Chapter 29: The Newspaper Report

  Before long, the time had arrived in '98. After a winter break, all students returned to school. Su Jing's recent mood was quite good. During the winter break, Liu Wenle's fantasy novel "War of Heaven and Earth" received a great response online. Huāng Zǒng took advantage of the students' vacation time to publish and distribute it, which unexpectedly became another bestseller! This undoubtedly had a huge promotional effect on other members of the writing club. After the sales data for "War of Heaven and Earth" was released, within just three days, Liu Mei received 21 writing outlines!

  Although it may not reach the height of "Dou Po", conservatively estimated, selling a few tens of thousands of copies per year is no problem. What's important is that this proves Su Zhan's original plan was completely feasible - publishing online, testing the market, and then issuing physical books in reality! The plan has great prospects! Now, Fat General is more devoted to Dream Net than Su Zhan ever was!

  Su Jin was rather delighted about this, after all, he was originally a lazy person, and as long as Fat could take care of these things, he could be even lazier, which was exactly what he had been hoping for!

  "Ding ding ding" The phone rang, Su Jin's hand reached for the phone, muttering to himself: "That fat guy must have something going on, he's in a frenzy now, three calls a day, more regular than meals, just calling to chat nonsense!"

  "Hello, who's there? I'm Su Zhan!"

  "It's me, Xiao Jin, come to the company quickly, there's an urgent matter!" As expected, the voice of Fat General came from the other end of the phone.

  "What's going on, Fatty? You'd better say it clearly and write it down properly. No mistake, you said it was an urgent matter!" Su Zhan said lazily.

  "Alright, stop dragging it out, hurry over, this time it's really an emergency!" The fat boss on the other end of the line sounded very anxious, not like he was faking it.

  Su Jin's tone also became serious and said: "Okay, I'll go right away, wait for me!"

  Hurriedly arriving at the company, Su Jin raised his eyes and took a look, there were not many people, but Fat General, Li Bing, Qian Ling, Liu Mei, Wang Fei, and Li Mo had all arrived. It can be said that now everyone related to this company has arrived except for Su Jin.

  "What's going on? Why so serious?" Su Jin asked in puzzlement.

  "Take a look at this report first!" Fatong handed Su Mei a newspaper and said.

  "The Ancient City Culture News", Su Jin saw the title of the newspaper at a glance.

  "The third edition of the commentator's article!" Li Bing said on one side.

  Turn to the third page of the newspaper, and this entire page has only one commentary article! "On the Education of Contemporary Youth" Su Jin stared at the newspaper with both eyes, looking serious, his expression becoming increasingly solemn. The entire article was thousands of words long, and after carefully summarizing it, the general idea was: "Youth are the future of the country, their growth is related to the development of the country's future, the main task of youth is to study, learn various knowledge and skills, so that in the future when they enter society, they can contribute their strength to the country and society.

  And schools are the places where students learn and grow, their influence on students is undeniable, they must play a correct guiding role. Let students establish a correct outlook on life and values in school. Especially for some money worship and hedonism in today's society, we must resolutely isolate them from campus! For some harmful elements in schools, schools must resolutely deal with them!"

  Su Jian put down the newspaper, closed his eyes and began to think silently: "Although the other party did not mention names, the implication was very obvious. As long as it is an insider, everyone can see it! This article directly points to Shang Xue! Or it can be said that it directly points to the Writing Society, directly points to Su Jian, and directly points to Dream Net!

  They are saying that the Dream Network and Writing Club in schools use real-life book publishing as a lure to entice students, causing them to become obsessed and neglect their studies. If they were writing traditional books, it would be okay, but the main problem is that they are writing garbage, which has no positive impact on students' future development. At the same time, because of the success of these publications, students will become even more obsessed with them, forming a vicious cycle. As the school is responsible for managing students, it should regulate and punish this behavior.

  Li Bing looked at Su Jin and said heavily: "It's not just the Ancient City Literary Gazette, the Ancient City Youth Gazette, and the Ancient City People's Gazette that have published similar articles. Some third-rate tabloids have also published follow-up pieces, and several major newspapers still care about their reputation, but these third-rate tabloids don't have any qualms. They're all naming names, making it seem like our Dream Net has become a street rat overnight!"

  "How can this be? Even if we did entice students to write, and even if what they said was reasonable, isn't this making a big deal out of nothing? The level of writing varies from person to person, who says that those with lower levels can't write articles? And as for writing on the internet, isn't that just another form of literature? Do people need to report to them before writing about what they want? Moreover, our Dream Net has only just started, does it really have such a big impact? Organizing students to write is limited to just our school! What kind of place is this school? It's where all the problematic students gather! Only those who can't make it in high school come here! The teachers and principals here only require one thing from them: don't cause trouble! As long as there aren't one or two murder cases every year, things like fighting, dating, smoking, drinking, and staying up all night online are considered minor issues not worth paying attention to! If students in this kind of school can really sit down and write books without causing trouble, I reckon the principal would be overjoyed! This existence that is normally completely ignored, living on the fringes of society, when did it become something so many people care about? It's even being linked to the future of our country and societal development!"

  The fat boss and several others looked at each other in dismay. Su Jin's words were not something they hadn't thought of, but rather they hadn't thought it through as thoroughly as Su Jin had. As soon as this matter occurred, they all felt a bit panicked, after all, if they didn't handle it well, they would become laughing stocks in the cultural circle and wouldn't be able to show their faces anymore! Now that Su Jin has said it, they really feel like there's something fishy going on!

  Su Jing was able to say this because he wasn't really more thoughtful than the others, but rather because he had been on guard against this all along. No mistake, Su Jing had long been prepared. As someone from a later generation, he naturally knew what kind of status fantasy novels held in people's hearts. In his previous life, for a very long time, fantasy novels were given the title of "electronic poison". Even in the era when Su Jing returned, this type of book was still an existence deeply hated by parents and teachers!

  This is also the main reason why he insisted on not going back to Yizhong to study. In a place like this, there is no soil for survival in Yizhong, even if students love to read, students in Yizhong have the lowest status, with teachers, school leaders and parents sitting on their heads! Do they have any right to resist?

  But in a business school, there are not so many things to worry about. As people say, for students of a business school, teachers, schools and parents all have only one requirement: as long as they don't cause trouble, it's fine. If they can calm down and write books, no matter what the content is, it's something worth celebrating for teachers and parents! Organizing students to write here is much easier compared to a middle school.

  "I think there's a shadow of those several publishing houses in this matter!" Fatong said suddenly with some uncertainty.

  "What do those publishers have to do with this?" Liu Mei hastily asked. The Writing Society was also her heart's blood, from its establishment to its later development, it could be said that every step of the way had left her mark on it. If the Writing Society really did have some fault, then the distress in her heart would not be any lighter than Su Jin's!

  Su Jin and several others also cast their eyes over at the right moment.

  "I'm referring to the big state-owned publishers like Ancient City Publishing House, Ancient City People's Publishing House and Ancient City Youth Publishing House! Although reform and opening-up has been carried out for nearly twenty years, in the current domestic market, especially the book publishing market, these state-owned publishers still occupy a dominant position! My publishing house is also one of the top private publishing houses in Ancient City, but it can't be compared with those state-owned publishers. Even if I take out just one of them, in terms of scale, channels and influence, it's enough to surpass ten Macrocosm Publishing Houses! Originally they never put me in their eyes, even when last year in the second half of the year, continuously issued bestsellers like "The First Time" and "Fighting Through the Sky", it was just an accidental phenomenon. After all, a publishing house can't rely on just one author to survive."

  But now it's different, with the emergence of Dream Net, I have a constant stream of books, especially with the release of "War in Heaven and Earth", although it can't be said to be very popular, but this is a long-term thing. Especially in the future when we publish books, they will be those that have been recognized by readers online, so the risk of publishing for the publisher will be minimized! In this situation, we really have the capital to catch up with them!

  At this point, they can't help but take us seriously! They know there's no way to confront Dream Net head-on, so they came up with this despicable trick to sabotage our writing club, tarnish our reputation and make us the laughing stock. It's definitely them, absolutely their doing!" Boss Wan became more and more certain as he spoke, eventually convinced that these few publishing houses were the culprits!

  Su Jin let out a sigh of relief, if this was just a few publishing houses playing tricks, although for an author, the hostility of publishing houses is not to be underestimated, but Su Jin is not an ordinary author, with the support of the fat president, he has nothing to fear, other publishing houses' capital! If it's really the entire cultural circle's hostility, then Su Jin might as well have been busy for nothing all this time. To think about cultural dissemination, he can start anew and drum up publicity again! After all, if everyone in the industry looks down on him, even hostile to him, how can he still survive?

  However, Su Jian's eyebrows furrowed again: "Even so, the situation is not optimistic. The main problem is that this time the opponent is standing at the highest moral point. What they say is in line with the mainstream attitude of society. As the saying goes, 'those who follow the Tao will have many supporters, while those who go against it will have few'. But it seems that this 'Tao' is on their side, which makes it very difficult for Su Jian to resist!"

  A few people discussed for a while, Qian Ling and others were from the internet business department, they didn't know much about cultural circles, at most they could only add to the headcount, obviously they couldn't come up with any constructive opinions. As for Huang Zong and Li Bing, they could barely be considered as part of the cultural circle, unfortunately they also didn't have any good ideas, as for Liu Mei, sigh, she was still a student, so don't expect too much from her!

  In the end, it's better for everyone to retreat and go home to think carefully!