For the arrangement of the bookstore, Chen Xu did not have such strict requirements as the History Museum, the main task of the bookstore is to collect and sort out all the articles of the sages, and then compile them into a book, in fact, many of them have been sorted out by hundreds of disciples, and finally it is copied from the bamboo and wood slips to review and compile, and the content is also varied, there is no way to start, mainly by the hundred disciples themselves, the role of the bookstore is to sort out these books after the collection is carried out, and then select some poems, books, agriculture, medicine, Printing and publishing that is of great significance to people's livelihood such as law, as for some other topics, if you want to publish, you can buy a book number at your own expense, and the printing house will sell it at a discount to you after printing, whether you can sell it, how much you can sell depends on your own ability, of course, if the publishing house wants to sell it, you can still print it yourself, this is a pure commercial activity.

After a lesson in the bookstore, Chen Xu did not make any suggestions, but asked all the people in charge of compilation to carefully compile and sort them out, classify them according to different types, and not have any bias and slander against books from other schools.

Before then, Chen Xu, accompanied by An Yuliang and Chen Pingren, visited the printing factory next to him.

The scale of the printing house has increased to a small size, the typesetting operation area has reached an astonishing 300 tables, and the printing table has also increased to nearly 100, that is to say, if only a book is typeset and printed, and a book is 100 pages, thousands of copies can be printed out without sleep for a day and a night, but this is theoretical, because books and newspapers are different, and they have to be cut and bound, in fact, it takes more than ten minutes to bind a book, and a person can only bind dozens of books a day, which greatly slows down the time when the book leaves the factory.

Typesetting and printing Chen Xu was already very familiar with it, but he still inspected the workshops divided into several areas one by one.

In this era without machines, all the printing links are done manually, from typesetting to printing to binding and cutting, are piled up manually, so what Chen Xu is seeing now is a busy factory with thousands of people, the huge wooden greenhouse is divided into several areas, typesetting, proofreading, printing, and binding are all very busy, but it looks well organized.

Typesetting and proofreading are literate scribes, and the printers are nimble young men, who can endure loneliness and repeat the same printing action repeatedly, and because books are bound with twine, most of the bookbinders are women, and they are also young women with flexible hands and feet recruited in the city.

At present, the printing house does not make money except for newspapers, but fortunately, the emperor is also very concerned about the development of the Academy of Letters, and arranges for the Inner History Office to allocate 10,000 stone of grain from Xianyang Cang every month, otherwise the three units of the newspaper hall, the Academy of Letters and the printing house alone will almost eat all the income of the newspaper hall.

The main task of the printing house at present is to print newspapers, and the number of prints in each issue is more than 50,000 copies, and the largest layout is used, and the paper is also the largest, so the consumption of ink and paper is also the largest.

In addition to the newspapers, there are currently three other books being printed in the printing house.

The first is the 100 forums edited by An Yuliang, the first printing of 5,000 copies, using A4 size paper, the first issue of the review and publication of 20 articles, all of which are Confucianism, famous and miscellaneous and other famous schools of celebrity and scholar opinions, each of which has been carefully reviewed by An Yuliang to ensure the professionalism and seriousness of the article.

The other is Zhang Cang's nine chapters of arithmetic, because it involves a large number of graphics, the illustrations in it need to be carved out of clay tablets according to Zhang Cang's manuscript one by one, and then sent to the factory to be fired into pottery plates, so this kind of book involving a large number of pictures and texts is very troublesome, only ten typesetting tables are used to slowly typeset, the progress is very slow, the first printing is ready for two thousand copies, and now the printed content is not even one-fifth.

There is also a collection of italic characters, compiled by the five princesses Ying Shiyan, because a separate italic character is used, so the factory specially produced italic movable type, and now only two typesetting and printing tables are slowly arranged.

There is no rush to promote italics, or it is not in a hurry.

Because of the current Great Qin, although the imperial court has been promoting a unified small seal, most of the literate people in the land of the Six Kingdoms still use the first six languages, many of which are different from the small seal, the application level of the small seal is still in the documents transmitted by the imperial court, that is to say, only the official is in use, but fortunately, under the promotion of Li Si and the imperial court, at least the official written records are small seals, and the original form of the official script began to appear.

At present, a large number of materials collected by the Academy of Literature are a mixed situation of countless different words, many ancient seals, large seals and even golden bone inscriptions are not even known to many scribes, and can only be identified by consulting some old people who have studied the text very much, which is also the original intention of Chen Xu to establish the bookstore, the text is not uniform, and it is estimated that the information of these strange written records will become antiques in tens of hundreds of years, and must be re-sorted and transcribed with small seals.

As for the square text in italics, Mo said that everyone does not know it now, and even if someone knows, it will take a very long time to promote it successfully, but Chen Xu believes that as long as the newspaper continues to promote and distribute, and so on next year, the newspaper will begin to use a special page to publish articles written in italics, and then with the release of the italic character collection, a large number of people will soon begin to learn and use concise italic characters, which is much faster than the promotion of small seals.

But these things cannot be done overnight, and they must wait until the right time to play Qin Shi Huang and obtain the emperor's permission before they can be carried out.

What's more, the promotion of italic characters will inevitably have a conflict with Li Si, Chen Xu doesn't want to be too stiff with Li Si, his current purpose is not to promote words, but to change the political pattern of Daqin, first promote various reforms and infrastructure construction related to people's livelihood, the text is actually changed or not changed The current problem is not too big.

Chen Xu led a group of people to the binding area, where dozens of young women in coarse cloth smocks were binding the Baijia Forum with twine.

Seeing Chen Xu coming, the steward of the binding area and a group of women were frightened and hurriedly stood up and saluted.

"You're busy, you're busy, don't worry about us!" Chen Xu waved his hand again and again, and then picked up a bound book and looked at it.

Because it is a periodical, a volume is only about forty pages, not too thick, so it is not too difficult to bind, and there are several literate helpers next to the row of printed back cover covers and contents according to the page number on a wooden shelf, and then pick up one from each stack from beginning to end, all the way to the whole content of a book, and then send it to the cutting table to cut neatly, and then send it to the punching machine to punch holes.

The punch machine is a factory-made machine, similar to a coin stamping machine, with five steel needles on a wooden anvil, and the cut side is placed in a wooden trough and clamped, and then the handle is moved to press down the anvil, and a row of five small holes is made on one side of the book, and then the contents of these punched holes are sent to a group of women to be bound with twine.

Chen Xu has already read the content of the 100 forums roughly, and the content is very serious policy, Chen Xu is not interested in reading it, many of them do not conform to his reform intentions, but as a professional journal, the most important thing is to cause more discussions at different levels, so Chen Xu did not care too much, the purpose of running a journal is to attract the attention of those hundred celebrities, so that they have a place to express their opinions, so as to divert their interest, so as not to make trouble in Xianyang and other places.

What's more, now that the History Museum and the bookstore have recruited a large number of famous people, this journal will slowly transform into an academic journal, and finally become an evaluation project for officials to make a fortune.

Being able to publish articles in this journal is both an honor and a symbol of status, just like later generations of officials like to publish articles in some academic journals, speaking out not only saves face, but also can get attention from all walks of life.

"I've seen Master Hou, Yuliang Gong, and Secretary Chen!" Hearing that Chen Xu came to inspect the printing house, Pang Que, the director of the printing house, hurriedly brought a few of his subordinates to greet him.

"Director Pang has worked hard, let's just come and have a look!" Chen Xu put down the journal in his hand and said.

"It's rare for Master Hou to come here, there are a lot of noisy people here, so let's go to the office with my subordinates to take a break!"

"Well, that's fine!" Chen Xu nodded, and led a group of people to the office of the director of the printing house.

With the opening of the bookstore, there should be some books to be printed soon, and these need to be arranged in advance, and as the director of the printing house, Pang Que's task is naturally very important.

Before there were no entertainment projects such as radio, television, network, and computer, reading books and newspapers was the most important means of entertainment for cultural people, and with the successive listing of a large number of paper books, the life of cultural people will soon be greatly enriched.

In the past, a book of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of words, is a masterpiece of the emperor, such as the Spring and Autumn Period of the Lu family, the whole book of 26 volumes, more than 160 articles, a total of more than 200,000 words, carved bamboo slips enough to fill a large cabinet, just to sort out and copy Chen Ping and Sun Shujiong took two months, and finally became no more than a thousand pages of hemp pulp paper, if the small font used in the newspaper is printed, the thickness can be reduced by half, and finally only about 300 pages, bound into a book is also three or five copies, and you can take it away in a pocket.

Therefore, in the period of using bamboo and wood slips, it is not easy for any book to spread, it is not easy to see a complete book, a good book is regarded as a treasure and will never be borrowed, so people who want to see it have to ask their father to tell their grandmother to copy it, so some people want to copy a whole book of Lu's Spring and Autumn Festival, just the bamboo slips have to be tens of thousands of pieces and hundreds of catties, not to say that the poor look down on it, and the rich people also look down on it.

And it is precisely because of this that many ancient classics can only see part of the content or even only a few words, a book turned over and over and broke the twine, and finally can only start to assemble with a confused face, if the assembly is wrong, many of the contents will be completely changed when they are circulated again, and finally become more and more unreliable.

Therefore, paper is an important carrier for the rapid development of human civilization, which is why the poetry culture will suddenly explode after the invention of printing in the Tang and Song dynasties.

And the dissemination of knowledge is the source and driving force of human progress.

Therefore, the existence of printing houses is very important at present, and with a large number of books on the market, all kinds of knowledge of farming, breeding, medicine, manufacturing, and farmland and water conservancy can be quickly spread, rather than relying on a few experienced craftsmen to slowly teach apprentices to promote the speed and effect that can be achieved.