, you are so weird. No one can get such a high bonus as you? If you have the ability, go make a movie. If it can get tens of millions at the box office, I will ask the president to give you a bonus of one million."

In the past two years, Guowen Publishing House has made great strides in the field of film and television and earned considerable profits. It is very generous to the creators of film and television works, and often gives them dividends of hundreds of thousands or even millions.

Over time, some people within the Guowen Society began to say strange things.

In the eyes of these people, they are the most legitimate employees of the Guowen Publishing House, but at the end of the year they can only receive a bonus equivalent to two or three months' salary, while people in the tertiary industry of film and television companies can get hundreds of thousands of yuan. It's unfair!

There are not many people who hold this mentality. Most of the time they just complain, and from time to time they will be criticized like what happened just now.

Guowen Society is a cultural organization, and most people understand that artistic creation is not based on identity, position, or high or low status.

If they can create value for the company or the organization, it is reasonable for them to receive hundreds of thousands of dividends. This is a virtuous circle, just like when the Guowen Publishing House took the initiative to increase the writers' royalties and revise the royalty contracts.

Respecting creation and respecting art are the concepts that Guowen Society has always adhered to.

Therefore, the sarcasm of a small number of people did not affect public opinion within the society.

While a few people were arguing, the queue for getting the money moved forward a little and it was almost their turn. The other people didn't have time to talk anymore and started to queue up quietly to get the money.

Lin Weimin and Cheng Zaochun stood at the back of the team, and the sound of arguing from the front could be faintly heard from the back.

Cheng Zaochun whispered, "These bastards, after a few days of eating full meals, they started to complain."

"It would be strange if there were no such voices in any unit." Lin Weimin said nonchalantly, "It's not just them. I think some leaders may have some opinions too, right?"

Cheng Zaochun glanced at Lin Weimin and said, “You’re asking questions even though you already know the answer.”

The huge dividends given to the creative staff by several companies under Guowen Publishing House can be explained by the idea that artistic creation is priceless, but the most criticized point is that the salaries of the leaders of those companies exceed those of many leaders of Guowen Publishing House.

Some comrades in the society were very dissatisfied with this matter, but due to Lin Weimin's prestige in the Guowen Society, they only dared to talk about it in private.

Such incidents are not uncommon in the domestic business community in later generations, and many Chinese companies going global have faced this problem.

These domestic companies have acquired companies in developed countries in Europe and the United States, but their employees are all subject to local salary standards and are paid in pounds, euros, and dollars. If you do the math, an ordinary middle-level employee in the local area may earn more than the president of the head office.

Faced with this situation, the vast majority of domestic companies will choose to raise salaries for senior executives and will not care about the lives of grassroots employees. A representative company among them is a certain company.

“So I say that it is necessary to transform the company into a company. Although the publishing business is the foundation of our company, its ability to generate income is not strong.

If we still maintain the current system, then the relationship between the several business segments will still be that of father and son. The son works more but cannot eat more. Over time, this system will be destroyed.

Transforming and restructuring the enterprise means changing the relationship between father and son into a brotherly relationship.

Brothers fight tigers together. What we want to do at Guowen Press is to be a cultural industry group, and the various business sectors should be complementary to each other.

Publishing is indeed the leader, but it is only the engine. It takes the coordination of all sectors to create the greatest benefits.”

Lin Weimin chattered to Cheng Zaochun in a calm voice, leaving old comrade Cheng speechless.

How could he not know what Lin Weimin meant?

It's nothing more than wanting to use him to spread these words, to stabilize people's hearts, so that some people won't complain too much and affect unity, and then affect the good situation of the Guowen Society.

"Didn't the leader tell you not to spread the news about the restructuring?" Cheng Zaochun said sarcastically.

"I'm telling you this, and I'm only telling you this. If I hear someone else spread this, that's what you said."

"I……"

"Then you should go and urge your leader." Cheng Zaochun said unhappily.

"Why are you in such a hurry? Is this something that you and I can decide in a hurry? We are just giving a suggestion to the higher-ups. The decision-making power lies with them."

When the two were talking, the people around them consciously stepped away, and no one heard their whispered discussion.

The team moved forward little by little. Most people didn't care about these things. What they cared about was the things happening in front of them.

The January salary plus the year-end bonus is equivalent to an employee's income for five months, which is a considerable income for most ordinary employees.

For the entire afternoon, the Chinese Literature Society was filled with joy.

The editorial rooms and department offices were filled with the laughter of employees.

Many employees of the People's Commune next door have long been accustomed to this kind of laughter and joyous atmosphere. It has nothing to do with them anyway.

Talk, laugh, and rub salt into our wounds as much as you want.

Near the end of the get off work day, Lin Weimin received a call from Michael Phillips in the United States announcing the good news.

"Life is Beautiful" was released on October 30th and was officially released in US theaters two days ago, for a total of 85 days.

Unlike most art films, the film was not first released in a few art theaters in major cities across the United States, where professional media critics were invited to watch and comment on it, and then released in large-scale markets after gaining word of mouth. Instead, it chose to directly choose to be released on a large scale.

This choice is the same as when "Farewell My Concubine" was released in the United States. The reason that made the producers and distributors so confident is naturally the quality of the film itself. "Life is Beautiful" swept this year's Cannes Film Festival in the first half of the year.

Another reason is their confidence in the original film.

Although the original novel of "Life is Beautiful", "Life is Beautiful Anyway", is not as well-known and influential in the United States as "Farewell My Concubine", it is also a best-seller with millions of copies sold and is widely popular among readers.

Moreover, Spielberg, the most commercially valuable director in Hollywood, once planned to adapt this film. If it were not for the opposition of the minority Jewish group, the film adapted from this novel would probably have been released long ago.

Finally, the movie was released and the audience did not disappoint the filmmakers' confidence.

In the first three days of its release, "Life is Beautiful" earned an outstanding box office of 12.6 million US dollars.

This number is certainly nothing when compared to a big-budget commercial movie, but "Life is Beautiful" is an art film with an investment of 20 million US dollars, and it is also a foreign film.

The movie's lead actor, Roberto Benigni, is somewhat famous in the United States, but everyone knows that the movie's first-week box office has little to do with him. The reason why so many audiences showed up was probably due to the influence of the original work.

In its second week, "Life is Beautiful" earned 20.5 million at the box office.

By its third week, the film grossed $21.3 million.

After three weeks of release, the box office has actually reversed and declined. This box office trend can no longer be described as healthy.

By the fourth week, the box office of "Life is Beautiful" remained frighteningly stable at 19.4 million, with a drop of less than 10 percentage points.

Such a strange and unexpected box office trend surprised many Hollywood practitioners who were concerned about the box office of this movie. By this week, everyone saw the huge box office potential of this foreign film.

18.3 million, 16.9 million, 15 million…

After nearly three months of release, the box office drop of "Life is Beautiful" set a record in American film and television, and has never fallen by more than 20%.

Such a healthy decline also contributed to the film's final box office performance of 165 million US dollars.

This result seems to be much lower than the nearly 300 million US dollars box office of "Farewell My Concubine", but its value is incomparable to "Farewell My Concubine".

The U.S. film market schedule can be roughly divided into five categories: winter schedule: from the first Friday of the New Year to before spring break, spring schedule: from spring break to Memorial Day weekend, summer schedule: from late May to September 4th each year, fall schedule: from September 5th to before Thanksgiving, and year-end holiday schedule: from the weekend before Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.

The year-end holiday period is one of the must-see periods for film producers because it spans the two major holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

"Life is Beautiful" was released on October 30, which is the autumn season of the US film market. During this period, the film market was lukewarm, and many films launched by production companies were targeting women, and there were basically no blockbusters.

However, because the release period of "Life is Beautiful" was too long, it not only covered the tepid autumn period, but also spanned the hottest year-end holiday period in the US film market.

The weekend before Thanksgiving to New Year's Day is the hottest period in the U.S. film market. It is basically a battleground for all major Hollywood film companies, and all their best films will be unveiled at this time.

The fact that "Life is Beautiful" was able to rake in 165 million US dollars at the box office during the year-end holiday period when many blockbusters were released has already shocked countless practitioners.

All companies and practitioners are analyzing the secret of this film's success.

The final analysis shows that Roberto Benigni, the absolute protagonist of the film who wrote, directed and acted in the film, deserves great credit, but the most fundamental reason for all this is still based on the excellent quality and wide influence of the original work.

(End of this chapter)