Chapter 095: Final Payment

Liu Yicheng had not made much of a mark in the profession of music production. He simply ran a small studio of his own, and because he had a little family connection with a deputy director at Anhui Television, he often picked up arranging and scoring work from the station. Over time, this had also helped him weave a network of contacts throughout Hefei.

This time, the Municipal Tourism Bureau and the Hefei Evening News jointly hosted the Crayfish Festival, and he was invited to serve as a judge for the theme song.

When he took up Zhang Tan’s two songs, Spicy Crayfish and The Stone of Hefei, Liu Yicheng first looked over the sheet music as usual, then silently hummed through the melody in his head.

Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum-dum-dum, da-dum...

He was humming Spicy Crayfish. After one run-through, he already had a good sense of it. “Pretty good melody. The arrangement has a bit of originality. Catchy, with some flavor to it. Let’s see how the lyrics turn out.”

After reading the lyrics, Liu Yicheng nodded first. “Crayfish, spicy crayfish—using crayfish as a metaphor for love. That’s interesting, and very fitting for the Crayfish Festival.”

Then he sighed and shook his head. “Still, the overall feeling is a little lacking. It feels more like a love song than a song about the Crayfish Festival. I wonder whether the organizers will approve of using a love song to promote the festival.”

With that thought, Liu Yicheng set the score aside on the left side of the desk. Only a handful of songs were placed there, all of them pieces he found more or less acceptable. Putting that score aside, he went on to read The Stone of Hefei. As before, he first hummed the melody once, searching for its atmosphere and flavor.

By the time he finished, his eyes had suddenly brightened. “What a clean style. Quiet tenderness, refreshing and soothing.”

Without delay, he began reading the lyrics with eagerness. “Three Filial Crossroads, Four-Pillar Tower... these are all iconic places in Hefei. It’s written from everyday surroundings, and that feels really novel. Let me try singing it.”

After all, Liu Yicheng was a music producer and had a certain level of vocal skill. Following the score, he opened his mouth and sang.

He sang quite convincingly, and his voice was pleasant enough.

When he finished, he grew excited, stroking the sheet music as though unable to put it down. “Good, this song would sound wonderfully Hefei. The Stone of Hefei—hmm, even the title has substance. A person from Hefei, in this society, is like a stone: is the promise unchanging?”

He reflected for a long while, then picked up Spicy Crayfish again and compared the two.

“These two songs are the biggest surprise I’ve found among the submissions these past few days. They’re clearly a cut above the rest. This songwriter, Zhang Tan, is talented. The melody is good, and so are the lyrics. Just these two songs alone make him worth bringing into my studio.”

With Zhang Tan’s submissions in hand, Liu Yicheng found all the other entries dull by comparison.

Still adhering to his professional standards, he carefully reviewed every submitted song before gathering the few he had selected and reporting them to the organizers.

—

Zhang Tan did not know how Liu Yicheng had judged his songs, but he was very confident that the Crayfish Festival committee would call sooner or later.

What he did receive first, however, was news from Taiwan.

The general manager of Xianxian Culture contacted Zhang Tan, intending to send someone to the mainland to settle the royalties for the traditional-character edition of Four Great Constables Suppress the Northeast, and also hoping to continue working with Zhang Tan on publishing Four Great Constables Meet in the Capital. With the success of Suppress the Northeast behind it, the other side had even higher expectations for Meet in the Capital.

Because Meet in the Capital was still being serialized, its publication would involve the magazine’s serial-release schedule, so the editorial department of Jingu Legend also had to take part in the discussion. Moreover, Xianxian Culture and the magazine itself had matters to discuss face-to-face, so the meeting was set in Wuhan, where all three parties would come together.

On April 20, Zhang Tan took leave again and prepared to go to Wuhan.

He had originally planned to go alone, but just then Tan Mingxia called, and Zhang Tan accidentally let it slip. As a result, Tan Mingxia firmly refused to let Zhang Tan travel to Wuhan by himself, worried both about his safety and about the more than one hundred thousand yuan in royalties. She immediately sent Zhang Quanshun to Hefei to go with Zhang Tan to Wuhan.

Going with his father naturally meant less freedom. Zhang Tan asked helplessly, “Isn’t the family busy? Doesn’t someone need to keep an eye on the internet cafe? If Dad goes to Wuhan, can you handle everything on your own, Mom?”

Tan Mingxia said proudly, “I’ve already hired three internet cafe managers. With me watching the accounts, nothing can go wrong.”

“And... plane tickets to Wuhan are pretty expensive.”

“Then take the train.”

In the end, Zhang Tan could not outargue Tan Mingxia and obediently went to discuss travel arrangements with Zhang Quanshun.

A day later, father and son arrived in Wuhan.

There they met chief editor Wang Conglun and Chen Xianmin, the representative sent by Xianxian Culture. After shaking hands, they began talking in Wang Conglun’s office.

With Zhang Quanshun there, Zhang Tan did not feel he could take the lead, so he simply let his father handle the negotiations while he played the idle bystander. Since being silent was rather boring, he took a manuscript from Wang Conglun’s desk and started reading. “Old Wang, are these all letters from submitted manuscripts?”

Wang Conglun pushed a stack of manuscripts toward Zhang Tan. “Yes. They were sent from all over the country. The editors below have already screened them once, and I still need to review them again. If you’re interested, help me take a look and see whether any of them catch your eye.”

“I’m bored anyway. I’ll have a look first.”

Neither Wang Conglun nor Zhang Tan bothered much with politeness.

Zhang Tan was already a heavyweight commissioned author for Jingu Legend: Martial Arts Edition. Since the special trial issue, he had not missed a single edition. By now, the magazine had reached its sixth issue and its circulation was climbing steadily, and Zhang Tan had made an indispensable contribution. A large part of the readership was following his Four Great Constables series with enthusiasm.

He could almost be called the magazine’s foremost warhorse in its campaign for the market.

So looking through a few manuscripts was nothing.

At once, Zhang Tan listened with one ear while flipping quickly through the submitted letters with the other.

His reading speed had been trained by the bombardment of the internet-fiction era. Not only could he skim at a glance, he could also roughly remember what he had just read, so that the beginning would not be forgotten by the time he reached the end.

The manuscripts in the submission pile varied widely in quality. Perhaps because they had already been screened by the editors, the remaining pieces were mostly competent in style, but the stories themselves were only passable.

There were not many that truly made his eyes light up.

The one that could barely be considered acceptable was a submission signed “Xiao Fu,” a piece called Femme Fatale. Both the writing and the story had a certain seasoned sharpness to them.

Other than that, there was nothing else that could keep Zhang Tan reading all the way through.

—

While Zhang Tan was examining manuscripts, Zhang Quanshun had already finalized the royalty settlement for Four Great Constables Suppress the Northeast with Chen Xianmin.

Altogether, Four Great Constables Suppress the Northeast had been printed in three editions, totaling thirty-two thousand copies. According to the contract, a total of 125,800 yuan after tax was paid.

Originally, his royalty should have been a little over 130,000 yuan, but this involved the distinction between list price and actual selling price. The list price was the book’s printed price, but by the time books were sold through, certain discounts would be applied, and the discounted price was the actual selling price. An author’s earnings were generally calculated by combining those two figures.

The contract Zhang Tan had previously signed with Xianxian Culture was for 13 percent of total sales, and that figure already included both list-price and actual-price totals. In other words, however much money the books brought in, Zhang Tan would receive his share from that revenue, without having to worry about the costs and profits that a publisher should be considering.

Publishing contracts involving only actual and list price were favorable to authors, because if payment was based simply on sales revenue, there was no need to haggle with the publisher.

Otherwise, if the publisher tampered with the accounts on the profit side, they could torment the author endlessly.

And so it was.

After the pleasant handover of the royalties with Xianxian Culture, the publication contract for Four Great Constables Meet in the Capital progressed even more smoothly.

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