Chapter 595: Making Wedding Clothes for Others
The call was from Jie Sutai. Lao Rong had passed away. He had fought the disease for more than a year, but eventually passed away.
Before his death, Rong Shihui stepped down from the position of deputy editor-in-chief of Writers Publishing House. Writers Publishing House is preparing a memorial service for him, which will be held the day after tomorrow morning.
Lin Weimin hung up the phone. Lao Rong had been ill for more than a year. He had visited him many times. Every time he saw him, he was weaker than before, but he was always optimistic and he always believed that he could defeat the disease.
Unfortunately, human power is limited.
"It's okay if your hair falls out. It will grow back later. That's what the doctor said. It's true!"
"I was brought to this disaster by smoking. You must quit smoking. It's not difficult to quit. Don't believe in nonsense like 'quit smoking candy' or 'quit smoking tea'. The key is your own will. You will get used to it after a few days."
"This disease is really fucking painful, it hurts like hell! But I'm almost healed, just hold on."
"You're so busy at work, so don't come. Come pick me up on the day I'm discharged from the hospital. I'll ride in your Mercedes-Benz again."
…
Lin Weimin was vaguely recalling Rong Shihui's voice, appearance and smile when he was alive, his heart filled with sadness.
After a long pause, he stood up and called his colleagues in the editorial office, saying, "Our senior editor Rong Shihui has passed away. A memorial service will be held the day after tomorrow morning. His family will come to the office to post the obituary. You can go and inform your colleagues in the office. If anyone wants to attend the memorial service, go together."
After giving the instructions, Lin Weimin went to inform Cheng Zaochun, then went to the gate of the courtyard and waited for more than half an hour until Rong Shihui's son came, bringing an obituary.
Lin Weimin first took him to talk to Cheng Zaochun for a few words, and then the two of them posted the obituary on the bulletin board in the yard.
In less than an hour, the news of Rong Shihui's death had spread throughout the Guowen Society.
When the two were posting the obituary, many people gathered around them, their faces heavy and their words full of regret and sadness.
Two days later in the morning, Lin Weimin went to attend Rong Shihui's memorial service.
Today is the weekend, and more than a hundred people came to the memorial service. In addition to Rong Shihui's relatives and friends, the majority were colleagues from the Guowen Publishing House, while there were not many people from the Writers Publishing House.
Rong Shihui spent most of his working life at Guowen Publishing House, and was transferred to Writers Publishing House for only a few years.
After the memorial service, Lin Weimin waited for a while, came to the grieving Jie Sutai, comforted her with a few words, and then prepared to leave.
Xie Sutai called Lin Weimin aside and said, "Weimin, I want to ask you for help with something!"
"Sister, don't say that. Just tell me what you want to say."
Jie Sutai wiped her tears and said, "You know Lao Rong. He has been an editor all his life and has been making wedding clothes for others all his life. I thought he could leave some time for himself and write something when he was old, but no one expected..."
She said a few words, but before she got to the point, she choked up.
Lin Weimin roughly guessed what she was going to say. Xie Sutai paused for a few seconds and continued, "Laorong has written a lot of things in the past few years since his retirement, but he has high standards for himself and has torn up many things he is not satisfied with, leaving only his fables. I wonder if the publishing house can consider publishing a book for him?"
Xie Sutai's eyes were filled with pleading after she finished speaking. Lin Weimin did not hesitate and said, "No problem. I'll go get the manuscript when you're done."
Lin Weimin's full promise made Xie Sutai burst into tears. She held his hand and kept saying thank you.
After a few polite words, Lin Weimin said goodbye and left.
Agreeing to Jie Sutai to publish a book for Rong Shihui was not only due to personal feelings, but also to public interests.
Rong Shihui has been an editor all his life and has worked on many classic works, a considerable number of which were revised by him.
His editing style is different from that of many people. He often makes drastic revisions to make the works better. This approach is of course thankless. If the works are popular, it has nothing to do with him, and the writers will not appreciate his kindness. If he encounters writers who do not understand him, he will even speak ill of them.
Rong Shihui dares to revise the works of the writers he has worked with, so his own writing skills are naturally beyond doubt.
He created very few works in his life, and only published "Five Fables" in "Contemporary". After the publication of "Five Fables", Yanjing People's Broadcasting Station broadcast this work with music for more than a year. In 1988, this work also won the National Excellent Fable Award.
Lin Weimin knew that after Rong Shihui retired, apart from occasionally doing final review work for novels for the Writers Publishing House, he focused most of his time and energy on creation. He created hundreds of fables intermittently, but because he had high demands on himself, most of them were deleted by him, leaving less than half.
Lin Weimin believed in Rong Shihui's creative ability and attitude, so agreeing to Jie Sutai could not be considered completely partial.
Two days later, Xie Sutai did not ask Lin Weimin to pick it up, but asked his son to deliver the manuscript.
The manuscript was very thin, a thin booklet. Lin Weimin counted and found that there were only 42 fables, each of which was short and concise, with a total word count of less than 50,000 words. However, it was the only work written by Rong Shihui in his life.
A pre-editing meeting was held the next morning. The meeting was chaired by Lin Weimin and attended by the editors-in-chief of each editorial department of the publishing house.
"The collection of Ba Lao's works has now been published to the 17th volume. It is difficult to collect the lost works, creative talks, letters and dates in the back. Our editorial office's idea is to run an advertisement."
The person who spoke was Wang Yangchen. He was not a leader in the publishing house, but he was experienced and hardworking. He had been the editor-in-chief of Ba Lao for many years. Even though he was over 70 years old now, he was still responsible for Ba Lao's works.
In the late 1950s, Guowen Publishing House published a collection of Ba Lao's works, which only had 14 volumes at the time. Now, so many years have passed, and Ba Lao's creation continues, so the updating of the collection has become inevitable.
Lin Weimin said: "Let Contemporary Magazine help send out a solicitation letter."
He Qizhi nodded, "No problem."
"I have reviewed the set of 'Forest of Fairy Tales' in the Foreign Languages Department and there are no problems. I will ask Xiao Zhang to send it to you after the manuscript meeting. Please hurry up and prepare for typeset printing."
"By the way, Lao He, I see that many readers have complained that the cover of Contemporary magazine this year has lost its tradition. It blindly uses a dark background and a gaudy pattern, which makes people uncomfortable. Your editorial department should communicate with the design department. The publication needs to be changed. It is a good thing to introduce new things, but you cannot ignore the feelings of readers."
Lin Weimin communicated with the editors-in-chief of each editorial office in an orderly manner, and when the meeting was over, everyone dispersed.
"Li Xin!" Lin Weimin called out to Li Xin from the Contemporary Literature Editorial Department.
"Editor-in-Chief, what's the matter?"
Lin Weimin handed him Rong Shihui's collection of fables and said, "This is a collection of Mr. Rong's works. Please review it in your editorial office."
Li Xin immediately thought of Rong Shihui's death a few days ago, and knew that Lin Weimin must have been entrusted by someone, "Okay, I'll do it as soon as possible."
After the meeting, during lunch, Cheng Zaochun and Lin Weimin sat together and asked, "Do you have time this afternoon?"
"What's up?"
"I've found a printing factory. If you have time this afternoon, come with me to take a look."
"Okay." Lin Weimin agreed.
Some time ago, Xinhua Printing Factory wanted to eliminate its outdated lead printing equipment, and Guowen Publishing House bought the equipment for less than 50,000 yuan.
But Guowen Publishing House does not have a printing house, so the easiest way is to find someone to cooperate with.
State-owned printing factories would definitely not work, so Cheng Zaochun set his sights on township enterprises.
After searching for almost a month, I finally found a village-run enterprise in Daxing.
After lunch, Cheng Zaochun and Lin Weimin took a few colleagues and drove all the way to Daxing.
In later generations, Daxing was a district of Yanjing, but that was after 2001. Today, it is still a suburban county around Yanjing, located directly south of Yanjing, more than 20 kilometers away from Yanjing.
Huangcun Printing Factory is a village-run factory. It is not very large. Its most common business is printing perpetual calendars, wall calendars, and travel brochures. The output is not high, but the factory building is very large.
After inspecting the printing factory, Cheng Zaochun asked Lin Weimin: "What do you think?"
"The printing equipment is not that delicate. There is enough space here and the transportation is quite convenient. The main thing is to set the rules for the joint venture factory."
Cheng Zaochun nodded, "I just like the small scale. We can take control."
Cheng Zaochun was the president of Guowen Publishing House and he was the full representative for the joint venture of the printing factory. After a brief conversation with Lin Weimin, he started chatting with the cadres in the village and town.
The Huangcun Printing Factory is very small, with an annual output value of less than one million and a profit of less than one hundred thousand.
Guowen Publishing House paid scrap price for the lead printing equipment eliminated by Xinhua Printing Factory, but the price was different when they discussed cooperation with Huangcun Printing Factory.
Even after depreciation, this large number of machines would be worth hundreds of thousands, while the total assets of Huangcun Printing Factory are only 500,000.
After some negotiations, Guowen Press invested 600,000 yuan in lead printing equipment and 100,000 yuan in cash and became the major shareholder of Huangcun Printing Factory.
The Huangcun Printing Factory was no longer called the Huangcun Printing Factory. From then on, it was upgraded to the Yanjing National Literature Printing Factory.
The newly established Yanjing National Literature Printing Factory, thanks to the support of a large number of lead printing equipment from the Xinhua Printing Factory, has increased its production capacity by more than ten times compared to before, and its scale is comparable to that of some city-level state-owned printing factories.
The hardware conditions are a bit shabby. Both the factory buildings and printing equipment give off a "Xiaomi plus rifle" vibe.
But as Cheng Zaochun said, let's first solve the problem and then talk about it.
At least the establishment of the Yanjing National Literature Printing Factory allowed the National Literature Publishing House to take control of part of the printing business.
In a short period of time, we can meet the reprint needs of Guowen Publishing House and the printing needs of Tongwen Publishing House, saving a lot of costs.
If things develop smoothly in the future, we may be able to expand the scale and install new equipment.
Even if the development is not smooth, it is only an investment of hundreds of thousands of yuan. The printing costs saved in a year can be saved, so it is not a loss anyway.
Having their own printing factory is a good thing for both Guowen Publishing House and Tongwen Publishing House.
Jointly setting up a printing factory is not something that can be completed in a day or two, so Lin Weimin no longer cared about this matter after the inspection.
"Jiuzhou Heroes" is the first pure martial arts novel publication in China. Since the first issue was released in mid-July, it has been warmly welcomed by readers.
Especially the magazine's headline work "The World's Number One", although only 50,000 words were published in the first issue, its grand story structure, twists and turns in the plot and full and three-dimensional characters have gradually unfolded and have been loved by countless readers. Many readers specially wrote to the editorial department, praising this work as a rare classic among domestic martial arts novels in recent years, which is not inferior to the works of Jin Guliang.
Readers' love is not just empty talk, it is reflected in the sales. "Jiuzhou Heroes" was reprinted three times within one month, with circulation reaching 1.1 million copies, breaking the sales record for the first issue in the domestic periodical industry.
The sales ceiling of the domestic periodical industry is "Popular Movies", with a single issue's highest circulation reaching 9 million copies. The sales ceiling of popular literature magazines is "Story Club", with a single issue's highest circulation reaching 4 million copies.
Whether it is "Popular Movies" or "Story Club", their sales are good, but none of the publications has ever achieved the feat of breaking one million copies of the first issue.
Tongwenshe, a little-known new publishing house, became famous in the domestic publishing industry with the first issue of "Jiuzhou Heroes" and became the focus of attention of countless peers.
(End of this chapter)
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