Because of Lu Xi'er's opposition, Hui Niang did not mention accepting Shen Xi as her adopted son, and according to the results of her discussion with the Zhou family, she would wait for the child to be a little older before discussing.

Hui Niang thinks that her daughter is young, and she is afraid that many brothers in the family will share her mother's love, so she will object, and when her daughter grows up, she will be sensible, and she will definitely agree when the time comes.

The matter of accepting Yizi did not succeed, and Hui Niang's love for Shen Xi did not decrease, but increased.

First, Shen Xi is capable, he has a lot of elf and eccentric ideas at a young age, and now the business of the pharmacy and printing workshop is very good; Second, Shen Xi said that day that even if she didn't worship Huiniang as her stepmother, she would honor her well in the future, which made her feel warm and moved.

Hui Niang is a person who knows how to repay her kindness, Shen Xi is well-behaved and sensible and good to her, so she will reciprocate.

The business of the printing workshop is very good, and every day it has to work overtime to print "The Complete Biography of Yue Yue" and "The Biography of Tong Lin", and the small county town of Ninghua has sold tens of thousands of copies, mainly thanks to the fact that each of these two books has many volumes, especially "The Biography of Tong Lin", the content is divided into volumes according to the chapters, adding up to 20 volumes.

The market is booming, and with it comes a variety of problems.

Even if the sales are good, but in fact, the workshop can't make too much money, and the sales of each volume are actually only four or five hundred copies, which is still the sales volume that many people in Tingzhou Mansion and even the surrounding prefectures and counties come to buy it. The more books are printed, the cheaper they are, and the content of the publishing line needs to be retyped with movable type, which requires a lot of effort to proofread, and the cost of labor has skyrocketed.

Of course, piracy is the biggest impact on sales. In this era when there is no concept of copyright at all, as long as others have the opportunity, they will print and openly sell ready-made books, even if they know that it is stealing the fruits of other people's labor, the government will not pursue it.

"The Complete Biography of Yue Yue" and "The Biography of Tong Lin" sold well, and there were soon fakes on the market, and some people began to copy books. In these days, it was difficult for private individuals to print books, but after getting the books, copying them manually was the main way to spread books, even in the Qing Dynasty, and the number of copies of a Dream of Red Mansions could not be counted.

This is not all bad, there are many copyists who are highly educated and cultivated, and they will revise the original book in the process of copying, but it can make the content of the book more substantial.

Shen Xi doesn't care whether others can copy or not improve the work, although these two books are not original to him, but they were spread through him, noblely said to enrich people's lives, but the main purpose is to make money. If someone else dilutes the profits from book printing, it is really not what he wants.

However, Shen Xi didn't have a good way, all he could do was to hurry up and launch the comic strips of these two books.

One of the biggest advantages of comic strips is that piracy is very difficult, and it is not possible to copy them with literacy or a little drawing skills.

The most important thing in printing a comic book is that the original picture is printed on a wooden engraving, and then the original picture is engraved, and a board corresponds to a page of story.

Under the premise that Shen Xi could not improve the papermaking technology, he could only use the traditional method, that is, to combine several pieces of rice paper into one, and then cut the rice paper into the size of thirty-two carats in later generations, and finally print the content of the comic strip, proofread and bind it page by page.

To engrave engraving, it takes a lot of manpower and material resources.

At the beginning, the workshop invited two masters to do it, and it took six pages to carve out six pages of content a day, and then Hui Niang went to invite two masters to come back, and the progress was much faster.

Although Zhou did not agree with Shen Xi touching the engraving, Shen Xi quietly went home to carve, because he was good at carving seals, and the painting was also created by him, the carving was handy, and the time was much less than that of other masters, but the speed was about the same.

After half a month of preparation, a total of 150 engravings in the first volume of "The Biography of Tong Lin" were finally engraved, and the effect was good after a few test prints, but there was still room for improvement in ink.

The printing shop took the printed sample of the first volume of "The Biography of Tong Lin" to the two shopkeepers, Hui Niang and Zhou, and both of them were happy on their faces.

“…… Lifelike, more vivid than Han Wa'er's painting. Zhou smiled and complimented.

Hui Niang smiled lightly: "Sister, this is saying something against her heart, even if it is well printed, the original painting was painted by Xiaolang, how can this credit be counted on Xiaolang." ”

Zhou pursed his lips and glared at Shen Xi, who was smug.

Hui Niang explained two sentences to the master who sent the sample book, asking them to engrave the engraving of the second book while printing, so that when the sales boom of the first volume has passed, the second volume can almost be launched.

When the craftsman went out, Shen Xi chased him out, he had to take precautions, find someone he could trust to keep the engravings, and send the engravings back to the pharmacy for storage after printing a batch, which was to prevent the people in the printing workshop from colluding with outsiders and taking the engravings out to pirate the comic strips.

Shen Xi believes that as long as the engraving is kept well, it will be very difficult for others to pirate the comic books he created in a short period of time, which can ensure sufficient profits.

When Shen Xi returned to the pharmacy, Zhou and Hui Niang were holding a copy in their hands and looking at it with a smile. Hui Niang looks at the picture and content, while Zhou just looks at the painting, and she roughly knows what is said through the painting, she is very happy, in the end, it is produced in her own workshop, how can she look at how pleasing to the eye.

In addition to opera and spring palace pictures, it is difficult to see other entertainment methods with a sense of picture for the time being, and comic books are very novel and chic.

"Xiaolang, this story is a little short, how about it be longer in the future?" The comic book is not a book, a volume of one hundred and fifty pages of comic books, Hui Niang quickly finished reading it, and she was a little unsatisfied, so she discussed it with Shen Xi.

Shen Xi was helpless: "Aunt Sun, it's not that I don't want to lengthen it, every painting in this comic book is carved out, and we don't have enough manpower." ”

Zhou said disdainfully: "Stinky boy, what your aunt means is that the content of the painting remains the same, and the text below is more, so that you can read it for a while?" ”

Shen Xi really wanted to explain that since people came to buy comic books, they were just to see the paintings, otherwise they would have to buy books and make up for their own brains. But in the end, it was Hui Niang and Zhou's meaning, and Shen Xi still responded.

Hui Niang is very happy, she almost doesn't know anything about the printing workshop business, she has to discuss any ideas with Shen Xi, Shen Xi thinks it is feasible for her to do it, and Shen Xi herself does not dare to take the idea without authorization, many things have to be discussed with Hui Niang, as if this workshop is jointly run by Hui Niang and Shen Xi.

"Aunt, I have an idea, why don't we add a few illustrations to the book printed in the future, so that the story in the book can be more vivid and interesting, and at the same time, customers can distinguish the authenticity of the book, otherwise they don't know if they buy fakes, but they will denigrate our printing quality."

Hui Niang smiled and nodded: "It's up to you, the little shopkeeper, to make the decision, where does Aunt Sun understand this?" However, it would be nice to add a few illustrations, and it would be more interesting to read. ”

Shen Xi's idea, Hui Niang's open-mindedness, and the sincere cooperation between the two families, as well as the day and night work of the guys below, brought about the prosperity of the printing workshop.

With the support of the previous book sales channel, the comic book began to be shipped and sold after 100 copies were printed.

In less than half a day, 100 copies of the comic book had been sold out, and since they had never seen such a continuous picture telling a story and portraying characters before, the shopkeepers of each bookstore couldn't put it down, and they kept one or two copies privately. Originally, it was priced at 50 wen a piece, but the next day someone in the city speculated and sold it, and the price rose to 100 wen or even 150 wen, but it was still impossible to buy it.

On the evening of the second day of the comic strip's release, several businessmen from other places came to Hui Niang's house to discuss buying engravings and printing them themselves.

These traders are standard pirate traders.

Seeing that "The Complete Biography of Yue Yue" and "The Biography of Tong Lin" were selling well, they bought the books and took them back to print them themselves, and now these two books are already on sale in Tingzhou Mansion and surrounding prefectures and counties, and even the provincial capital Fuzhou.

Seeing that the comic strip was very popular, these people also wanted to buy it and print it themselves, but it turned out that it was too difficult to pirate it, so they simply met up to buy the engraving.

"The little woman can't make up her mind about this kind of thing."

In the face of these bound merchants, Hui Niang behaved neither humbly nor arrogantly, "The big shopkeeper of this book printing workshop is this lady." ”

Hui Niang put the blame on the Zhou family.

The Zhou family was originally joining in the fun, but he couldn't help but be dumbfounded when he heard Hui Niang say this.

"I don't know what this lady is called?" Those practitioners asked Zhou in an earnest tone.

Zhou is spicy on weekdays, but she has never had any experience in talking to people about business, and finally she searched around the crowd and pulled Shen Xi out.

Zhou said: "Minfu Shen Zhou, our family is a small shopkeeper. If there's anything, ask him! ”

The faces of the merchants changed color in unison, and they all thought that Hui Niang and Zhou were joking with them, what ability could a seven or eight-year-old child have to manage a hot printing workshop?

Hui Niang nodded: "You don't have to doubt, this little shopkeeper can decide everything, as long as he agrees, we have no opinion." ”

A middle-aged merchant glanced at Shen Xi with disdain, but his words were still very polite: "Little shopkeeper, we want to buy the board of this painting book, you can make a price!" ”

Shen Xi raised his head and refused in a blunt tone: "Our engraving will not be sold." Each page corresponds to a engraving, sell it to you, what do we make money? ”

When the middle-aged merchant heard this, the smile on his face froze suddenly.

He had already asked someone to calculate the cost of the engraving comic strip, which was too high, and the key techniques of the comic strip could not be mastered, such as how to cut paper, how to achieve the harmony and unity of the picture and the text, and how to rub the text under the picture.

They originally wanted to buy printing plates and go back to study them themselves, but now they can't buy printing plates, so they can only watch as all the silver goes into the hands of the proprietor of the printing workshop, and they can't share the oil and water.

The middle-aged merchant hurriedly said, "Little shopkeeper, don't worry, let's discuss it...... Well, do you think this will work, you open a high price, we will take down this printing shop, you can make a lot of money from it, how about it? ”

"We make money and sell it to you, which is equivalent to killing chickens and taking eggs, so we are not so stupid."

Shen Xi took out a child's style of speaking in front of outsiders, "But it's not impossible for you to cooperate sincerely, we can wholesale the printed comic books to you at a low price, and you can sell them elsewhere, whether you make money or lose money, and it's your own business to make more or less money." For mobile phone users, please visit http://m.piaotian.net