1980 My literary era

"Abandoned Capital", written by Jia Pingwa.

Just by looking at these words, no one who makes a living from literature or loves literature will associate this novel with the author's name with the word "best-selling".

However, such a pure literary work written by an author who seems to be insulated from "best-selling" has swept the Chinese literary world and book market in just half a month. The crazy and furious attitude is even worse than that of two other authors. "Spirited Away" more than a month ago was no less impressive.

200,000 copies in five days, 500,000 copies in half a month, 1 million copies in a month...

"Abandoned City" sold like crazy!

Millions of copies were sold in a single month. Before "Spirited Away" and "The Wasted City", there had never been such an evil work in the Chinese publishing industry and the contemporary literary world.

Who would have thought that in the spring of 1993, two films would appear at once.

"Spirited Away" is Lin Weimin's work after all. Over the years, Lin Weimin has already conquered countless Chinese readers with his talent and strength. All his novels have sold less than 1 million after publication, and the sales volume has been 5 million. There are also two or three volumes above the volume.

The outbreak of "Spirited Away" is due to the realization of the reputation Lin Weimin has accumulated over the years, as well as the natural communication advantage of children's literature.

But "Abandoned Capital"...

Why is it?

Taking a detailed look at Jia Pingwa’s creative career, she published her first work at the age of 21, and her first collection of novellas "Bingba" at the age of 25 (the previous article published her first book at the age of 23 was wrong. The author was not good at mathematics and did not lose weight. Understand), it can be said that youth is successful.

In these years, he has published 14 novella collections and 3 novels, which can be said to be a rich collection of works.

It can be said that Jia Pingwa is a well-known writer with her own status in the contemporary literary world.

But looking at his previous works, none of them have sold more than 100,000 copies, let alone one million copies in a single month.

"The Wasted City" was selected into the Buhu Book Series. With the powerful publicity campaign of the Chinese Literature Society, it achieved a sales miracle of one million copies in just one month, making many colleagues in the literary world full of envy and jealousy.

The remuneration payment standards for the Buhuhu series are clearly written in the "Literary Story Newspaper".

For volumes below 150,000, payment will be RMB 150 per thousand words; for volumes over 150,000, payment will be 10% royalty.

What is this concept?

With 1 million copies of "Desolate Capital", the novel is priced at 6 yuan, which means that Jia Pingwa can get at least 600,000 yuan in royalties.

What’s even scarier is that this is only the first month!

With the current rapidity of "Abandoned Capital", I'm afraid even three to five million copies can't stop it, right?

Doesn’t that mean that another pure literary writer will be born in Shaanxi literary world who will become a millionaire by relying on royalties?

Some superstitious colleagues couldn't help but murmur in their hearts. Shaanxi's Feng Shui seemed to have something to say, otherwise there wouldn't be so many emperors buried there.

Of course, along with the enthusiastic sales of "The Wasted City", there was also a polarization of the novel's reputation. Well, to be precise, the negative pole overwhelmed the positive pole.

What is the most attractive aspect of "Dead City"? To put it bluntly, it is X.

"Delete the word XX here" and "omit the word XX here" should be indelible memories of many readers who were familiar with literary works in the 1990s.

How many young men have endured the entire novel to read it.

In the overall conservative atmosphere, the release of "The Wasted City" coupled with the overwhelming publicity of the Buhu series of books was like a grand carnival, allowing these readers to burst into an unprecedented wave of excitement in the 1990s when talk of pornography was changing. strength.

But for "The Wasted City", readers' crazy pursuit of it with "ulterior motives" is undoubtedly a double-edged sword.

Contrary to the crazy sales, the mainstream media and public opinion have criticized and suppressed this novel.

The description of X in "The Wasted City" is much more exaggerated than that in "Lover", so the wave of negative comments that Jia Pingwa has to face is much greater than what Lin Weimin had to face back then.

It has only been a month since "The Wasted City" was released, and criticisms have come and gone like waves, one after another, with seemingly no end in sight.

Jia Pingwa herself is relatively calm about these critical voices, because the criticism is limited to the level of the work and does not rise to the level of the writer himself.

Unfortunately, just two days after he was happy, some newspapers began to call him a "rogue writer" by name, which immediately made Jia Pingwa feel anxious.

You know, before "Abandoned Capital", Jia Pingwa had written a series of Shangzhou-style novels such as "Shangzhou" and "Mountain Moon". The simple folk customs and kind humanity he gave to his works made him once Known as "the purest writer in the literary world".

From "pure" to "gangster", it only took one month to publish a novel.

The too strong contrast between before and after made Jia Pingwa's originally peaceful state of mind finally become depressed.

In fact, not only Jia Pingwa, the author of "Abandoned Capital", but also the Chinese Literature Society received strong criticism from the outside world during this period.

Buhu's book series was promoted with great fanfare, and the sales volume of "Desolated Capital", which was released after a thousand calls, has skyrocketed, and it has naturally become the focus of attention in the domestic cultural, literary and even publishing circles.

When some writers and critics criticized Jia Pingwa, they also criticized the Chinese Literature Society.

Some people think that Guowenshe is just for sales and sensationalism, and some people call the Buhu Series "SQ Series" for this reason.

Such radical criticism was certainly in the minority, and was quickly dismissed.

The reason is very simple. There are three works in the first batch of the Buhu series, "Abandoned Capital", "Bitter World" and "Flower Season and Rainy Season".

"Abandoned Capital" tells the story of a fictional city, the emotional entanglement between Zhuang Zhidie, a cultural celebrity in Xijing, and three women, during which he got involved in all kinds of nonsense in the cultural world.

Many people only saw the "Jin Ping Mei"", this evaluation is naturally exaggerated, but it also reflects that the connotation of "The Wasted City" is not just X.

The story of "The World of Bitterness" tells the story of a hijacking accident that started the bizarre killer legend of a Chinese doctor assisting foreign countries.

The whole work is very popular. The African style, vast nature, terrorist organizations, mercenaries, killers, all kinds of exciting elements come together to make "The World of Bitterness" very readable.

"Flower Season and Rainy Season" tells the youthful growth of boys and girls, with a fresh and natural style.

Three novels, three completely different styles, fully demonstrate the diversity of the Buhu book series and the colorfulness of contemporary literature.

Not to mention the critical voices that arose due to "The Wasted Capital", the open and inclusive attitude of the Buhu Series has won praise from many people in the literary world.

Moreover, many people criticized that the sales of "Desolate City" depended entirely on X, and some people also questioned this.

Because "The World of Bitterness" and "Flower Season and Rainy Season" published at the same time also achieved good sales.

300,000 copies and 500,000 copies are respectively the sales volume created by "Bitter World" and "Flower Season and Rainy Season" in one month.

These two novels don’t contain any descriptions of X, right? Hong Feng is still somewhat famous, but Yuxiu is a pure new writer, and he is only a student.

With no accumulation of works and no reputation, the work has sold 300,000 or 500,000 copies. How to explain this?

There is no doubt that the only explanation is that it is backed by a big tree to enjoy the shade.

Thanks to the heavily invested publicity campaign by the Chinese Literature Society, coupled with strong distribution channels, the sales of the three novels have skyrocketed.

Later, Chunfeng Literature and Art Publishing House spent a lot of money to plan and promote the Buhu series of books, which attracted the attention and pursuit of countless readers. In order to recover the cost, the single volume of the series was priced as high as 9.6 yuan, which was 9.6 yuan in 1993 and 1994. But even so, There are still hundreds of thousands or millions of readers paying the bill.

The Chinese Literature Society will not do this kind of thing. The single copy of the novel is priced at only 6 yuan. The price that is slightly higher than the market price is just to spread the huge publicity costs.

In one month, the cumulative sales of the three novels have reached 1.8 million copies, with a total sales volume of 10.8 million.

The first success of Buhuhu's book series resounded in the Chinese literary world, and also brought huge attention and benefits to the Chinese Literature Society.

The initial investment of more than 5 million, including royalties, publicity, and printing, was repaid within just one month. In the following days, every additional book sold in the Buhu series meant that 80 cents entered the Chinese Literature Society. Income statement.

This is a gold mine!

Based on the potential shown by the first batch of works in the Buhuhu series, even if the subsequent works show weak performance, this is 100% a series that will sell tens of millions of copies!

The profits of a series of books amount to tens of millions, and colleagues in the domestic publishing industry are so greedy that they almost lose their money.

What is more greedy than domestic publishing houses are domestic writers.

Even though some people criticize Jia Pingwa more fiercely than anyone else, there are few people who don't envy Jia Pingwa.

If you earn 600,000 yuan a month, you can see with the naked eye that it will be easy to earn several million yuan in the next few years.

Who wouldn't envy me?

Not to mention Jia Pingwa, even Hong Feng and Yuxiu were envious of them, with two or three hundred thousand a month!

Therefore, despite the ups and downs of public opinion in the month after the release of the Buhu series, it did not affect the editorial team's acceptance of the manuscripts.

That's not right. To be more precise, it has a huge impact.

Originally, this month the editorial team of the Buhu Book Series was supposed to focus on finishing the second batch of accumulated manuscripts, but due to the release of several works such as "The Wasted City", it became very popular.

In just half a month, manuscripts from all over the country flew towards the editorial team like snowflakes.

461!

This is the current number of manuscripts accumulated by the Buhu Book Series editorial team.

Too busy, too busy at all.

In this month, the editorial team of twelve old, middle-aged and young editors reviewed manuscripts day and night, and they only completed the review of 118 novels.

This group of people had just finished reviewing last month's backlog of manuscripts. They turned around and looked at the mountain of new manuscripts, and couldn't help but fall into despair.

"Leader, please add more people! If you don't add more people, someone will die!" Gao Xianjun begged Lin Weimin.

This is not only the voice of the editors of the editorial team, but also the voice of Gao Xianjun. After all, he is also the deputy leader of the editorial team, and he cannot escape his review responsibilities. If this continues, he is really afraid that he will die suddenly one day, or that some senior member of the editorial team will Comrades rode a crane to the west.

Facing the voice of the masses, Lin Weimin was a little embarrassed. Of course he understood the difficulties faced by the editorial team, but the problem was that Buhushu Series now has twelve editors, which is even larger than many editorial offices. If more people are transferred there, it will be difficult. It will affect the work of other newsrooms.

Lin Weimin sighed helplessly, "Let's second him!"