Chapter 876 Under the Banyan Tree
This year, Wenhua Film and Television has been the most successful among the many subordinate units of Guowen Press. This is not because other sister units have not worked hard, but because Wenhua produced "Hero".
This movie broke countless records for Chinese films. Its achievements are simply incredible and cannot be beaten!
For example, Tiantian Changting, which Xiao Liu is in charge of, has made a profit of nearly 20 million this year, but during meetings he can only bow his head and act like a grandson.
But this is not a problem for Xiao Liu. He has gotten used to it over the years and has gotten used to being a younger brother.
Apart from Xiao Liu, the most depressed person is Haiyan.
This year, Wencheng Film and Television launched four TV series, all of which achieved good results. Combined with the copyright sales of the TV series produced in the previous two years, revenue easily exceeded 150 million yuan, and net profit exceeded 70 million yuan, firmly maintaining its position as the number one in the domestic TV series production field.
But compared with Wenhua, Wencheng's achievement is not good enough.
The movie "Hero" made a net profit of more than 200 million yuan. Not to mention Wencheng, there are few companies in the Chinese business community that can make more money than it.
It’s so unfair!
Haiyan looked at Yu Dong, who was full of energy and talking fluently at the meeting, and felt an indescribable feeling in his heart.
In terms of talent and experience, he is better than Yu Dong in every aspect. Even in terms of age, he is older than Yu Dong!
In the past, when everyone was interacting with each other, he always regarded himself as the big brother. But now, the big brother was knocked down on the beach by the younger brother. From now on, he is embarrassed to sit at the head seat when going out to eat.
No one knew Haiyan’s little thoughts. After the meeting, he and Yu Dong walked together, talking and laughing. The scene was very harmonious.
"Alas, it seems that the publishing business has really reached its end." After the meeting, Cheng Zaochun and Lin Weimin walked together and suddenly sighed.
Today is the year-end summary meeting of Guowen Publishing House. It is clear that the publishing business of the publishing house has stopped the downward trend of the past two years, but the growth rate is less than two percentage points, which is almost negligible.
The revenue scale is okay, but the key is that the net profit is far surpassed by its subordinate unit Wencheng Film and Television, not to mention Wenhua Film and Television.
"Why don't we do some teaching supplementary business?" Cheng Zaochun said.
Lin Weimin glanced at him and asked in surprise, "Doing teaching business? Who gave you the idea?"
"It's not someone who came up with the idea. I saw my grandson's homework a few days ago. In the schoolbag of a junior high school student, all he has are supplementary books except for the textbook. Now he spends two to three hundred yuan a year just on those supplementary books."
Lin Weimin nodded. "With our country's education system, supplementary teaching materials are of course very profitable. This has been the case in recent years, and will be even more so in the future."
Seeing that Lin Weimin agreed with his opinion, Cheng Zaochun smiled with some ease. Just as he was about to speak, Lin Weimin said, "But we are a literary publishing house, and we are publishing supplementary teaching materials. How do you think the People's Publishing House and the Education Publishing House will view us?"
"What can I say? What did you say? It's about making money, it's not shameful!" Cheng Zaochun joked.
"Okay, Old Cheng. I never knew that people's ideas change so quickly."
Lao Cheng was not happy about the compliment, "I don't want to be suppressed by these companies every year. It would be embarrassing if I told others about it!"
Lao Cheng's ideas represent the voices and attitudes of the vast majority of domestic employees. For a long time, the employees of Guowen Press have had an innate sense of superiority over Wenhua, Wencheng and other subordinate units.
But this year, Wenhua and Wencheng's performance has exploded, and their profits have far surpassed those of Guowen Society, making these people in the society feel very uncomfortable.
This is like a down-and-out noble lady kindly taking in a country girl, with a condescending attitude of charity, but in the blink of an eye the country girl turns into Cinderella.
Lin Weimin chuckled and said, "You'll get used to it slowly. This kind of thing will probably become the norm in the future. Although publishing is the foundation of our company, everyone has to understand its industrial characteristics. The scale of the industry is also there, and there's nothing we can do about it."
He added: "You have to look at both sides of everything. Although the ability of the publishing business to generate profits is declining, it is still an indispensable leader in the content industry."
Cheng Zaochun nodded slightly and said nothing more.
Lin Weimin asked, "By the way, have you looked at the website I showed you yesterday?"
"Oh, I just remembered that I have something to do later."
Old Cheng pretended to look at his watch, ignored Lin Weimin's words, and left quickly.
Lin Weimin shook his head speechlessly. The old comrade was playing tricks and had no respect for his reputation anymore.
Under Lao Zhou's persistent supervision, Lao Cheng has now mastered the use of computers and is adept at surfing the Internet.
However, I still can’t change my mindset and I get a headache whenever I look at the computer.
Back in the office, Lin Weimin turned on his computer.
The website he had previously asked Lao Cheng to try was called Under the Banyan Tree, and it was originally just a personal homepage in Chinese.
The owner of this personal homepage, William Zhu, is a Chinese American who originally ran an advertising company. As his personal homepage became more and more popular, William Zhu became more and more addicted to it, so he sold his advertising company this year and turned his personal homepage into a Chinese literature website.
At that time, Under the Banyan Tree had just been established and had been online for less than a month. Lin Weimin knew about its launch because he saw people discussing it on the reader forum of the Guowen Press official website.
He was certainly familiar with the name Under the Banyan Tree, the earliest established and most branded literary website in China, which once had one of the world's largest original literary manuscript repositories and made many well-known online writers famous, such as Li Xunhuan, Ning Caishen, Annie Baby, and so on.
At this time, because the website has not been open for long, the content of Under the Banyan Tree’s website is not very rich.
The submission method of Under the Banyan Tree is very unique. It is not like the current forums where any user can post freely after registering.
Instead, a submission link is placed on the website. Users can click on this link and submit their works to Under the Banyan Tree via email.
Guowen Publishing House has held an Internet creative writing competition before, but because it was open to the public, the submitted articles were published directly on the forum.
During this period, Lin Weimin was also planning to open an email submission channel for each editorial office of Guowen Publishing House. However, many editors were still not proficient in computer operation, so he could only let everyone familiarize themselves with computer operation first, and planned to officially open the email submission channel next year.
It is actually very troublesome to submit articles to Under the Banyan Tree via email, because this method requires preliminary review of the content and has very high requirements on the speed of content review by the website editor.
However, apart from publishing content independently on forums, there are no similar websites on the Internet that accept user submissions. The style of Under the Banyan Tree immediately began to attract the attention of many users.
Only one month after the website was launched, the number of independent IP visits exceeded 100,000, and this number is still soaring every day, which is much more than the number of users of Guowenshe.
After browsing the website for a while, Lin Weimin glanced at the contact information at the bottom of the website. Under the Banyan Tree is now affiliated with the Shanghai Hotline website, which is a bit troublesome.
After thinking it over carefully, Lin Weimin contacted Zhu William.
After hearing him introduce himself, Zhu William was silent for a long time in surprise, and even suspected that the person on the other end of the phone might be a liar.
"I have tried the Banyan Tree website for a few days and I find it very interesting, but I guess you are under a lot of pressure to operate it right now?"
Lin Weimin's words pointed out the dilemma that Zhu William is facing now.
Although Zhu William created the Rongshuxia website, he was the only one who was responsible for reviewing, editing, and publishing the website content, and he was even responsible for all technical matters.
Even though he is a full-time worker now, he is still very busy every day.
It's not like Zhu William hasn't recruited people before, and he's not short of money. He had been recruiting before he started the website, but it's not easy to find someone who understands literature, computers, and has similar interests to him these days. He wasn't originally in the literary circle, and he hasn't met the right person after recruiting for a long time.
Touched by Lin Weimin's words, Zhu William let down his guard and started chatting with him.
After a long while, Zhu William was finally convinced that the person on the other end of the phone was not a liar, but the great writer Lin Weimin he knew.
“I can tell that you are a very idealistic person. You did not treat Under the Banyan Tree as a business, but whether it is building a website or creating content, it is not something that can be done well by one person alone.
Our Guowen Society is very interested in Under the Banyan Tree, and we can provide you with the help you need most right now."
After chatting for nearly half an hour, Lin Weimin finally revealed his true colors.
Lin Weimin's words were very tactful, but Zhu William understood what he meant. Did he want to invest in Under the Banyan Tree?
If Lin Weimin had said from the beginning that he wanted to invest in Rongshuxia, Zhu William might have refused without even a second thought.
In 1994, William Zhu graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles and decided to come to China to start a business after working for a year. He chose advertising as the business direction.
In the 1990s, when the domestic advertising industry was booming, William Zhu discovered direct mail advertising, a field that had never been tried before, and thus founded United Artists Advertising Company.
In the second half of this year, in order to establish Under the Banyan Tree, he sold United Artists, which he had worked hard to run for several years, to Omnicom Group, one of the world's four largest advertising groups, for US$12.4 million.
With a huge amount of cash in hand, William Zhu is not short of money, so he is not interested in so-called venture capital at all.
But after talking with Lin Weimin for such a long time, he had gradually accepted Lin Weimin's point of view without realizing it.
It is indeed unrealistic for him to run a literary website alone.
Guowen Publishing House is the largest literary publishing house in China and has a significant influence in the domestic literary field. They also held an Internet creative competition some time ago and obviously have some insights and experience in the field of Internet literature. If we can cooperate with them, it seems to be a good choice.
While Zhu William was hesitating, Lin Weimin continued, "William, I should have come to Shanghai to have a face-to-face meeting with you, so that I would appear more sincere. But after thinking about it, I think I should still invite you to Yanjing, to our Chinese Literature Society, to feel the atmosphere here. Whether you are willing to cooperate with us or not, I think this is a rare opportunity for you to communicate."
Zhu William hesitated for a moment and said, “Okay, I accept your invitation.”
(End of this chapter)
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