Chapter 204 Jump Up

If the heat of June still carries a hint of restraint as it first steps onto the stage, the July sun is like a donkey that has gone mad, rampaging across the world, making everyone who sees it want to avoid it, and you can feel its madman-like threat from afar.

If someone can still come out to meet someone at a time like this, it's either because they have an extremely good relationship, or because there's something really important that they absolutely have to meet.

Lu Yanhe and Chen Siqi were sitting in a coffee shop next to the Guangmao Building, waiting for Xin Zixing.

They are going to talk to Xin Zixing today about future collaborations on this Mook.

Compared to our first meeting where we only discussed our intentions, today's discussion will be more specific and realistic.

Seeing that Lu Yanhe was a little nervous, Chen Siqi said, "I'll talk about it later. You know her before and have worked with her. There are many questions you're embarrassed to ask, so it's better if I do it."

Lu Yanhe looked at Chen Siqi with some gratitude when he heard her say that.

Being thin-skinned is a huge problem for him.

It needs to be changed.

"However, there's actually a question I've always wanted to ask you."

"What's the problem?"

“From the very first time I communicated with Sister Zixing, I was surprised. You didn’t seem nervous or unfamiliar with negotiations at all; you always seemed confident,” Lu Yanhe said. “How did you do that?”

“I’ve simulated it many times. When I was little, I often followed my dad and saw him talking business with others. I was somewhat influenced by him. Later, when Liu Wei’an came, I often fantasized about inheriting my dad’s company one day and then slapping her in the face. I often fantasized about negotiating with people in various scenarios, like in TV dramas, imagining myself as a queen.” Chen Siqi smiled and said, “Actually, I didn’t care about anything, and I didn’t think about any speaking skills or anything like that. Many people think the more they think, the less they know how to start. I just say whatever comes to mind. Maybe others think I’m too straightforward and lack skill, or that my way of speaking is not suitable for negotiation. I don’t care. Compared to whether it’s suitable or not, I’ve always felt that it’s more important to say what needs to be said than to just say nice things to each other.”

Lu Yanhe said, "Your mindset is much stronger than mine."

“Yes.” Chen Siqi nodded. “If you were born into a family like mine, you would have an enemy to fight against every day you open your eyes. After so many years of training, you would definitely have the same mindset.”

Lu Yanhe was both amused and exasperated by Chen Siqi's words.

Just then, Xin Zixing arrived.

-

Xin Zixing has been busy these past two days assembling the filming team for "City Travelogue" while also personally guiding Liu Yaliang in working on the fashion section.

I work more than 15 hours almost every day.

However, Xin Zixing did not find it difficult at all. On the contrary, she was full of motivation and energy, which made the people around her feel incredible and even unbelievable.

The coffee shop was quite crowded.

However, she spotted Lu Yanhe and Chen Siqi at a glance.

The two of them sat in a booth by the window. Lu Yanhe was wearing sunglasses, probably to avoid being recognized at a glance.

Xin Zixing smiled and walked over, "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."

"No, we just arrived too."

"I've been really busy these past two days. I was just having a video conference in the car," Xin Zixing said. "The feedback on 'City Travelogue: Corridor Transformation' is much better than I expected. I'm currently assembling a filming team, and once that's finalized, we'll begin officially recording this documentary."

"Okay." Lu Yanhe nodded.

Xin Zixing asked, "Is there any progress on the Mook you want to make?"

Lu Yanhe nodded and said, "I have contacted all the people on the list I showed you last time, and they are all initially willing to write it down and have not refused."

Xin Zixing looked at Lu Yanhe with some surprise, "So fast?"

"Yes, we also want to get it done as soon as possible."

"So what you want to talk to me about today is the future cooperation method?"

“Yes.” Lu Yanhe nodded, and at the same time exchanged a glance with Chen Siqi. “We need to clarify in advance what form we will meet with everyone and what kind of cooperation we will take.”

Xin Zixing nodded, not at all surprised that they would make such a request.

“That’s how it should be. If you have any ideas, you can speak up directly. I’ll reply to you on the spot if I can make a decision, and I’ll go back and communicate with my superiors if I can’t make a decision,” Xin Zixing said very frankly.

Chen Siqi said, "Regarding this Mook, if it is published on Yemai.com in the future, what can Yemai.com do to promote the book?"

“If it’s exclusively available on YeMai.com, I can guarantee that the promotional efforts will be no less than those for the documentary ‘City Travelogue: Corridor Transformation’,” Xin Zixing said. “I want to reiterate that YeMai.com has always wanted to create its own book series. We have a dedicated e-reading section, but we don’t have our own book series. When you, Yan He, suggested creating an e-magazine, I was immediately struck by how perfect it was. Given this positioning, as long as your Mook is exclusively available on YeMai.com, you can imagine that we will treat it well.”

"Do you expect it to make money?"

"To be honest, we might not make money in the first year or two. We'll definitely lose money to gain publicity. The current e-reading market, especially for traditional content e-reading, doesn't have a mature market or a stable and profitable industry chain. We need to develop it ourselves," Xin Zixing said. "I don't even want it to be charged for. It's just a product we launched to let more people know about it and read it."

Lu Yanhe said, "Then what about the production costs?"

Xin Zixing said, "YeMai.com has its own profit points. From the perspective of the input and output of this book alone, it may not be profitable. However, let me put it bluntly, we want to launch such a book series not for profit, but for brand influence and to gain a stable group of readers."

Chen Siqi nodded and said, "I understand, but does that mean all the costs will be paid by Yemai.com? Including our salaries? We can't work for free, can we?"

Xin Zixing laughed, “Of course. My idea is very simple. For the first phase, I will apply to the company for 100,000 yuan as production funding. You can make this book within this budget. The 100,000 yuan also includes the remuneration for the two of you. Let’s see the effect of the first phase. If the effect meets our expectations, we will sign a long-term cooperation agreement and the production funding can be increased. But this increase must depend on how many readers it can convert.”

"Does the 100,000 yuan price tag include all copyrights, or just the right to distribute the content online?" Chen Siqi asked cautiously.

Xin Zixing said, "I can't say for sure right now. I need to report back and confirm."

“If it costs 100,000 yuan for all the copyrights, we definitely cannot accept it,” Chen Siqi said directly. “To be honest, this price is not high.”

"This is no longer a low price for an electronic Mook."

"As you said, there are no basic electronic Mooks yet, the market hasn't been developed, and without comparison, how can we know if it's a high price or a low price?" Chen Siqi shook her head. "Jiang Yuqian, Lu Yanhe, Li Zhibai, Song Linxin, Liu Jiazhen, Mingyin... if you put these names together on any product, the advertising value would be more than 100,000. Not to mention brand influence, just these names alone would attract a lot of traffic, and that traffic would be a significant source of advertising revenue for your Yemai.com, right?"

Xin Zixing glanced at Chen Siqi with some surprise.

Lu Yanhe is the same.

Chen Siqi took a deep breath and said, "However, for the first phase of 100,000 yuan, as long as you agree that it is only for the right to disseminate online, I think we can try it first and see what we can achieve in the first phase. Then we can talk about the future. To be honest, 100,000 yuan is difficult to just pay the manuscript fees and design fees of these people."

“I know, of course I know that this amount of money is incomparable to the investment in the traditional magazine era, but to be honest, apart from our Yemai.com, no other company would spend 100,000 yuan to try something that no one else is doing now,” Xin Zixing said. “As long as this Mook can get more than 50,000 subscribers, we will increase the production budget from the second issue onwards, at least to 150,000 yuan per issue.”

Chen Siqi said, "How are subscription numbers calculated? Since you don't plan to sell them, how will you calculate subscription numbers?"

“If a user reads for more than 30 minutes, we count it as one subscription,” Xin Zixing said.

Chen Siqi estimated in her mind that if the book was released for free, people would not need to spend money to subscribe to it, and 50,000 subscriptions would not be a lot.

The number of loyal fans that Jiang Yuqian and a few other celebrities can attract is more than that.

But there's a problem: they'll read articles by their idols, but can they really stick with that for half an hour?

Chen Siqi harbored doubts.

In fact, if someone is willing to read for more than half an hour, it means that they are basically accepting of the content of the book and are really willing to read it.

If you calculate it that way, 50,000 subscribers is quite a lot.

-

After meeting Xin Zixing, Chen Siqi and Lu Yanhe both fell silent for a while, deep in thought.

What should I do? How should I decide?

Lu Yanhe didn't really have much of a concept of these things; he was more concerned with the content itself.

So, after thinking about it for a while, he stopped thinking about it.

Let Chen Siqi figure it out; she seems to be much more experienced in this matter than he is.

Chen Siqi looked up at him and asked, "What do you think?"

Lu Yanhe said, "I'll listen to you."

Chen Siqi looked at him in surprise and said, "This is the book you wanted to make."

“Well, but I’ve found that I’m really not good at these things. I’m only thinking about not losing money. If you asked me to think about it, we would probably fail immediately because of my lack of foresight.” Lu Yanhe admitted his weakness and explained sincerely, “You are much more perceptive than me when it comes to who to cooperate with, how to cooperate, and how to distribute the profits.”

Chen Siqi: "...You can't just sit back and do nothing like that."

Lu Yanhe said, "The right people should do the right things."

Chen Siqi paused for a moment and said, "As long as Yemai.com doesn't make exorbitant demands for ownership of this book, I'm inclined to cooperate with them. A suitable book needs to be placed on a suitable platform to achieve a synergistic effect greater than the sum of its parts."

Lu Yanhe laughed and breathed a sigh of relief: "That's great. I was really worried that you wouldn't want to cooperate with Yemai.com."

“I’m not stupid. They’re just a bit stingy and didn’t meet my expectations, but they didn’t cheat us,” Chen Siqi said. “Besides, 100,000 yuan is enough to produce this book. It’s just that the two of us will most likely have to pay for our ideals and won’t make much money.”

“If this book can be developed into a series as Sister Zixing suggested and start making a profit, we’ll split the profits 50/50,” Lu Yanhe said.

Chen Siqi curled the corners of her lips. "So generous?"

While the book is said to be a collaborative effort between two people, what truly enabled its success was Lu Yanhe's network of connections and influence. Otherwise, without inviting Jiang Yuqian and the others to contribute articles, Yemai.com wouldn't have been so eager to collaborate with them.

Chen Siqi never intended to split the profits 50/50 with Lu Yanhe.

Lu Yanhe said, "It was originally something we did together."

Chen Siqi nodded and said, "Okay, then I believe you."

"Mm." Lu Yanhe nodded.

"Now we have one more thing to do."

"What's up?"

“Giving this book a name is also giving this book series a name,” Chen Siqi said.

Lu Yanhe asked, "Do you have any ideas?"

Chen Siqi: "This is obvious. I don't believe you don't have your own thoughts."

Lu Yanhe laughed.

Indeed, if you have the idea of ​​making a magazine, how could you not have thought about what kind of name to give it?

Lu Yanhe asked, "What name did you want?"

Chen Siqi: "You go first."

Lu Yanhe said, "Actually, it's a very ordinary name, 'Jump Up'."

"Jump up?"

“Hmm.” Lu Yanhe nodded. “When I was writing an essay before, I wrote a sentence that I remember quite well. At that time, I wanted to change my mediocre life. I wrote, I don’t want to look at the world map and idly imagine the future of traveling around the world. I want to jump into the depths of the universe and go to the black hole to see if there is a new continent on the other side.”

Lu Yanhe noticed that the moment he finished speaking, Chen Siqi's gaze towards him changed.

“I really like what you said,” Chen Siqi said.

“I liked it very much, so I always remembered it.”

“Let’s use this sentence as the introduction for the first episode,” Chen Siqi said. “The title is ‘Jump Up,’ which is quite good.”

"What was the name you had in mind before?" Lu Yanhe asked.

Chen Siqi shook her head, "I prefer yours, I'm not saying anything more."

She took out a pen and paper, wrote down Lu Yanhe's words on the paper, and then wrote "jump up" after it.

“Lu Yanhe, I suddenly have a bit of affection for this name. When I wrote it down, I especially hoped that it would last a long time.”

"Then let's do our best." Lu Yanhe smiled earnestly.

-

In the following days, Lu Yanhe began his agonizing journey of being urged to submit his manuscript.

Chen Siqi messaged him: "I'll leave those people's manuscripts to you to follow up. I've sent invitations to some authors that I think are suitable, to see if they're willing to contribute."

Lu Yanhe asked: Which authors did you send invitations to?

Chen Siqi sent over a list, and Lu Yanhe realized he didn't recognize any of the names.

Chen Siqi said: These are all authors I found online who tell stories about their student days and whose posts are very popular. I would like to ask them to write more in detail and in more detail about their student days. Maybe I can get some good manuscripts.

Lu Yanhe thought Chen Siqi's approach was quite unconventional. Many people search for manuscripts online, but few use online content to invite authors to create richer content.

To Lu Yanhe's surprise, the first person to submit a manuscript was Song Linxin.

Song Linxin sent over the article she had written in just five days.

Lu Yanhe was astonished, not knowing why it had happened so quickly.

Upon opening it, I found that Song Linxin was talking about her experience playing in a band during her high school years.

Lu Yanhe immediately took Song Linxin's article to Li Zhibai: "She has already submitted her manuscript, and you haven't written a single word yet!"

Li Zhibai: "Yan Liang hasn't been written yet either!"

"He's already written half of it!" Lu Yanhe decided to use his tactic of wearing Li Zhibai down. "You'd better at least write the beginning today, Brother Li, Brother Bai, Big Brother!"

Li Zhibai looked worried: "Alright, alright."

Lu Yanhe watched him sit in front of the computer, unable to write a single word for a long time. He had really tried, but it wasn't working. Lu Yanhe realized that he might have to think of another way.

He thought of a way to write for Li Zhibai himself, but then he realized that wouldn't work. He also needed to write his own articles for this column, and if the styles of the two articles were too similar, there would be problems.

How about changing it to an interview format?

The question is, who can conduct the interview?

Moreover, this column is more immersive because it is narrated in the first person.

Moreover, people who are not familiar with Li Zhibai will not be able to get any real stories from him. That's just how he is; he will only give perfunctory answers to people he is not close to, even professional reporters.

-

While urging him to finish the manuscript, Lu Yanhe also thought about his book. He felt that the current content was too little. There were enough well-known figures, but not enough content.

Besides the people invited by Chen Siqi, we also need other articles.

Lu Yanhe suddenly thought of his classmates, Lin Yu and Bai Yu.

Lin Yu is a "hexagonal warrior" among students, serving as both class monitor and top student. Perhaps we could ask her to write an article?

Then there's Bai Yu, who often writes novels. Luo Zicheng even read passages aloud to her in front of the whole class. In fact, everyone knows that Bai Yu has a dream of becoming a writer.

Lu Yanhe hesitated for a moment, then decided to ask them for a contribution.

If the manuscript is really unsuitable, then we can talk about it, but since we want to make a Mook that is truly related to student life, how can it not have real students creating it?

Lu Yanhe immediately sent messages to Lin Yu and Bai Yu.

When Lu Yanhe sent the message to Lin Yu, he was a little worried that she would refuse, because Lin Yu had a competition in August and she was preparing for it, so she was very busy. But Lin Yu immediately agreed and asked if there was a word count requirement.

Lu Yanhe said that around two to four thousand would be more appropriate.

Because it's an ebook, it has fewer page restrictions compared to a paper book, and the word count control is not as strict.

Lin Yu immediately agreed.

Bai Yu's first reaction was: Me? Can I?

She lacked confidence in herself.

Lu Yanhe didn't dare to say yes or that he would definitely use the manuscript at this time: "Write it first, okay? I can't promise that I will definitely use your manuscript now. This is an official electronic Mook. Liu Jiazhen and Mingyin's short stories will also be published in the first issue. But I hope that your work can be published in it. I also need your support."

Bai Yu: Okay, I'll give it a try.

Lu Yanhe breathed a sigh of relief.

-

Bai Yu put down her phone; she felt completely numb.

Since the college entrance examination results came out, the atmosphere at her home has become very tense, because she only got into an ordinary university, which did not meet her parents' expectations at all.

To this day, her parents have never smiled at her.

She cried several times. Did she fail the exam? Not entirely. Her grades were just average.

Indeed, once the college entrance examination results are released, the pressure of a single exam determining one's entire life begins.

Bai Yu herself was also depressed and kept herself locked in her room reading, not going out at all.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.

"Your dad and I won't be home for dinner tonight, so make yourself something," her mother said from outside the door.

"Mm," Bai Yu replied.

She heard her mother and father changing their shoes in the entryway.

Knowing they were going out, Bai Yu breathed a sigh of relief.

We can finally catch our breath from this low pressure.

Just then, her father's voice came from outside the door: "You got such a terrible score on the test, and you stay in your room all day long. You didn't study well, and you've even made yourself stupid."

"Alright, stop talking. What else can we do?" Her mother said gently, managing to calm her father down.

No further sound came from the two of them.

The door opens, then closes.

She was left all alone at home.

Bai Yu sat blankly in the chair for a long time.

By the time she came to her senses, the sun had already set, casting a slant of light into her room.

The room was dark, half of it shrouded in shadow.

Bai Yu's tears had already dried.

She took a deep breath, created a new document, looked at the blank document interface, and placed her hands on the keyboard.

The sound of fingers tapping on a keyboard filled the air.

"She knew she hadn't done well on the exam, but when the results came out, an overwhelming sense of sadness welled up inside her. The atmosphere at home was terrible; no one spoke during meals. She felt apologetic and didn't look up. On such a awful day, one rainy afternoon at two o'clock, she walked into a convenience store wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and there she met the boy behind a row of shelves."

...

For readers, reading is entering a dream, finding solace in the dreams of others. In fact, for authors, creation is also a process of creating dreams, finding solace in the dreams they themselves have created.

Bai Yu didn't know if her manuscript would be accepted in the end.

But at least this is an opportunity.

If she fails her exams and can't get into a good university, can her persistent writing bring her a glimmer of new hope?

(End of this chapter)