Chapter 452 Stepping Stone?

Chapter 452 Stepping Stone?

Chapter 452 Stepping Stone?
"There's definitely no problem with Teacher Gu Lu's work. Who is Teacher Gu Lu? He's a genius writer who wrote The Little Prince at the age of sixteen. Isn't it easy for him to write fairy tales?"

Director Wang, head of the Children's Literature Research Office of the Writers Association, said in a very objective tone, "Teacher Gu Lu's new work will be included in the [New Fairy Tales] series, which will be the biggest highlight of the series!"

Vice Chairman Qi and Secretary General Tian Mengge looked at each other's face, which was in its fifties, and felt that it was so much thicker than their own.

But... you are the only one who wants to make progress? The two leaders on the left side of the round table also spoke up.

"The fact that Teacher Gu Lu has the energy to participate in the event is enough to prove his concern for the development of children's literature in our country, so I personally propose that "The Borrower" be the main work of the series." Vice Chairman Qi said.

Secretary-General Tian Mengge continued, "I have known Mr. Gu Lu for a long time and have kept in touch with him for four or five years. I know very well that Mr. Gu Lu is a quick shooter, so he finished the work in more than 20 days, which sounds very hasty, but we must believe that Mr. Gu Lu is dedicated. I will also vote for Mr. Gu Lu."

None of the three leaders of the Writers Association had read Gu Lu's new work. But so what?

The editorial board of the [New Fairy Tales] series of books also includes the chief editor and editors of the Yangtze Children's Publishing House, as well as a variety of other people who have been given titles to gild their reputations.

Regarding the theme of this conference, "Main Writers of Series Books", almost all votes went to Gu Lu.

Why almost? There were two abstentions.

Among those who abstained from voting was Du Muyao, deputy editor-in-chief of Changjiang Children's Publishing House. One can tell from his name that he lacks the element of earth.

Du Muyao feels that this is a bit unfair because other writers such as Zhou Jing, Xu Nuochen, Qiao Manshui, etc. have not yet finished writing. Should the main works be judged based on their quality after they are all finished?

"The Little Prince" is unique among fairy tales, but there are more adults who like to read it, right?
How many children are willing to watch "Seeing the world from a child's perspective"? Adults like to watch it because they have lost the perspective of children. At least Du Muyao personally thinks that fairy tales of the Little Prince type are not suitable for the current "New Fairy Tales" series.

Why didn't Du Muyao express his opinion at the meeting? Because he was kind and he was also a reader of Gu Lu. It was definitely not because he had parents and children to take care of and he was too timid to contradict his superiors.

"As for the Writers Association, please sort out the opinions." Editor-in-Chief Changjiang said to the person next to him, his tone was slightly rhythmic and he was in a good mood.

"I'll go back and organize it into a document and send it to your email address, editor-in-chief." Du Muyao responded immediately.

"This is a good job that has finally fallen to our Changjiang Children's Publishing House." Changjiang Editor-in-Chief said, "Vice Chairman Qi will send Teacher Gu Lu's new work to me today. Please take a look first and mark any ambiguous paragraphs and texts. After summarizing them, discuss with Teacher Gu Lu."

Editor-in-Chief Changjiang did not know about Gu Lu’s influence at the national level, but from the perspective of writers alone, for medium-sized publishing houses, this wave was definitely a 100% effort.

"I understand." Du Muyao hesitated for a moment and then asked, "Should we inform other writers?"

Including Gu Lu, a total of seven writers have signed book contracts. They discussed royalties and publicity resources. After all, they are all contestants whose works have accumulated sales of over a million, so they all have bargaining chips.

The main work, that is, the biggest publicity position, was given to other writers, so they must be informed. Besides, Du Muyao has known Qiao Manshui for many years.

Editor Changjiang thought for a moment and said, "You arrange it."

Arrange? Du Muyao was speechless. Didn't the implication mean that he was the one making these calls?
I took a car back to the company with the editor-in-chief. It was Du who drove. In fact, when editor-in-chief Changjiang and his colleagues traveled, they never drove themselves. If they didn't drive, editor-in-chief Changjiang would shamelessly wait for others to call a car.

Sometimes Du Muyao, the deputy editor-in-chief, would wonder if the reason he didn’t become editor-in-chief was because he wasn’t thick-skinned enough?

"Editor-in-Chief Du, um, we're out of biscuits in the tea room." The new intern saw the key person and ran over.

"Talk to the purchasing department. Why are you talking to me? I don't manage the tea room." Du Muyao said unhappily. He then took a cup of coffee and returned to his office.

Looking at the leader's back as he left, the intern cursed in his heart, "Damn it, if you hadn't stuffed a lot of biscuits and cakes into your bag every day, would there be nothing left?"

Du Muyao sat down, took a sip of coffee, shuddered, opened the company's email, and received the new work sent by the Writers Association.

Wait a minute, Du Muyao thought, and called his friend Qiao Manshui first, since they were familiar with each other and they could talk directly about anything.

"Qiao Qiao, is it convenient for me to talk? I have something to ask."

Immediately afterwards, Du Muyao informed his friends that the series of books had been confirmed.

As expected, my friend was very angry. "The main title won't be given to Zhou Jing, right? Why? Isn't her cumulative sales volume 16 more than mine? But my single book record is far better than hers!"

"I haven't finished writing my work yet, how can you be sure it's her? What, the rule is that whoever finishes first gets the lead?"

After a quick chat, he named the other five people. It was either fifty-fifty or Qiao Manshui felt that he had the advantage.

The spirit conveyed is unwillingness to accept defeat.

Du Muyao waited until his friends finished their output before he responded, "The main work is Gu Lu's The Borrower."

There was silence on the other end of the line for about ten seconds before Qiao Manshui spoke, "Write about The Little Prince, The Flowers for Algernon from Flatland, The Devotion of Suspect X, and Gu Lu from the New World?"

Du Muyao spoke without pause for a word, and he felt that this long string of words would almost make the other person die.

"So, the current cast of this series of books includes me, others, and Gu Lu?" Qiao Manshui asked.

More than half a month ago, the Writers Association urgently called for the release of the list of authors of the series (specifically Gu Lu), so the other six people knew each other, but were not aware that Gu Lu was included.

"Yes, Mr. Gu Lu signed the contract quite late..."

"Brother Si Tu, whoever finishes first gets to publish the novel. I have no objection to this rule." Qiao Manshui's tone suddenly changed. "It's not about anything else. I also read Teacher Lu's novels when I was a student. I can't compete with my elders."

How dare you say that, you were born in the 80s and Gu Lu was born in the 95s!
"There's no point in talking about this with regard to our relationship." Du Muyao implied that he wanted to talk about something practical.

"Let's just say behind closed doors. This essay contest is for children. Sixty percent of the sales of Gu Lu's Little Prince were contributed by adults. I am confident that my essay is more suitable for the main hit than his, but..."

Saying "but" means that all the previous pretenses are useless. Qiao Manshui lowered her voice on the phone and said, "How famous is Gu Lu? How difficult is the worldview of the first volume of the new book "From the New World"? I dare say that if it weren't for this author name, 70% of readers would abandon the book. What was the result? In the past two or three months, the sales in Asia have reached nearly two or three million, right?"

"What kind of exposure is this?" Qiao Manshui sighed, "Gu Lu is the lead in the series, so I can also become famous. If people tell others that Gu Lu and I have published a series of books, I can also have face!"

That makes sense, Du Muyao figured it out. If you want to be the main hit, you need popularity. To be honest, what slogan for fairy tales can be more eye-catching than "Gu Lu, the author of The Little Prince, will continue to write fairy tales"? "But you are really good at inviting him. He hasn't written fairy tales for six or seven years - to be precise, he only wrote The Little Prince when he debuted. It's been such a long time." Qiao Manshui was very happy.

There are two reasons for my happiness. The first reason is what I mentioned before, which is that I am more famous.

Second, it is also related to the name. Think about it, there are Gu Lu and Qiao Manshui in the series. Then the child bought a set and said to his mother, "Mom, I think Qiao Manshui's book is better than Gu Lu's." Imagine this scene, how exciting it is?

There aren't many chances to defeat the "genius" Gu Lu through your work!
Qiao Manshui, who was so excited that he couldn't contain himself, said, "Okay, I have a new idea. I know what happened. I'll hang up first."

Then, very quickly, Du Muyao's strategy for calling the other five writers changed.

It begins, "The main work of our series has been selected, it is Gu Lu's new work "The Borrower"."

His response was that he was very happy and had no complaints.

After Qiao Manshui gave the announcement, he also caught one or two of their excited points.

"Now it seems that I am a little sorry for Teacher Gu Lu. I have become a stepping stone and everyone wants to step on me." Du Muyao felt quite guilty.

Gu Lu’s works shouldn’t be the least popular among children, right?
Let’s take a look at the work first, Du Muyao began to read.

Beyond Du Muyao's expectations...

A sick little boy is sent to a suburban villa to recuperate, and then he discovers a mysterious race in the house: the borrowers.

The little man would live under the floor, relying on borrowing things from the "giant"'s house to survive. The little man's greatest fear was being discovered.

"It's not a fairy tale for adults. Instead, it's a story with rich imagination that children love to read." Du Muyao was surprised. He felt that these little people seemed to be like parasites?
Besides, if you take something without permission, isn’t that stealing?

Regarding this issue, the book also describes him arguing with a villain about the issue of "borrowing" and "stealing". For example, the title of the book is not "The Villain Who Steals Things".

I finished reading it in one breath. Du Muyao read the 70,000 words very slowly, which took him an hour to finish, but I still felt unsatisfied.

"Unlike the Lilliput in Gulliver's Travels, Gu Lushu really didn't intend to teach us anything in this story!"

The Borrower is interesting to read and the story setting attracts me. Adults have basic cognition and will not make wild guesses, but children will definitely wonder if the missing little things in their homes were stolen after reading or listening to their mothers telling the story.

In his excitement, Du Muyao knocked the pen cap next to him to the ground. He subconsciously bent down to pick up the pen cap, but after a pause, an idea popped up in his mind - should he wait a while before picking it up? See if it will disappear.

Then Du Muyao straightened up, rubbed his eyes, and felt that he was too childish.

"The things that can't be found are borrowed. The little people will return them after using them for a while. So we can't find them when we look for them, but they will appear after a while. This explanation is a genius explanation in fairy tales."

Du Muyao felt that he wanted more after watching the film. One of the reasons was the setting of the "borrower", which had a long aftertaste and was able to attract people's imagination.

"A good fairy tale book for children is like this. It is mainly interesting, and the path it wants to tell and the virtues it wants to teach children are all expressed in the story." Du Muyao especially likes the little character Yun Xi.

Because the little people are afraid of being discovered, they make their homes far away from places like doors and windows, but in corners of the room that are not often visited by humans.

But children yearn for the blue sky and white clouds, and Yunxi is one of them. She has a desire to explore and empathy. She is what children like most and what they most want to be like when they are young.

"The Little Prince is for adults, and The Borrowers is for children. These two fairy tales have reached the ceiling." Du Muyao thought to himself, "I was saying that Gu Lu is not suitable for this theme... In half a month, he only needs to do a little bit of work, and he has already reached the ceiling of this level."

The six writers who were sharpening their knives and stepping on Gu Lu to go up the stairs were about to miscalculate.

"Should I give Qiao Qiao a call to remind her... Never mind, there's no need." Du Muyao felt that it would be quite interesting if he didn't remind her.

Du Muyao then continued reading the text and began to look for ambiguous words.

It took two full days to compile the statistics and send them to the author. Gu Lu also received it, but he was busy with other things.

"No wonder, I seem to have learned something." What Gu Lu learned was that value is more important than content.

After calling back, Brother Yao informed them that seven or eight luxury brands wanted to buy illustration elements. Gu Lu and Brother Yao were not fools. One or two might not understand and would be confused, but seven or eight... there must be someone behind the scenes fanning the flames.

So who is it? The answer is obvious.

"Indeed, I should have understood this truth long ago. My ability to enter a think tank in China is the most obvious manifestation of this." Gu Lu is already prepared. He will soon receive tens of millions of US dollars (two million per company) and 2% of sales revenue.

Two million US dollars is the highest price given by luxury goods and intangible cultural heritage around the world. As for 2%, it is generally non-existent. Gu Lu is an isolated case of cooperation. After all, brands are not philanthropists.

Gu Lu was not so arrogant as to think that it was his fame that affected him. He murmured to himself, "Besides his love of giving cheese away everywhere, Dibo is a pretty good person."

In addition, Gu Lu also took the opportunity to make a small request, which would help implement the plan of "isolating America".

Another call came in. It was the online taxi driver. Gu Lu was dragging the suitcase out.

The pulley was making a lot of noise. It seemed that it was broken after being violently transported during check-in at the airport the last time, which caused the noise to be very unpleasant.

It wasn’t heavy, so Gu Lu picked up the box to avoid disturbing himself and passers-by.

After getting in the car, Gu Lu reported the last digit of his cell phone number and fastened his seat belt.

Not long after I drove out, I received a WeChat message.

[Tian Xiao: Is the flight on track? Is the flight on track? If there are any changes, please let me know!]
"Okay, no problem." Gu Lu sent a voice message.

Why did Gu Lu, who always typed rather than talked, act out of character? It wasn't because he felt dizzy when typing in the car, but because Tian Xiao was really too "cautious".

(End of this chapter)