More than a week has passed in the blink of an eye, and the time has entered March. Saturday, March 7. Zhu Mingli was carried to the city by his father's motorcycle, and they were going to meet a few people.

These people are Liu Wei, the editor of Zhu Mingli of Science Fiction World magazine, and the staff of the publishing house.

In the past week or so, Zhu Mingli has been in contact with Liu Wei on the phone. The main content of the conversation was about the physical publication of Wasteland.

Because of "The Martian", the publishing house decided to let Zhu Mingli participate in the physical sales share of "Wasteland", but this percentage is very small, only 2% at the beginning! and it must be sold when it reaches 40,000 copies to participate in the share.

Although Zhu Mingli is not good at mathematics, he has also studied mathematics hard for most of the past six months, and now he can score about 130 points in every quiz and exam.

With the volume of "Wasteland", there are just two volumes, and the price of each volume is 25 yuan per volume.

So Zhu Mingli counted with his fingers, 2% of the share, and participated in the share after the sales reached 40,000 copies, which means that in the end, Zhu Mingli's share was not even half of the remuneration, even if the sales reached 100,000 copies, Zhu Mingli couldn't get much money, and the publishing house still made a lot of money!

Although the age is placed, Zhu Mingli is not a child, of course he will not agree to this division.

Moreover, Zhu Mingli inadvertently asked Liu Wei about the sales of physical books, probably because Zhu Mingli was young and couldn't bear to deceive him.

After a long time, Liu Wei finally told Zhu Mingli that generally speaking, the organizers of the national bestseller list are based on monthly sales of 2,000 copies. If we reasoned according to this, it would be 2-40,000 copies a year.

It is generally believed that a general bestseller with a cumulative circulation of about 50,000 copies in a year, a relatively bestseller with more than 200,000 copies, and a super bestseller with 500,000 or 1 million copies.

Don't look at the science fiction magazine "Science Fiction World", which claims to be the world's best-selling science fiction magazine, with a circulation of 400,000 copies in a single issue. Zhu Mingli's "Wasteland" has reached millions of readers after several months of serialization, but it is still unknown whether the conversion rate of readers will reach 10 to 1 if the physical book is actually listed.

Liu Wei's subtext is that, according to the publisher's estimates, the novel "Wasteland" can sell 40,000 copies a year after it goes on the market, which is already barely enough! That is to say, the publishing house basically has no intention of letting Zhu Mingli participate in the division.

After Zhu Mingli got Liu Wei's reply, he almost laughed angrily, this Nima is really bullying children.

At the beginning, Zhu Mingli was not ready to be a traditional science fiction writer, and was ready to return to his old profession and write online novels in the future. So Zhu Mingli was not afraid of offending Liu Wei or the publishing house, so he directly replied to Liu Wei with this sentence.

Zhu Mingli is also a little confident, although since the American version of "Wasteland" was uploaded to Amazon, he has not paid attention to the sales of the two novels on Amazon, but it should not be too bad.

If the publishing house is really insincere, "The Martian" will become popular on the Amazon in the future, and the walls will bloom and the walls will be fragrant, and then there will naturally be a large number of publishing houses crying and shouting to find themselves to publish novels.

Liu Wei was also silent after listening to Zhu Mingli's words, and ended the call with Zhu Mingli after being silent for a while.

Two days later, Liu Wei called again, perhaps he passed Zhu Mingli's words to the publishing house, and after discussion, the publishing house lowered the sales standard to 30,000 copies.

Zhu Mingli naturally didn't agree, a few thousand yuan, to send the children. The indignant Zhu Mingli climbed over the wall and checked the sales of "The Martian" and "Wasteland" on Amazon.

Then Zhu Mingli laughed, and the sales of "The Martian" had reached $1837, a strong sales of 2000 mark. Wasteland sales also reached $1,086, which translates to more than 300 readers who have downloaded and purchased Wasteland!

And the reviews of both books are not low, especially "The Martian", which has more than half of the readers who give a five-star rating and a four-star rating. And Zhu Mingli saw in the comment area that many readers said that they were recommended by friends.

Even Zhu Mingli learned from reader reviews that the book "The Martian" has been on the top ten of Amazon's science fiction list!

Zhu Mingli hurriedly clicked to view, and sure enough, "The Maitiana" was shot at No. 9 on the best-selling list of science fiction novels!

Seeing this data, Zhu Mingli immediately smiled, and his heart was happy, Zhu Mingli took a screenshot of the ranking and sales data, marked it with a red circle, and then sent it to the editor Liu Wei.

The next day, Zhu Mingli received another call from Liu Wei, who told Zhu Mingli that he had sent a screenshot of Zhu Mingli to the editor-in-chief of the publishing house yesterday, and then they went to the website to check the situation in person and confirmed that Zhu Mingli had not cheated.

So the editor-in-chief of the publishing house was relieved and increased Zhu Mingli's sales share to 5%, and the sales volume still reached 30,000 copies before it could be shared.

However, in terms of remuneration, the publishing house gave a discount, from the original 150 yuan per thousand words to 180 yuan per thousand words. This price can be regarded as a midstream price among the writers of the entire magazine.

In addition, there is also the translation fee of "Wasteland" that the publishing house paid for Zhu Mingli before, which was originally paid back by Zhu Mingli, but now the publishing house directly exempts Zhu Mingli.

After learning about the new conditions of the publishing house, Zhu Mingli silently counted on his fingers, this price is okay, if the sales of "Wasteland" are good, he can almost get a small 100,000 remuneration before and after, so it is not a loss.

Be a man, don't be too greedy, so Zhu Mingli agreed to the conditions offered by the publishing house.

Liu Wei knew that Zhu Mingli needed to attend classes, so he specially agreed to come over and sign a contract with Zhu Mingli during the weekend holiday.

Because Zhu Mingli would not be 15 years old until he was 15 years old in a week or two, and he could not sign a legally effective contract, his father Zhu Guangming specially gave himself a half-day off and followed Zhu Mingli to meet Liu Wei and others.

Liu Wei and others stayed in a three-star hotel called Nanyuan Hotel in the center of Qingyang, and Zhu Mingli passed by the hotel several times when he went to the city center to play.

So the father and son quickly arrived outside the hotel, Zhu Guangming locked the motorcycle in the parking space, and the two walked into the hotel.

Went straight to the second floor of the hotel, Zhu Mingli saw his photo in Liu Wei's QQ space, glanced at it on the second floor, and saw Liu Wei and others sitting in a corner, Liu Wei estimated that he had also seen Zhu Mingli's photo in Zhu Mingli's QQ space, when Zhu Mingli looked over, he just looked up and saw Zhu Mingli, so he smiled and beckoned to Zhu Mingli.

Liu Wei is the kind of ordinary middle-aged young otaku image that is very in line with the general public's impression, wearing a pair of black-framed glasses and a prominent small belly. Maybe it was because he was coming over to sign a contract with Zhu Mingli, and in order to look formal, he was wearing a suit, but he felt very incongruous.

In comparison, the two middle-aged men sitting next to him looked like elites in the workplace.

"Uncle Liu, hello!" Liu Wei is two years older than his father Zhu Guangming, so Zhu Mingli usually calls Liu Wei an uncle.

"Mingli, we've known each other for more than half a year, and today we finally officially met!" Liu Wei shook hands with Zhu Mingli with a smile, hugged him, patted Zhu Mingli's arm again, felt the solid muscles and continued to say in Sichuan, "Huo, it's a sturdy guy!"

Then Liu Wei introduced Zhu Mingli to two people from the publishing house, one is the editor-in-charge, named Su Guanghui, and the other is a lawyer from the legal department who specializes in contract management, named Zhao Yongning.

Zhu Mingli also introduced his father to everyone. Liu Wei told his father that he had raised a good son, and although his father's response was modest, his happiness and pride were overflowing!

The two sides sat down and exchanged a few words, and then began to go through the signing process.

Zhu Mingli had already agreed with the publishing house about the conditions for signing the contract, but he couldn't be careful. Zhu Mingli took the contract handed over by Lawyer Zhao and began to look at it.

Although Zhu Mingli does not understand the law in this regard, he still looks at the responsibilities and rights of both parties.

After confirming that there was no problem with the contract, Zhu Mingli signed the contract, and then his father also signed his name at the back. The contract came into effect.

After the contract was signed, Su Guanghui, the editor-in-charge of the publishing house, told Zhu Mingli that the remuneration for the novel would be credited to Zhu Mingli's account within seven working days after the contract was signed, and as for the sales share of the novel, it was estimated that it would be at the end of the year......

Then the father and son took the contract and a few people said goodbye, left the hotel, got on the motorcycle and returned home!