Chapter 3374 Extra Strong Sister 28
Zhou Man turned and ran, "Go home and wait first, I'll come find you when I find it."
Mingda: ...She didn’t even have the chance to say that these bookstores belong to two families. Also, it’s not time to leave the office yet. Does this count as leaving early?
Zhou Man ran back to the Princess's Mansion, went into the study and began to look for it. "I remember seeing it in a book that mentioned a new papermaking method, so I bought it."
"But after reading it through, I found that the things recorded in it were very mixed. It only mentioned a printing method called movable type printing." Zhou Man squatted in front of the bookshelf and searched through it, muttering to Keke as he flipped through the pages.
"Didn't we deduce that this method wasn't applicable?"
The sudden sound made Zhou Man sit down on the ground. She turned her head and saw Bai Shan in casual clothes, standing in front of the innermost bookshelf with a book in his hand.
Bai Shan closed the book helplessly and went forward to help her up. "It's rare to see you scared."
"What are you doing at home in the middle of the day instead of going to the imperial court?" Zhou Man asked angrily, "Don't you know that scaring others can kill them?"
Bai Shan: "...From childhood to adulthood, Bai Er and I have tried countless times to scare you from the shadows, but we never succeeded. I thought you weren't afraid of sudden noises. How could I have known you would actually be afraid?"
Zhou Man looked at him suspiciously, "Do you really not know, or are you pretending?"
Bai Shan tried hard to maintain his expression, but Zhou Man stepped on his foot, crushed it, and said through gritted teeth: "I knew it!"
Bai Shan hissed and quickly hugged her, saying, "It's my fault, my fault. Please forgive me, my lady. I won't dare to do it again."
Bai Shan finally helped her find the book from the bookshelf, handed it to her, and asked, "Why did you think of this method?"
"Mingda said he wanted to open another bookstore. There are quite a lot of books on the list, and Mingda sent so many sets. The bookstore can't operate properly, so he wants to open another bookstore."
Bai Shan frowned, "You want to use a new printing method in the new bookstore?"
Zhou Man nodded, "What do you think?"
"But we've deduced before that the new printing method might not be as good as the current one," Bai Shan said. "Typesetting with movable type is too laborious and too expensive."
"I was thinking about this on the way back, but I think it's a little different, so maybe I can give it a try."
Bai Shan: "What's different?"
"Compared to when we were doing this more than a decade ago, there are more people who can read now. Didn't you also say that more and more people are taking the imperial examinations each year, but the number of people the court can recruit each year is still limited, so a large number of people are unemployed."
Bai Shan: "...You want them to do typesetting? Do those scholars need this little bit of wages?"
Who among those who can afford to go to school doesn’t have a few acres of land?
Zhou Man said, "There are always people who are short of this little bit of money. Count how many people take the imperial examinations every year? If only one of those people could get a job in a bookstore, one per year, how much work would the bookstore be able to do in a few years?"
Bai Shan thought about it and it was true. Times are different now than in the past. Since the popularity of women's education, private schools have also flourished. More and more people are literate, and not everyone is aiming for the imperial examination.
There are still many literate and unemployed people among the people.
"But hiring people who can read and write is still more expensive."
"Well, books aren't cheap, either. Those who are capable should get them. We shouldn't be too stingy with the wages."
"Since your goal is to lower book prices, you must control the cost of each book, including labor costs."
Zhou Man: "We'll know after the calculation, so you also think this is feasible, right?"
Bai Shan basically did not stop Zhou Man from doing what he wanted to do. Even if he felt that he could not do it, he would let the other party try. It was rare for him to directly reject it, and this time was no exception.
Bai Shan nodded and said, "You can give it a try. If you need anything, come to me."
Zhou Man happily closed the book and turned to leave, but Bai Shan stopped her and said, "Copy the method on a piece of paper and send it to him. You should leave the book at home."
Although he put the book on the bookshelf without fear of people reading it, there is still a difference between this and deliberately sending it to smart people.
Zhou Man agreed after thinking about it.
He flipped to the page with the printed text and began transcribing. "Mingda has found some disciples from the Mohist School. With them around, we should be able to figure this out much faster. I'll let them figure out how to reduce costs later."
Woodblock printing and typesetting did not require people who knew many words, or even people who could read and write. All they had to do was print out the blocks one by one.
But movable type is different. The typesetter not only needs to recognize the characters, but also needs to know every word, and even read the textbook carefully, so as to avoid mistakes and be efficient.
If the printing volume is not large, the cost of movable type typesetting will be too high. In this respect, movable type is completely inferior to woodblock printing.
But movable type also has its advantages. First, as long as there are enough type molds, a bookstore can quickly typeset a new book without having to carve each word and stroke from scratch like a woodblock print, which is very slow.
Secondly, during the printing process, if some characters are damaged, the movable type can be quickly replaced at a low cost, unlike woodblock printing, where if one character is damaged, the entire plate will be damaged and the cost of repair will be extremely high.
As Zhou Man copied, he said, "Another reason I recommend movable type is that more and more people are writing books these days, especially those about vernacular novels and miscellaneous conversations, as well as collections of poetry and prose by various literati. Throughout the Great Jin Dynasty, with the exception of a few individuals, everyone else's books are copied by hired copyists in bookshops."
"Why is that? Isn't it because engraving is difficult, and if the quantity is not enough, the bookstore will not accept it?"
A new book, like Bai Erlang's, which has already accumulated a reputation, would be fine. The bookstore would engrave it and reprint hundreds or thousands of copies every year. There would be no worries about bookstores and booksellers buying it, and that was when the bookstore made a profit.
If a book written by an author can only sell dozens of copies in the capital, then even if it is sold to other places, there will only be a few hundred copies in total. The bookstore will have to discard the engraved plates once they are printed, so the printing cost is too high.
Few booksellers are willing to pay this amount, unless the author pays for it himself. Otherwise, most of the story books and miscellaneous talks are actually copied by hired people.
It was a tradition for the Zhou family's children to read and copy books to earn pocket money. After they had mastered the handwriting skills, they could copy poetry collections and miscellaneous talk manuscripts from the bookstore.
The price is a little higher than copying "The Analects of Confucius".
Zhou Man copied down everything about movable type printing, then sighed sadly, "But I remember one Mid-Autumn Festival, when I was drunk, I mentioned that printing technology was about just a few clicks to print. If Mingda insists on asking about this..."
"Just say you saw it in a dream, and it seemed like something the gods in heaven were doing."
"That sounds like a lie."
Bai Shan: "But when you say it, it doesn't seem fake at all. Don't worry, she will believe you, because this is also true. It's just that it's not the way the gods in heaven do it, but the way the underworld does it."
But the underworld doesn’t sound good, the gods in heaven sound better.
Good night
(End of this chapter)
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