"Shopkeeper Jin, did you come to me on purpose?" After the two sides sat down in the living room, Chi Fei asked.

The shopkeeper replied: "That's right, in two days, the booksellers' guild will hold an annual booksellers' exchange meeting in Zizhuyuan in the east of the city, and not only the booksellers from all over the capital will be present, but also many famous authors will be invited to participate." The person in charge of the guild has entrusted us to pass on an invitation to you, which is the invitation. After speaking, he handed a red gold-sprinkled invitation to Chi Fei.

Chi Fei looked at the invitation and said with some embarrassment: "Shopkeeper, it's not that I don't give face, I really don't want to reveal my identity at this stage, so as not to cause trouble." ”

Looking at Su Zhen, whose face was still quite immature, the golden shopkeeper could also understand his difficulties.

Although Su Zhen usually has a maturity and calmness far beyond his age in dealing with people, he is only fourteen years old after all, and he is still a weak teenager. If his identity is exposed now, it will attract many book fans to watch, not to mention, in case it attracts ill-intentioned villains, it will be dangerous.

The shopkeeper nodded approvingly and said, "Your concerns are also reasonable, so I'll just make up a reason to reply on your behalf that I can't attend." ”

"Then it's a hassle shopkeeper."

"Little brother, although you can't participate as Chi Fei, you might as well participate as an ordinary person. It's good for you, at least to get a general idea of the booksellers and the authors you're working with. Lest the next time you encounter something like that of a cottage scholar, you don't even know what the other party looks like. ”

Chi Fei thought about it, and what he said made sense. Since you have been in this industry, you must know more people, learn more about the rules and taboos of this industry, and you can't bury your head in building a car all day long.

"The shopkeeper is reasonable, then Su Zhen will be cheeky to participate as the shopkeeper's nephew, I hope the shopkeeper will not be surprised."

"If there really is a nephew like you, it's too late for me to be happy, where will I be weird. That's it, and I'll pick you up when the time comes. ”

"Thank you, shopkeeper."

…………………………

At noon two days later, the golden shopkeeper took a carriage to pick up Chi Fei as agreed.

Chi Fei was wearing a brand-new pale white cloth robe, which was low-key but not shabby. The golden shopkeeper was satisfied, and the boy always knew very well what he should and should not do.

In the car, the shopkeeper Jin introduced the origin of this bookseller's guild to Chi Fei.

The booksellers' guild was established more than 20 years ago to reduce the vicious competition among their peers.

Before the guilds, booksellers did not have a uniform price for printed materials such as scripts, poems, songs, and the Four Books and Five Classics. Different booksellers, different printing quality, and even different papers, the prices are different, and some are very different.

Since books are not cheap, the most common method used by booksellers to attract more people to buy books is to sell them at a reduced price.

If you sell well, then I'll sell it cheaper and attract customers, anyway, the content of the book is the same. Then the other party will sell cheaper in order to fight back, so a vicious price war is formed.

In this kind of price war, booksellers can only save costs to the greatest extent in order to make money. As a result, many shoddy and inferior books began to flood the market.

Some of them are printed in a mess, some are printed on very poor paper, and some are even misprinted. This makes many readers and ordinary readers have a very bad impression of booksellers, and feel that most booksellers are unscrupulous profiteers.

In order to reverse this situation, several large time-honored booksellers in the capital, including Juyazhai, united for the first time to form a booksellers' guild, and continued to attract more booksellers to come in.

The main purpose of the establishment of the booksellers' guild was to curb this vicious competition through collective strength.

Vicious competition arises because of unreasonable price wars, so the first thing booksellers will do is to prohibit price wars among peers and implement unified pricing.

In order to regulate the market, the quality of the book is divided into upper, middle and lower grades, not by content, but by paper and printing quality.

One price is set for books of good quality, another price for books of medium quality, and another price for books of inferior quality.

If a bookseller violated the rules, there would be a collective boycott by the entire booksellers' guild.

Through such tough measures, the publishing market in Beijing has finally been effectively rectified, and booksellers no longer need to engage in the kind of sales method through price wars.

In order to prevent the guild from becoming a monopoly, the major booksellers also established a strict rotation system. That is, the president of the guild was replaced every three years, and the heads of the major booksellers took turns to serve as presidents.

Whenever any major decision is to be made, it needs to be voted on by all booksellers, and the minority obeys the majority.

The guild president is only the initiator and initiator of the resolution, and does not have the right to decide.

In order to deepen the exchange of various booksellers, the booksellers' guild will hold a bookseller exchange meeting every year at about this time, when not only the booksellers from all over the capital will be present, but also many famous authors will be invited to participate.

The establishment of the Beijing Booksellers' Guild played a very important role in regulating the publishing market, which attracted the attention of booksellers from other places, and many booksellers in Fucheng also set up their own booksellers' guilds.

After listening to the golden shopkeeper's explanation, Chi Fei couldn't help but admire the wisdom of the ancients.

Who said that the ancients would not have a democratic vote, isn't this a living example?

Soon, the carriage came to the site where the exchange meeting was held, the Zizhu Garden in the east of the city.

The original owner of this Zizhu Garden is a wealthy businessman in the capital, but unfortunately he is not rich for three generations, because the family has a ruined son, the family property is quickly lost, only this garden and an ancestral house are left.

In order to make a living, the current owner rents out the garden to others to play in order to earn rent.

This purple bamboo garden is named because it is full of purple bamboo, covering a large area, in the capital of this place with such a large garden, it can be seen how rich the original owner was.

It is a good place to play, so many wealthy people will rent this garden if they want to hold a large party.

First, the place is big enough to worry about the guests not being able to sit down. Second, after the party, you just need to spend some money to ask someone to clean up, and you don't have to bother with anything.

Unless someone else rents it in advance, it has become a common practice for booksellers to give first choice to this Zizhu Garden when they hold an exchange meeting every year.

There is a special person at the gate of the garden who is responsible for greeting guests, and when the other party sees the gold shopkeeper, he greets him very politely.

After the golden shopkeeper was polite to him, he introduced Chi Fei as one of his nephews, and this time he brought him over to open his eyes.

The other party didn't suspect it, so he sent the two in.

After Chi Fei followed the golden shopkeeper into the garden, he saw that the surroundings were obviously carefully arranged, and the organizers were also full of lanterns and ribbons on the purple bamboos on both sides of the road, which looked very festive.