Chapter 208 [Daily Life]
All the girls in dormitory 401 gathered around in shock, looking at Jiang Ning with sparkling eyes.
Especially Yu Qianqian, Zhang Min and Liu Yan.
They are all still working hard for tutoring jobs outside of school. At that time, there was no Xianyu, no tutoring groups or communities. If they want to find reliable tutoring jobs, they need to be introduced by seniors in school, recommended by teachers and counselors in the college, or join some tutoring institutions outside of school.
They had just started college and had just figured out how to find tutoring jobs. They hadn't even met a few people yet, but Jiang Ning had already received a job from CCTV.
That’s the central bank!
Zhang Min was very envious and wanted to ask if she could be brought along. In fact, her essays were also very good, but she was too embarrassed to say it. She blushed and asked, "Can I ask what kind of job it is?"
Jiang Ning said, "It's the job of a small screenwriter." Looking at Zhang Min's envious eyes, she did not hide it, "I haven't even discussed the payment yet, so I might be working for nothing."
Of course, she didn't mention the copyright fee of more than 200,000 yuan.
When it comes to working for free, Zhang Min immediately loses interest. In her dictionary, there is no such concept as working for free. If there is no money, she won't do the job no matter how good it is.
Yu Qianqian and Liu Yan still felt that it was amazing. Except for Zhang Min who never doubted her future and was always full of confidence, they knew very well what it meant for Jiang Ning to receive the screenwriter job from CCTV at this time.
This means that Jiang Ning has caught the attention of some people at the central bank, and after graduation, Jiang Ning's chances of getting a job at the central bank are higher than others.
That's the central government. Even if they enter the system after graduation, how can they compare with the central government? That is the department that is closest to the center of power, has the most opportunities, and has direct access to the top.
Although they are confident that they will have good jobs after graduation, compared with Jiang Ning who determined his future direction and the path he wanted to take so quickly, their future is still unclear.
Even now, they have not decided whether they will work in their own professional field in the future or go back to work in the system. They are still just college students who have just entered university.
Shen Xinlan was not so envious. She was originally a native of Beijing. Her mother resigned from the system and went into business. Her future plans were also very clear. She would definitely study abroad. As for whether she would settle abroad in the future, she had no specific plans at present. But no matter what, she had a lot of choices.
She was just like the other girls in the dormitory, shocking Jiang Ning's brain.
Being able to be admitted to Peking University, they were already the best among thousands of people. But when they arrived at Peking University and stood in front of Jiang Ning, they still felt the gap and sighed that they were inferior to Jiang Ning.
Even after Shen Xinlan went abroad and stayed there for many years, she never doubted whether her motherland would become stronger, and she never felt inferior to people from other countries because of her country's temporary poverty. She was always confident and held her head high, because she had seen such outstanding people during her college years. There were such outstanding people in their country, and in places she couldn't see, there were many people as outstanding as her who were working silently for their motherland.
Even though she had met many outstanding, interesting, and free souls over the years, there were still very few who could compare to her roommate.
After Jiang Ning greeted them, she returned to her small rental house and called Wang Yong and the editor at the publishing house to tell them that the film rights to "The Song Dynasty" had been sold and that the TV series rights to "White Snake" had been bought by CCTV.
The publishing house and Wang Yong were stunned when they heard the news, and then they were filled with ecstasy.
Oh my god! That’s the central bank!
This year, due to the popularity of the movie "White Snake", the box office is currently ranked first this year. At the Wanhua Film Festival during this period, "White Snake" won the Best Picture Award. Jiang Bai, who played the supporting role in "White Snake", won the "Most Popular Actor" award. The physical book of "The Years I Cultivated Immortality as a White Snake" is selling like hot cakes. Now the total sales of several copies of the book are almost catching up with the sales level of "Song Dynasty" with tens of millions.
Once the TV series version of "White Snake" comes out, the sales of the physical book of "White Snake" are expected to increase again.
This sales increase is not an increase in the sales of a single work, but will drive the sales of other works written by Ning Meng.
Moreover, what does it mean that "White Snake" was made into a self-produced drama by CCTV?
You know, apart from the fact that Mango TV became extremely popular this year due to "Happy Little Swallow", whose ratings directly broke the 50% mark and temporarily surpassed CCTV's ratings, in any other time period, CCTV's ratings are still the undisputed number one in this era. It can be said that whatever CCTV broadcasts, becomes popular.
CCTV is the guarantee of ratings.
With the original influence of "White Snake" and the influence of the central bank, the publishing house can already predict that by then the sales of the physical book of "White Snake" will probably exceed that of "Song Dynasty" and directly exceed 10 million.
This is the second book written by Ning Meng that has grossed over 10 million yuan.
There is also the currently popular drama "The King's Guards". Due to the popularity of this drama, the physical book of "The King's Guards" has been reprinted again and again.
This time, one million copies were directly printed and distributed nationwide. Jiang Ning invested all the royalties he received into that electronic stock, waiting for the arrival of the 519 market next year.
This time I called them to let them prepare in advance.
The publisher's first reaction was: "Teacher Ning Meng, can you give me another 20,000 signed copies? We will make a three-in-one hardcover collector's edition of "The Imperial Guards", "White Snake Cultivation", and "The Great Song Dynasty Constable"!"
I have had a single-volume hardcover edition and a single-volume collector's edition, but I have not had a three-in-one hardcover collector's edition.
All I can say is that publishers have tried every possible way to sell books and make money, but readers just fall for it.
With sales of millions of copies, signed books are far too few given such a huge sales base.
Every time a signed book comes out, they rush to grab it. Many fanatical fans collect several sets of signed books by themselves. For some books that haven't come out yet, they use the connections with the bookstore staff to pre-order a batch. Only a few signed books can be circulated to major bookstores across the country.
Some people spend one or two hundred dollars to buy second-hand signed books for collection.
Other authors with such high sales would at least hold book signings or something, and travel to major cities. But Lemon Studios has been around for three years and hasn’t held a single book signing.
Although many people have confirmed that Ning Meng is a girl, there are still many readers who are not sure whether Ning Meng is a boy or a girl.
After all, they were not Ning Meng's roommates. Knowing Ning Meng's real name and the time she entered Peking University, as well as her appearance, it was easy to guess her identity. Even if many people watched the Wanhua Film Festival, they ignored Jiang Ning because the main shots were on the crew and Jiang Bai.
Moreover, not everyone goes online in this era. The Internet is still a new thing for many people today. The Internet is not well developed and the speed of information dissemination is slow. There are also a large number of paper readers who have been following the novel since "The Great Song Dynasty" and have preconceived notions that Ning Meng is a man.
Therefore, Lemon Tree's signed books are always in short supply in the market. Every time a hardcover edition or collector's edition comes out from the publishing house, even though many readers know that the signed edition is only a part and the probability is the same as winning a lottery, readers who like it will still buy it, and it will be sold out immediately after it is on the market.
Jiang Ning smiled and said, "My daytime classes are all full now, and I have to write The Imperial Guards and a new article at night. Now I've also accepted the job of writing the TV series White Snake. What do you think?"
When they heard that Jiang Ning had actually received a job as a screenwriter for CCTV, they became even more polite to Jiang Ning.
If Jiang Ning's identity as a best-selling author brings benefits to the publishing house, then Jiang Ning's current cooperation with the central bank represents the heights that Jiang Ning may reach in the future. Especially given Jiang Ning's identity, the path she is likely to take in the future may just be to manage them.
Directors Wang Yong and Li Ang, on their part, were lamenting, because the serialization of White Snake in Wuxia had ended. The release of White Snake on CCTV did not bring them much benefit in terms of magazine sales, but they were very happy. Not to mention how much the now popular film The Commander of the Imperial Guards had boosted their magazine's sales, the fact that the award of the movie White Snake and the copyright of the TV series had been bought by CCTV itself had brought great influence to their magazine.
This influence can be said to be intangible or tangible.
The intangible reason is that there was no direct increase in magazine sales during the serialization of "White Snake". The tangible reason is that Jiang Ning is a contracted writer of "Wuxia" magazine. Several very influential movies and TV series on the market are from their "Wuxia" magazine. This makes more film and television companies, when looking for copyright cooperation partners, think of "Wuxia" which has produced several hit dramas. Especially now is the time when the martial arts trend is the hottest. Some TV stations have already taken a fancy to other martial arts works serialized in their "Wuxia" and are in the copyright agency negotiation stage.
To this end, "Wuxia" magazine has also opened a new department, called the Film and Television Copyright Department, which specializes in the development and incubation of film and television copyrights.
Even Director Li Ang himself did not expect that when he founded this magazine, it was entirely out of his passion for martial arts novels. He wanted to create their own martial arts magazine in the mainland, to provide a platform for mainland authors and readers who love martial arts and the martial arts career to publish their own martial arts works.
Their magazine has faced the crisis of transformation many times, including now. Although they have gradually opened up columns for fantasy and fairy tales, and for children of the Jianghu, they have even started a column for "Interstellar Science Fiction" to warm up for Jiang Ning's next interstellar novel.
But he never imagined that at the end of the 1990s, when the magazine was about to enter the new century, it would be able to develop new businesses and enter new fields.
This is a completely unfamiliar field, transitioning from the magazine and book publishing industry to the incubation of film and television copyrights, but he has a hunch that with the advancement of technology and the popularization of televisions, there will be more and more film and television works in the future, and this will be a major trend in the future.
And their "Wuxia" magazine is already at the forefront of this industry.
He seemed to have seen the door to a new world.
For Wuxia magazine, the development of film and television copyright business was an unexpected and brand new track brought about by Ning Meng's personal works. Because Jiang Ning's film and television contracts were previously handled by Wang Yong, who then contacted Jiang Ning. Wang Yong knew the most about Jiang Ning's copyright contracts. This time, the new film and television copyright department will be headed by Wang Yong, a veteran who has been working for three years.
It's a newly established department and everything is still in the exploratory stage. The cooperation with authors is very practical. There are no contract pitfalls at all. The agency contract signed with the contracted authors is 20%. After all, their magazine has already produced hit dramas such as "White Snake", "Judge Bao" and "Jinyiwei". In the signing of the contract, it can help the authors avoid many pitfalls. Even the contract was drafted according to Jiang Ning's original contract, which is much more reliable than negotiating copyright with the film and television parties themselves, and the price is also higher than what they negotiated themselves.
Wang Yong is no longer a newcomer in the workplace, but has been promoted to deputy director and editor-in-chief of the Film and Television Copyright Department!
Because the speed of his promotion was completely linked to Jiang Ning, his uncle was so happy that he gave Jiang Ning's store a new order. It was the leftover goods from a brand's foreign trade processing order he received. This big brand found a OEM factory in China to process the products, then put its own label on them, and then sold them to domestic consumers at a brand premium that was more than ten or even twenty times higher than the factory price.
This batch of last-minute items are all the latest models released by this brand this year. Except for the lack of brand labels and private labels on the collars, the quality, materials, quality inspection cards, etc. of the rest of the down jackets are all exactly the same. Even the brand fabric quality inspection labels of the lining of the clothes are complete. This batch of items can be called high-quality goods. Uncle Wang Yong gave them all to Jiang Ning at the lowest price based on the cost price and sent them to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Uncle Wang Yong was afraid that Jiang Ning and Jiang Bai didn't understand the value of these down jackets, so he put the brand's brochures, posters, mall pricing, etc. in a package and sent it to Jiang Bai. In the mall, the premium for each down jacket was more than a thousand yuan higher than the cost price to Jiang Ning. In this era, it was definitely a luxury item.
Even if Jiang Ning's goods are sold at an extra 100 yuan per piece on top of the cost price, there are still many people who want them in wholesale. If they add a markup to the price and sell them outside, they can still make a lot of money.
Some even more ruthless people would ask the factory to put the logo and brand on the products themselves, which makes the products indistinguishable from the original ones.
In some busy commercial streets in Shanghai, such clothes are casually priced at five to six hundred, seven to eight hundred yuan. Even if you cut the price in half, you will still have three to four hundred yuan left.
It's not that people of this generation are simple. In fact, their pursuit of fashion and brands is no less than that of people ten or twenty years later. Even many rural students who have been admitted to big cities from the countryside have very strong self-esteem. They envy the brand-name clothes and shoes worn by their classmates, but cannot afford them because of their financial constraints.
The batch of goods that Uncle Wang Yong sent to Jiang Ning can be said to be the most suitable for the consumer group of young students. The quality is good enough and the price is not high.
If it weren't for Wang Yong's relationship, Uncle Wang Yong wouldn't have thought of giving this batch of goods to Jiang Ning.
This was also an unexpected surprise for Jiang Ning.
Her collaboration with Wang Yong, magazines, publishing houses, film and television companies, and other parties seems to have formed a virtuous circle, with each party benefiting from it.
Don't say that she doesn't need money now that she has made a lot of money. Compared with what she wants to do in the future, this money is just a drop in the bucket.
Nowadays, the street behind Shanghai University of Technology has been basically rented out, and Jiang Ning and Jiang Bai’s shops have also been renovated.
The decoration style is also very simple, just ordinary white floor tiles and white walls.
Jiang Ning bought two shops, the total area of the two shops was about 100 square meters, and the floor height was about five meters. Jiang Bai's shop was right next to Jiang Ning's.
When Manager Qian came to renovate the shop for them, he suggested that they divide the shop into two small floors. The first floor should be 2.8 meters high and could be used for daily business. The second floor should be 2 meters high, which is a bit low for living, but they don't live upstairs. They only use it as a rest area and warehouse at night. Such a height is not enough for Jiang Bai and Grandpa Jiang to hit their heads. As for the choice of bed, they don't need to use the high bed that Grandpa Jiang was used to sleeping on. Instead, they can choose a lower bed, so that it won't seem depressing because of the height. Grandpa Jiang doesn't have to draw a curtain behind the shop. He only has a narrow and cramped bed. At night, he has to go to the public toilet behind the rented storefront to go to the toilet, which is very inconvenient for daily washing.
After two years of development, Manager Qian's interior decoration company has become a mature design company that is very good at targeting the actual needs of customers.
For example, Grandpa Jiang has poor legs and feet, and his knees will ache when it is cloudy and rainy. Manager Qian suggested that a small space be separated at the back of the store to make a dry and wet separated bathroom. This way, when Grandpa Jiang wants to wash and go to the toilet during the day, he doesn't have to run upstairs. The upstairs is large enough for sleeping and storage at night, and it can also have a separate bathroom and toilet. As for the choice of stairs, an American-style staircase is chosen, which is more suitable for the elderly to walk on. Above, there are all sliding glass windows, which provide better lighting. Even if the floor height is lower, the elderly will not feel depressed when sleeping at night.
His brother-in-law now runs a furniture factory. All the shelves in Jiang Ning's store and all the cabinets needed upstairs can be custom-made from his brother-in-law's factory.
Of course we have to make money, but the price we offer is definitely lower than the market price, and the quality is also guaranteed.
Manager Qian first called Jiang Ning to discuss the matter and sent her the design drawings. After she agreed, he entrusted all the decoration matters to Jiang Bai and Manager Qian.
Jiang Bai is actually much more meticulous in his work than Jiang Ning.
He himself is a science student, and he has many more ideas than Jiang Ning about the various electricity and wires in the decoration process, as well as some little tricks in life.
Not only the shop, but also the two houses that Jiang Ning bought in this community have been renovated and are currently being ventilated. They only need to wait for three months of ventilation before Grandpa Jiang can move in.
In order to make Grandpa Jiang's life more comfortable, the two houses in this community are also equipped with floor heating.
Jiang Bai also made some money from filming this year. Not to mention his role as the second male lead in "The King's Guards" during the summer vacation, he also had 10,000 yuan in publicity fees for "White Snake" at a film festival. He won the "Audience's Most Favorite Actor" award, and several investors also gave him a large red envelope. His winter vacation hasn't even started yet, but his schedule for the vacation has already been fully booked. One is from the crew of "The Song Dynasty", and some other movies and TV series have also sent him audition invitations.
He himself was not good at it, nor did he have the patience to deal with these things. It just so happened that Tong Jingang liked it and was good at it, and doing these things was expanding his network of contacts, so he happily took over all of them and said, "It doesn't matter if you don't like it, I'll handle it for you, just focus on your class!"
Jiang Bai was being trained as a last-minute disciple by a retired engineer in their department. When he discovered that Jiang Bai was acting during the holidays, he thought that he was wasting his talent and not doing his job properly, so he gave him a lot of homework, so that Jiang Bai's spare time was basically spent studying and staying in the laboratory. Fortunately, he had Tong Jingang to help him, not only in work, but also in daily running of the store and taking care of Grandpa Jiang, and he also contributed more.
But for Tong Jingang, who has already found his future career direction, he never gets tired of it.
Jiang Bai has now saved enough money for the down payment. Thinking of his sister asking him to buy another house, Jiang Bai simply bought a house here to make it easier to take care of Grandpa Jiang. This time it is not a pre-sale house, but a ready-made house.
His household registration could not always be kept in his sister's house. His sister's house was always his sister's house, and he always felt weird about it. Now that he had bought his own house that came with a blue-stamped household registration, he could finally breathe a sigh of relief and the pressure in his heart was no longer so great.
He would choose to buy a house behind the school, which is also near the school and is really suitable for Grandpa Jiang’s retirement life.
Grandpa Jiang now feels that he has integrated into this place. Sometimes when Jiang Bai and Tong Jingang come to the store and he is not needed, he just walks around the campus with his hands behind his back. Watching the old professors on campus exercising, he also exercises. This quiet, peaceful and literary environment and the youthful smiles on the faces of the students passing by make Grandpa Jiang feel like he is ten years younger. His physical condition has improved a lot, and his complexion is becoming more and more rosy and healthy.
Jiang Bai also likes this kind of environment. Compared to going out to film, he prefers the simple environment of school. He doesn't have to deal with people. He only needs to stay with machines and instruments every day, which makes him feel safe and comfortable.
His ideal life now is to sell bicycles and motorcycles in front of the school gate, and he is still working hard for his future bicycle shop.
Alas, I don’t know how many more movies he has to shoot before he can open his bicycle shop and motorcycle shop, or even an auto repair shop.
Jiang Bai felt that he could definitely do this well!
Although the money for purchasing bicycles has not been received yet, a large number of last-minute brand-name down jackets sent by Uncle Wang Yong to Jiang Bai's shop have arrived first. Because there are so many down jackets, Grandpa Jiang's old shop obviously cannot accommodate them all, so this batch of down jackets with brand logos are hung in the shop which has just been renovated for less than two months.
His own shop was empty, so he simply put the last-order shoes from the shoe factory next door, which were also sent to her by Uncle Wang Yong, in his shop for sale. As a result, the originally empty shop was suddenly filled with several down jackets. He also asked Manager Qian's brother-in-law to build some detachable shoe racks on both sides of the wall for him.
The opening of these two shops can be said to be the earliest two shops in this newly built back street. Several other shops are still under renovation, which makes it seem a bit noisy and messy. Originally, there was no business at all in this back street.
But who can blame "The King's Guards" for still being in theaters?
The hit of "The King's Guards" made Jiang Bo instantly famous at Shanghai University of Technology. He was treated like a star in daily life and people looked at him wherever he went. The clothes in Grandpa Jiang's shop sold like hot cakes and business was booming.
The back street, which was previously deserted, became known to students because of the opening of Jiang Bo's shop, and a large number of students suddenly flocked in.
Then they discovered a treasure shop!
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