Chapter 31 31

"Have the monthly sales figures been tallied?" Director Li paced anxiously in his office.

Ever since the fourth issue of "The Great Song" was published in "Wu Xia", Li Ang has been waiting for the total monthly sales figures for this month, because it has been almost a month since the serialization of "The Great Song" in "Wu Xia", and the total monthly sales figures are about to be announced.

Li Ang is under tremendous pressure.

On the one hand, he is facing the cancellation of the magazine. Once the Guangzhou branch is cancelled, many employees of the Guangzhou branch of the magazine will have to face the risk of losing their jobs.

On the other hand, he was the one who withstood the pressure and decided to print one million copies for the first time in two years after the magazine sales of the magazine company had been declining for five consecutive years and the warehouse had been piled up with unsold magazines until the monthly sales were only 500,000.

If the magazine company still cannot sell the magazines and the inventory is piled up, then he may face the closure of the magazine company even faster, and even the branches in Nanshi and Shanghai may be affected and accelerate the closure.

Even Bao Huixin, who has worked with him to bring the "Martial Arts" magazine from its founding to its glory and to today, can't help but admire Director Li's courage.

Not everyone has the courage to burn their boats after experiencing the decline of the magazine company.

Once it fails, it will inevitably speed up the magazine's withdrawal.

Li Ang can be said to be unable to sleep day and night these days

. On the one hand, it is caused by great pressure, and on the other hand, it is caused by excitement. Years of experience tell him that this is a great opportunity and he must seize it, but the market is unreasonable. The final result is still determined by sales.

From the first issue to the fourth issue, "Da Song" has been serialized in "Wu Xia" for a full month. From the first issue, it broke through the first print of 500,000 in one week. The second and third issues were reprinted, and the first print of the third and fourth issues was directly one million copies.

Now the fourth issue has been on the market for a week. The specific sales will not be released until next month, but the total sales of "Wu Xia" magazine this month has come out.

"How much?" Li Ang sat in the office, his hair had been messed up by him, but he didn't notice it at all.

The marketing staff didn't care about their director's image at all, but reported excitedly: "3.2 million copies." As

soon as this data came out, the whole "Martial Arts" magazine office burst into cheers of joy.

Director Li, who was nearly 50 years old, couldn't help but raise his fists excitedly at the air: "YES! YES! YES!" Then his eyes were red again.

How long has it been? How long has it been since "Martial Arts" magazine achieved such sales since its inception?

How could the marketing staff not understand Director Li's excitement? How could he not be excited? This was the first time since the late 1980s that the monthly sales of their magazine had exceeded three million again.

Yes, although they had declined before and the monthly total sales had dropped to five hundred thousand, even in the middle and late stages, their magazine could still maintain a monthly sales of two million.

But breaking through three million was something they had never done since the 1990s.

The marketing staff couldn't stop smiling: "The fourth issue of the serialized journal has only been on the market for a week, and the Nanshi and Shanghai branches have just stocked the goods. The market feedback is not that fast. If the popularity continues at this rate, the total monthly sales next month is estimated to be no worse than this month."

"Yes, yes, we must strike while the iron is hot." Director Li understood very well that the popularity of "The Song of Glory" was due to a certain amount of luck. First of all, it took advantage of the subject matter, and secondly, it rode the popularity of "Justice Bao". Once "Justice Bao" was off the air, the popularity of "The Song of Glory" would inevitably decline, and as a result, the sales of "Wu Xia" would follow suit.

But he could definitely catch this favorable wind and take off on its own. Before Justice Bao was released, he could grab this fiery hurricane and make the magazine he founded once again prosper!

He calmed down, took off his glasses, wiped his eyes and glasses, put them back on and said, "Wang Yong has already signed a contract with Xi Meng. Xi Meng sent a manuscript of 40,000 words more than a week ago, and Wang Yong also sent 15,000 words in an emergency. Ask the manuscript receiving department to sort out the manuscript receipt letters. With Wang Yong in Wucheng in charge of Xi Meng's manuscripts, there is no need to worry about any gaps in "Wu Xia" for the time being."

They still have 6,000 words left, plus the 55,000 words sent by Xi Meng and Wang Yong, the total is 61,000. 61,000, enough for them to serialize three issues, and they suddenly have a lot more time.

The marketing department staff also asked happily: "Director, has Ximeng replied to the email?"

At this time, Director Li had already suppressed his excitement, and said unhappily: "What emails are you replying to!" He originally wanted to say that Ximeng was still a student, a boarding student who was locked up in school and couldn't get out, but after thinking about it, he held back and didn't say it, but said: "I have left Wang Yong with Ximeng, and he is specifically responsible for Ximeng's manuscripts. I will go to the Finance Department and tell them to transfer Wang Yong's salary for this month, including bonuses and travel expenses, to him at the end of the month."

Logically speaking, Wang Yong had completed his mission perfectly on this business trip, and it was time for him to return to the magazine. This is just in case, it's better to have a lot of manuscripts.

"By the way, recruit people. Go and recruit people. Haven't various colleges and universities just graduated a batch of university students? Continue to recruit people from their schools. This time, we need five, no, six. When the new recruits arrive, first arrange an office operator to sit in the office and answer the phone, especially Wang Yong's call. Then arrange someone to check and reply to emails."

Because of the craze for job hunting, the policy of guaranteed job assignment was cancelled in 1995. At that time, there were still many university graduates who had just graduated and had not found suitable jobs.

Since Meng left her email address, Director Li knew that this was no longer the 1980s, when submissions were made by hand. Since they added Yahoo Mail as the submission address, they have received many manuscripts from authors. This is a completely different way of receiving manuscripts from the past. He has a hunch that this way of submission will become mainstream in the future as computers are used more and more and the country develops faster and faster.

He thought of the recently popular communication method, called something like MSN, and quickly applied for it.

With the resurgence of Wuxia and its impact on the martial arts market, many magazines of the same type have noticed the most popular article in the market, "My Years as a Constable in the Song Dynasty". In fact, not only martial arts magazines have noticed this article, but also female-oriented romance magazines.

Because it is written from a female perspective and the writing is delicate, which is different from the previous martial arts style, the editors of romance magazines soon realized that the author of this article, Xi Meng, is likely to be a female author.

At this time, no one knew that Xi Meng of Wuxia and Xi Meng of other magazines such as Zhiyin were the same person.

The first thing other martial arts magazines thought of was to poach people.

After all, the value of an author who can single-handedly revive a dying magazine and make it take off is enormous.

Dig!

Must dig!

Not only martial arts magazines, but also romance magazines are asking for news about Meng.

Their magazines can also be serialized, they can also ask Meng to write articles, and the next article can be signed directly to their romance magazines.

So all the major magazines of the same type arranged reporters from the magazines to go to Guangzhou, whether undercover or thinking of other methods, they must find out the current payment of Meng Meng and get Meng Meng's contact information.

This is actually not difficult, just bribe a few staff members of the receiving department of "Martial Arts" magazine. They used to do this and poached a lot of people from "Martial Arts" magazine.

Wuxia Magazine was just a step away from being poached and closed down. The news had spread in the industry before that the Guangzhou branch of Wuxia Magazine was going to be closed down.

They were in the same industry, even if they were not in the same city, they all had their own information channels.

But Li Ang, the founder of Wuxia Magazine, had already prepared for this. After the magazine staff was transferred, only a few were left. The rest were all die-hard fans who had followed Li Ang since the founding of the magazine, or honest people who had no relationship with him. Anyone who had a little relationship with him was transferred away.

Director Li said very bluntly: "Once the information of Ximeng is dug out, you can get some money temporarily, but so what? What will we face in the future? I believe everyone knows it." Director Li said: "At worst, I will be transferred, and I will still be my director. In a few years, I will retire and still have a pension. What about you?"

"The only thing waiting for you is resignation!"

The shadow of resignation still loomed in the hearts of these people some time ago, and now it has finally dissipated a little. How could those people come here to dig out Ximeng? It is obvious that they are digging into their work and their foundation. How could they tell others about Ximeng's information?

They don't know Ximeng's identity, but they know the contact address.

Is there any difference between knowing the address and finding Ximeng himself? It's just a matter of time.

So these veteran employees were on high alert, and if there was any sign of trouble, they would treat it as a formidable enemy, suspecting that it was an undercover sent by the rival magazine.

It was no wonder they were suspicious, as their magazine had been undercovered many times before, and their homes were almost robbed.

For this purpose, Director Li also held a special meeting with the old employees: "We are not just defending blindly, we can also attack, right? Now only we know the information about Xi Meng, but this does not prevent us from releasing some true and false news, such as Xi Meng's identity and Xi Meng's job." He paused and took a sip of tea, "Aren't there many readers who wrote to analyze what Xi Meng's real job is? I think the readers analyzed it very well, with sharp eyes and golden vision!"

"Xi Meng, he is actually a public security officer in the government unit, this makes sense, right?"

Although the old employees did not know Xi Meng's specific identity, the director said so, so it must make sense.

So soon, the news that the author of "The Great Song" was actually a public security officer in a certain city within the government unit spread from Guangzhou.