Recently (2013), the National Copyright Administration released the Measures for Payment of Remuneration for the Use of Written Works (Revised Draft for Comments) on its official website, which intends to increase the royalty rate of original works to 5%-15%, and the basic remuneration standard for original works to 100-500 yuan per 1,000 words. www.biquge.info This is much better than the Regulations on the Remuneration of Published Literary Works issued in 1999, which stipulates that the basic remuneration standard for original works is 30-100 yuan per 1,000 words, and the royalty rate is 3%-10%. However, the income tax threshold of 800 yuan is too low.

We have read too many articles on the topic of manuscript fees, and now that Mr. Zhu Zhi is here to join in the fun, there is a suspicion of mixing manuscript fees (fortunately, there is no manuscript fee for posting on the Internet), but I still can't help but want to say. The reason is just that my friend Xiaoyue received a manuscript fee a few days ago, and promised to invite Mr. Zhu Zhi to drink two cups of horse urine, which is very cordial and very expected.

The first time I received the manuscript fee was when I was a sophomore in college (1990), at that time, there were more articles, and most of them were weighty articles, and there were novellas with headlines, and the manuscript fee was more than three or five hundred yuan, and the less was ten yuan and eight yuan, which was like a huge amount of money for a college student who relied on sending 40 yuan a month to his family. Therefore, when it comes to receiving the manuscript, they shout everywhere, lest the world will not know.

Once, the manuscript fee for an essay was 22 yuan, but the bill of exchange was written in the pen name of Mr. Zhu Zhi. When the post and telecommunications lady saw that it did not match her ID card, her eyes turned white, and she threw it out, and shouted: The name is wrong! I hurriedly explained that it was a pen name, and I received a manuscript fee, and I had proof. The young lady was angry and shouted; What pseudonymous manuscript fee, one or twenty yuan, get out quickly, don't get in the way of the people behind! When the people in the back heard this, they all poked their heads together, probably wanting to see that it has been more than ten years since the reform and opening up, and now it is the primary stage of socialism, and there are still people who receive such a small amount of remittances. I couldn't help but feel hot on my face, as if I was not collecting money, but stealing money, and quickly got out.

Since then, if it is a small amount of bills of exchange, I dare not venture to visit the post and telecommunications office, and many of my colleagues also feel the same way, going to the post and telecommunications office to receive a little money, sometimes the goosebumps on my body will be bigger than the banknotes. Not only is it a severe test for the face to go to the Link's bill, but sometimes even receiving the bill of exchange will be a little frightened. Once, I received a manuscript fee, which was thirty or forty yuan, and the bill of exchange was placed in the office, which caused a lot of boos. People who saw it said that I thought he had made a fortune writing articles, but such a small amount of money was not enough for him to buy ink! It's a shame that he's so desperate! That look is like Mr. Zhu Zhi was fully armed and tried to grab money, but he didn't grab a lot of money, and only grabbed three or five yuan, but the police caught him and was sentenced to a heavy sentence! It's really like a manuscript fee is like a timid, and your face is thinner than a foreign exchange!

Of course, there are also high manuscript fees, and that was in the past. Mr. Lu Xun, in 1913, his first novel "Nostalgia" written in literary language was published in the "Novel Monthly", which was a generous manuscript fee at that time. Lu Xun later wrote for the "Free Talk" of the "Declaration", and the fee for a thousand-word manuscript was actually opened to 80 oceans, which is equivalent to dozens of taels of rice, and even the editor-in-chief Shi Liangcai's hands trembled every time he signed the manuscript fee. But in this era, when it comes to manuscript fees, hehe! The famous Romanian novelist Constantine lamented: This is the era of persecution in Romanian literature, where a novel could buy a car in the past, but then it could only buy a tire, and now it is necessary to sell the car to produce a novel.

It is said that the cost of a 1,000-word manuscript for a nationwide publication in the United States is $750 to $2,000, and the fee for a 1,000-word article in the New York Times is more than $2,000, or 4,800 to 12,800 yuan. The 1,000-word renminbi of European newspapers and periodicals is 4 to 5,000 yuan. China's state-level newspapers and periodicals cost about 100 yuan per 1,000 words, and "low remuneration has almost eliminated the important industry of freelancers." It is said that even Zheng Yuanjie, a fairy tale king who is a frequent guest on the writers' rich list, complained about the low remuneration of Chinese writers in an interview with the media as early as 2009. Nowadays, there are many people who write on the website, and it is said that they get tens of millions of yuan a year for manuscript fees, and I have heard of it, but I have never seen it.

Although the manuscript fee is so low, most of them are not guaranteed to be received. If you have ever written for newspapers and periodicals, you will have the experience of being owed manuscript fees, and when you encounter such a thing, Mr. Zhu Zhi is categorically sighing and helpless. (However, I have a friend who behaves very differently than I do in this regard, and if he doesn't receive the manuscript fee, no matter how much, he dares to write to ask for it, which really makes me look up to the mountains!) Moreover, for some small amount of manuscript bills, I still dare not take them to exchange money, to this day, I have accumulated in the drawer more than a dozen bills of exchange that I dare not receive, the most one is 28 yuan, the least one is transferred from the Chinese Copyright Society, a magazine (Chinese and foreign women's digest) reprinted one of my essays of more than 1,000 words, the reprint fee is actually three yuan and six cents. Later, I simply stopped writing short articles.

It is already an indisputable fact that articles are becoming less and less valuable; The era when writers can make many people worship is already helpless. Many friends who know me ask, Mr. Zhu, how much money can you make writing articles? This question is really difficult to answer, "literati don't ask about manuscript fees, women don't ask about age", so I had to say: It's just a hobby, for example, you like to dance, take pictures, pick up girls or something, how much money can you make? In fact, writing articles can only be a hobby, and there are very few people who make a fortune by writing articles, and there is no one around me. It's not actually what writers are looking for. But if writing an article is a pleasure, publishing an article is a joy, and when it comes to receiving the manuscript fee, it is really embarrassing.

I remembered that in the past, Mr. Zhu Zhi also ran an internal publication, but the manuscript was less than the copper plate in Mr. Zhu Zhi's pocket, so as soon as it was published, he forced his friends to write the manuscript everywhere, and when it was time to send the manuscript fee, he really sweated for them, so that it was not enough to buy a bottle of Valium tablets and blood pressure pills, so that they might be ridiculed intentionally or unintentionally, and Lao Dajia made them move to the post office to embarrassment, which is actually a sin! Here, I would like to express my deep apologies to those brothers and sisters who have been "fooled" by me.

In a materialistic world, for a "high-minded" literati, it is indeed a shame to receive such a small manuscript fee. Therefore, when Mr. Zhu writes for some newspapers and periodicals, if the manuscript fee of the unit is remitted through a bank account, I will collect the full amount of the manuscript fee. If you send money through the post office, the amount is too small and you have to reluctantly cut your love. There is a saying that goes like this: If you love him, send her to New York, because it is heaven there; If you hate him, send her to New York, because it's hell there. In fact, it can also be said this: Editors, if you love me, please publish my article, because I will be happy; If you hate me, please send me a little bit of the manuscript fee and embarrass me.