Chapter 1597 - 1596: Enshrined in History_1
Receiving a cold stare from Qiao Xiaomai was the norm for Bei Yun, and he didn’t mind. He chuckled and said, "Don’t forget about my Floral Dew."
Xiaomai responded noncommittally and continued chatting with Tong Sanlang; they were discussing the publication of Journey to the West.
Journey to the West had been completed, and Tong Sanlang had used the actual author’s name as a pseudonym because he felt it inappropriate to claim such a masterpiece as his own. The credit should go to where it was due.
According to Yang Wenxiao’s idea, the plan was to first stir up interest at Jiwei Residence and Zuixian Building, as before, and then sell complete copies of the book to earn silver once the hype had built up.
Now that Shen Bai had improved the Papermaking Technique, lowering the cost and increasing the speed, maintaining the book’s pricing at the original level would definitely turn a tidy profit from the sales.
That was Yang Wenxiao’s idea, but Tong Sanlang had another thought. He believed that Journey to the West should be published in the Daqi Monthly to introduce the book to a wider audience in Daqi and also help drive the newspaper’s sales.
The Daqi Monthly had already released two issues, but the sales were dismal, barely achieving break-even.
Tong Sanlang had analyzed the reasons behind this carefully, ultimately attributing the problem to subpar quality.
The truth was that not too many people cared about Daqi’s policies.
Daqi’s gossip was also not fresh every month, and gossip about others, whom many didn’t know well, didn’t capture much attention either.
Unless it was about someone as widely recognized as Xiaomai herself in Daqi, general gossip wasn’t of interest to the public.
The content of the previous two issues of the Daqi Monthly, which combined policy and gossip, indeed lacked appeal to the general populace.