As one of the three major shareholders of the "Ming Pao" Group, and was designated by Jin Yong as the future successor of "Ming Pao", Zhang Shaojie naturally has the right to read some of the bills and statements of the Ming Pao Group.

When Shen Baoxin saw that Zhang Shaojie wanted to read the accounts, he had the intention to tease him, and actually took out the account books accumulated for decades, with tens of thousands of pages thick.

These original materials, important documents, and tomes are piled up, and even if you read them carefully, it is very difficult. Not to mention, the clues can be seen from these original documents.

"Let's get a briefing!" Zhang Shaojie said with a smile, "I'm not a professional analyst, and the original documents don't mean much to me!" All I need is a summary of Ming Pao's business and financial status! ”

Shen Baoxin smiled at this time: "What an honest child!" Shen Baoxin took out a briefing, only a few pages, not many words, most of them were graphics. In this way, we can quickly have an intuitive understanding of the current situation of Ming Pao.

It took Zhang Shaojie half an hour to quickly understand the current situation of Ming Pao's operation.

At this time, the circulation of Ming Pao Group had reached 230,000 copies, 250,000 copies of Ming Pao Weekly, and 120,000 copies of Martial Arts and History.

These three newspapers and periodicals are the main sources of profit for Ming Pao Group.

Relying on the publication of three flagship newspapers and magazines alone, Ming Pao Group has become a well-deserved leading newspaper company in Hong Kong.

In this era, because the labor cost in Hong Kong was relatively low, newspaper distribution could also be profitable. The distribution and sales of newspapers alone are enough to make a profit of 8 million Hong Kong dollars, and the annual manuscript fee reaches 3 million Hong Kong dollars, ranking among the newspaper companies with the largest manuscript fees in Hong Kong.

This is only the profit of the newspaper and magazine distribution itself, in fact, more of the profit of "Ming Pao" comes from advertising revenue!

In terms of advertising revenue, Ming Pao only had a million Hong Kong dollars in advertising revenue in 70 years.

With the increasing readership of Ming Pao and the growing credibility of Ming Pao, major companies in Hong Kong are actively bidding for advertisements on Ming Pao, so Ming Pao's advertising expenses are also increasing year by year, and since 1980, the advertising revenue has exceeded 20 million Hong Kong dollars!

The growth trend of Ming Pao's advertising expenses is now slower than that of the past decade. However, it is now growing at an average rate of 30% per year, and of course, the advertising revenue of newspapers cannot grow indefinitely.

When the advertising profit is only tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars, there is still some room for growth, once the advertising revenue reaches 100 million Hong Kong dollars, then the profits of this area will also be saturated, even if the advertising costs continue to grow, it is just going with the flow, with the rise in prices, advertising costs are just rising.

The profit of advertising expenses is growing!

However, with inflation and per capita wages rising every year, the profits from newspaper sales and distribution are declining year by year. Now, newspaper sales and distribution can still earn 8 million Hong Kong dollars for the time being.

However, according to the current upward trend of operating costs, it is estimated that the annual operating costs will increase by more than HK$800,000. In other words, if the current circulation is maintained, in 10 years, the distribution and sale of newspapers will be a loss-making business.

At that time, "Ming Pao" needed to use advertising profits to make up for the hole in the loss of newspaper distribution and sales!

"Ming Pao now has a net profit of 30 million a year! The total expenditure also reached 60 million Hong Kong dollars, but how much was the remuneration paid to the author - only 3 million Hong Kong dollars! It can be said that the benefits of advertising revenue are not shared with the author at all! ”

Zhang Shaojie criticized: "This can't work! The reason why advertisers give us advertising fees is because Ming Pao has a large number of readers. Why do readers subscribe to our newspaper because of the articles provided by the authors that appeal to them! The annual income is 90 million, the expenditure is 60 million, and the profit is 30 million! However, the remuneration paid to the author is only 3 million, which is 10% of the profit and 5% of the operating expenses of Ming Pao! Such a proportion of remuneration is unreasonable! ”

"And what do you say?" Shen Baoxin and Jin Yong were all smiling.

In fact, Jin Yong has long mentioned the reform of manuscript fees, according to the original history, a few years later, Ming Pao's remuneration standards for authors have not only been formalized, but also greatly improved.

At Zhang Shaojie's suggestion, a large-scale increase in authors' remuneration and the formulation of a unified manuscript fee standard were several years ahead of schedule!

First, if the quality is mediocre and can barely be published, a minimum standard of HK$0.05 per word will be paid. 0.05 yuan per word, which is the minimum manuscript fee standard for Ming Pao.

Second, the quality is relatively excellent, and a newspaper serialization remuneration of HK$0.1 per word is given.

Thirdly, for contributing writers with extremely high quality and extremely wide popularity, the remuneration standard is evaluated according to their personal popularity and the quality of the manuscript. Famous level, different writers have different prices.

In the future, the remuneration will not be paid according to the identity and social status of the author of the article, which has nothing to do with the work itself, but according to the quality of the article, as well as the popularity of the author and the appeal to the market.

As for the articles submitted by professors, experts, scholars, and politicians who have no market appeal and mainstream readers don't actually pay attention to their articles, there is no need to give extra high prices!

For manuscripts with a certain degree of publication value or adaptation value, it is necessary to contact the author in a timely manner and buy all kinds of copyrights for publication, adaptation, translation, etc., in addition to the authorization of newspaper serialization.

The income from the publication of physical books can give authors the most generous royalty sharing standard in the world - 20% royalties. Adaptations of film and television, ACG, etc., as well as the income from overseas translations, have become the basic criterion for five or five points with the author.

In the future, the profits from Ming Pao's traditional business will gradually increase the scope of copyright investment, rather than the development of the scale of the newspaper media itself!

"In the future, if there are popular authors like me, Mr. Jin Yong, Yishu, and Ni Kuang, there will be such popular authors as Ming Pao's publications! It is necessary to evaluate the commercial value of the text's films, TV series, comics, anime, games, and so on. Once the author's text has been evaluated, there is any kind of adaptation value! Then, you have to make a move without hesitation and buy his adaptation copyright copyright investment, just like venture capital, maybe out of 100 copyrights, only 10 can make money, 1 is super profitable, then 90 are loss-making, and overall they are also profitable. Of course, those 90 loss-making films can also enrich our copyright library and increase our voice in the copyright industry. ”

Zhang Shaojie smiled and said: "Of course, the copyrights of famous artists who do not publish words in our Ming Pao, Liang Yusheng, Li Bihua and others are also our goals." For example, when I read Li Bihua's novels, the value of film and television adaptations is far underestimated! Even if her novel is adapted into a movie, there is a chance that she will win a movie award! ”

Jin Yong nodded and said: "The investment in copyright adaptation rights should be a new concept, and it should be gradual and gradual, and only after a thorough understanding of the operation of this industry can Ming Pao Group be able to further transform!" This year, there can be no big move, and for the time being, 10% of the profit will be reported, that is, 3 million Hong Kong dollars, to engage in this investment! In the future, if you understand it thoroughly and can do it practically, you will make additional investment! ”

For Jin Yong's decision, Zhang Shaojie felt very pleased.

Invested HK$3 million for copyright investment.

That means that this year's remuneration will reach more than HK$6 million, which is double the scale of last year's HK$3 million.

"Ming Pao" pays 3 million Hong Kong dollars a year, but in fact, it only accounts for 5% of Ming Pao's expenses!

The bigger expenses are the costs associated with employee salaries, office expenses, publishing and distribution, and so on. To put it simply, in the past, Ming Pao paid too much attention to running the newspaper itself, and neglected the authors who contributed to Ming Pao.

With prices high, it is difficult for most Hong Kong authors to simply write to support their families. Therefore, there are fewer and fewer professional authors, and writers are gradually becoming rare animals, which is not good news for Hong Kong's film and television industry, comics, animation, games and other peripheral industries!

In any creative industry, high-quality writers are indispensable!

The home is stuffy on the surface, but in reality it is a group of people with amazing creativity. This group of people, into the cultural and entertainment industry, the source of creativity, and even the imagination of the family, into the society, after forming an influence, will stimulate the innovation of science and technology.

Technology and culture complement each other. The development of science and technology has brought new elements, new changes and breakthroughs to the cultural industry. The inspiration of the cultural industry will affect the psychology of the whole society, and will also be transmitted to the group of scientists, and then affect the research and invention of scientists.

If we have to separate technology and culture, it is impossible - scientists also need culture and entertainment, and families will be affected by the times because they enjoy scientific and technological achievements!

"In any case, these reforms of Ming Pao! Whether it is in the long term or in the short term, it is a great benefit to the author group of Ming Pao Group! Zhang Shaojie thought silently.

The reason why Zhang Shaojie advocates increasing the remuneration of writers and supporting authors is also for the sake of the future of Hong Kong's cultural and entertainment industry.

The foundation of all cultural industries is words!

More than half of the animation products are adapted from the copyright of the novel. A large number of novels with imaginative, detailed plots, and settings undoubtedly provide a lot of material to the animation industry. The animation industry uses novels as raw materials and reprocesses them, so that the animation industry continues to innovate and has a steady stream of vitality. For example, the later "Lianggong Chunyu" series was adapted into comics, anime, and games through the novel "Lianggong Chunyu". The "Lianggong Spring" series has tens of millions of fans in Yueben, and it has also set off a cultural trend of Lianggong Spring around the world.

The same is true in the Hong Kong comic industry!

When Huang Yulang was painting the first few parts of "The Legend of the Son of Heaven", he invited Huang Yi to write the plot for him and conceive the plot! Huang Yi's imagination is magnificent, not only integrating the martial arts setting system in Huang Yi's novels into "The Legend of the Son of Heaven", but also constructing a larger setting than "The Tang Dynasty", "Raining Clouds" and other novels. As a result, "The Legend of the Son of Heaven" was able to sell more than 100,000 copies and gain a large number of die-hard fans!

But later, because of the share of comic sales, Huang Yulang's dividend to Huang Yi was too low, which made Huang Yi dissatisfied. The perfect combination of the two is over.

After Huang Yi withdrew from cooperating with Huang Yulang, Huang Yulang said in his heart, without you Huang Yi, can't I find someone else to conceive the plot? So, Huang Yulang organized dozens of screenwriters to conceive the plot and set up characters, but the popularity of "The Legend of the Son of Heaven" is still inevitably declining, and it is no longer as imposing as when he cooperated with Huang Yi in the early days!

The strategic value of excellent works and authors in the cultural and entertainment industry is equivalent to the Microsoft Brain System for the computer industry. If this foundation is not solid, the creative potential of other film and television and ACG industries will also be restricted

(To be continued)