Chapter 63 The Work of Editors
Qin Chaoyang clapped his hands and said to everyone, "From now on, it will become a bimonthly publication, and everyone's work will be even busier. Lao Meng has already applied to the publishing house to increase the staff of our editorial department, so please don't worry."
There was a smile on everyone's face. The growing strength of the editorial department proved that the publication was on the rise, and they were happy to be a part of it.
Lin Weimin was even happier. "I am finally not the last one to enter the office. Someone will do the work for me in the future."
Seeing his boastful look, Qin Chaoyang couldn't help but criticize him, "Don't even think about it, all the people here are veteran editors. You, just focus on doing odd jobs!"
Everyone in the office laughed without any sympathy.
Lin Weimin's smile immediately turned into a bitter face.
He muttered, “Young people have no human rights!”
"Don't say weird things!" Qin Chaoyang scolded him. The old comrade knew the principle of giving a sweet reward after a slap in the face. "You have done a good job in planning the album, so your monthly bonus will be increased by 7 yuan."
Finally there was some consolation. Although Lin Weimin didn't need the seven dollars, it was at least a recognition of his work.
"Thank you, Director. I will do my best!"
“Well, that’s a good attitude.”
After Qin Chaoyang left, everyone in the office temporarily lost interest in work and started discussing the upcoming revision and staff expansion.
When the Guowen Publishing House put all its efforts into publishing "Contemporary", each editorial group in the company would submit their best manuscripts and strongly recommend the works of their own group at the pre-editing meeting. They all hoped to introduce the edited books to readers through "Contemporary" before they were published, and each pre-editing meeting was very lively.
Mo Yingfeng's "General's Chant", Chen Guokai's "The Price", Yang Xinji and Hu Yuewei's "Crazy Festival", Zhu Chunyu's "In the Sea of People", Wang Meng's "Cloth Ceremony"...
It is precisely because of these excellent and high-quality works that "Contemporary" has gained great popularity as soon as it was released.
Now, the situation has changed. The change from a quarterly to a bimonthly means that the amount of manuscripts required has increased by half. This is a huge test for both the company and the editorial department.
Originally, everyone selected the best to submit manuscripts to "Contemporary". Now the manuscript intake has increased, but there are only so many excellent manuscripts. If we want to ensure the quality of the manuscripts, we must expand the scale of manuscript collection. After all, it is impossible for the publishing house to continuously provide blood transfusions to "Contemporary". "Contemporary" is our own son, and other editorial departments are not born by stepmothers!
"It seems that collecting manuscripts won't be so easy in the future."
"It's definitely more tiring than before, because our magazine is so popular. Think about when we first started last year, wasn't it more tiring than it is now?"
The person who said this was Zhu Changsheng, one of the founding members of Contemporary magazine and one of the original trio.
Xiao Yao suddenly mentioned Lin Weimin and said, "What a pity for Weimin. If he hadn't joined our editorial department, he would have been a stable contributor."
Including the novel "The Cliff" published in the album, Lin Weimin has published two novels in "Contemporary".
Everyone in the editorial department knows that he is a quick writer. The quality of his manuscripts is stable and he writes them quickly. So far, he has never been asked to revise a manuscript.
Unfortunately, after Lin Weimin joined the editorial department of "Contemporary", he could not be both a referee and an athlete. This was an unspoken rule in the industry. Unless there were unexpected circumstances, Lin Weimin's manuscripts would no longer appear in "Contemporary".
"What's so regretful about this? If you need manuscripts in the future, you can just take Weimin's manuscripts to other groups to exchange."
Liu Yin made a clever remark and made everyone laugh.
Lin Weimin smiled bitterly and said, "Thank you so much."
After joking for a while, everyone started working seriously again.
Lin Weimin stopped studying the manuscripts he received from the old writer. He went to a corner of the office which was filled with letters from readers.
When the magazine was first published, the editorial department did not receive many letters, only a few hundred. However, there were too few staff at the time, and even manuscript collection, review, and publication were problems. How could we have the time to deal with letters from readers?
It was not until later when we had more manpower that we remembered to deal with it.
This work was previously handled by Xiao Yao. With Lin Weimin, Xiao Yao was liberated and Lin Weimin completely inherited most of her miscellaneous work in the editorial department.
Even with someone dedicated to handling letters, the editorial department still receives more and more letters. Only a portion of them are placed in the corner of the office, and the real bulk of them are piled up in the secretary's office of the modern department of the agency. The scale has only increased, not decreased.
Lin Weimin now spends two hours every day to deal with letters. It’s not that he doesn’t want to spend more time, but even if he deals with these letters every day, it is impossible to finish them in a short period of time, and it will delay his work. It is better to take it slowly.
The contents of the readers' letters were varied. The letter that Lin Weimin was reading mainly praised the magazine for its good run. Lin Weimin felt a little embarrassed by all the flattery. It was not until the end of the letter that he earnestly requested that "Contemporary" should be changed from a quarterly to a monthly magazine.
My goodness, this reader is really a bit inhuman. He went straight from one issue every three months to one issue every month. Aren’t you afraid of the collective death of the editorial department?
After reading the letter, he spread out a piece of letter paper and wrote a brief reply to the reader named Liu Quanbin. The gist of the letter was that the editorial department had noticed the calls from the majority of readers and was planning to revise the edition, and that good news would be notified to everyone at the beginning of next year.
He opened another letter, which was sent recently. Lin Weimin took a look at the pile of envelopes. Maybe they were messed up during sorting. The letters were all placed in chronological order.
The main content of the letter was to praise the "thrilling scene" published in the previous issue of the magazine. Apart from that, there was nothing else. Such a letter without any actual content did not require a reply.
In fact, there is no need for readers to write to praise it. Lu Yao's "A Thrilling Scene" has won unanimous praise from critics and readers since it was published in the last issue of "Contemporary". Although it has not yet reached the height of his later work "Life", it is by no means an exaggeration to describe it as "coming to the fore".
Moreover, Qin Chaoyang had a special fondness for Lu Yao. Even the title of the novel in "Contemporary" was written by him personally in official script.
I tore open another letter, which was asking for subscription. This was the financial sponsor, so I had to give a brief reply.
There are also local magazines applying to establish contact with Contemporary Magazine, but Lin Weimin has no say on this. He will collect a few of them and hand them over to the editor-in-chief Qin Chaoyang for processing.
Some letters ask for adaptations of movies and TV series published in magazines. Not to mention the author, even the editor-in-chief can't do it, so just forward the letter directly to the author.
After working for more than two hours and receiving letters with all kinds of content, it is finally time to get off work.
(End of this chapter)
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