"Brother, how much money can your novel make this time?"
In the evening, his younger sister Lin Qin curiously asked Lin Baicheng.
"Could it be tens of thousands of Hong Kong dollars?"
Hearing this, his elder sister Lin Shufang also chimed in.
"It'll definitely be more than that."
Lin Baicheng didn't intend to hide things from his family:
"You all know, I didn't take a manuscript fee—I got shares instead. The better the newspaper does, the more valuable my shares become. The day before yesterday, I also wanted to know roughly how much I could make, so I asked Chief Editor Hu about it."
"At that time, the paper's daily circulation was around 33,000 copies. Just from newspaper sales alone, we were making more than a thousand HKD per day—about thirty to forty thousand a month, which adds up to over 300,000 a year."
"And that's not even counting advertising revenue. Before, because the paper's sales were poor, advertising income wasn't much. But starting from May, new ads will be coming in. By then, ad revenue alone should bring in at least fifty thousand a month."
"Of course, employee salaries, taxes, and other costs need to be deducted. But even after all that, the annual profit should still be six to seven hundred thousand HKD. Since I own 25% of the shares, that's more than 100,000 HKD for me."
"And that's just the annual profit. If we're talking about the actual value of the shares, it could multiply several times over that, easily worth over a million HKD."
Hong Kong's newspaper industry could really be described as "feast or famine."
The three biggest papers each had market values of at least tens of millions HKD, with annual net profits in the millions, sometimes much more. Yet just a month ago, The Star Daily couldn't even break even and was losing money every day.
In this industry, the higher the circulation, the more you earned from sales. But the real money came from advertising, and stable circulation meant stable, high profits. That was what made the big papers so valuable.
"So much!"
His whole family was stunned. They knew Baicheng was bound to make a lot of money this time, but they hadn't expected it to be this much. They had thought it would just be tens of thousands.
"Writing novels makes so much money? Then I want to write novels too!"
Lin Qin said enviously. She was a good student, and hearing how profitable writing could be, she started thinking about studying Chinese literature after graduating secondary school, then writing novels to make big money.
"What are you thinking? Writing novels doesn't normally make this much."
Lin Baicheng said helplessly:
"This time, it's just that I happened to meet a paper on the verge of collapse, and Chief Editor Hu was willing to gamble. That's why I got so many shares, and after reviving the paper, I hit the jackpot. If the paper hadn't been saved, I'd have earned maybe just over ten thousand HKD at most—possibly even less."
"For a normal new author, manuscript fees are about 25 HKD per thousand words. A million words would only bring in about 20,000 HKD. Take my current novel as an example—less than two million words in total, so less than 50,000 HKD in income."
"Fifty thousand is already a lot."
His mother Zhao Huilan said:
"Your father, your sister, and I together only earn about that much in a year—and that's because we don't have to pay rent on the shop. Otherwise, we wouldn't even make that much."
Lin Haishan added:
"That's right. You know very well how exhausting our year of work is."
"Little brother."
Lin Shufang looked at him and said:
"You're more capable than me. Since you can make a living this way, you should keep writing novels. Who knows, maybe one day our family will produce a great writer like Mr. Jin."
"I wouldn't dare compare myself to Jin Yong."
Baicheng shook his head immediately. He knew his own limits. More importantly, he never intended to make writing novels his lifelong career. He was only doing this to earn his first pot of gold. After that, he would move on to other ventures instead of writing day after day.
Of course, he didn't plan to tell his family that just yet. Better to wait until he had progress in his next business before mentioning it, so they wouldn't worry.
The next day, while Baicheng was at home writing, Hu Zhiwen called.
On the phone, Hu told him that someone from a publishing company had come to The Star Daily asking for the author's contact details for The Storm Dominates the World. They wanted to discuss publishing it. Hu had already given them Baicheng's home number, and was just calling first to let him know.
Baicheng thanked him and chatted briefly before hanging up.
He was a bit puzzled about why a publisher would be reaching out so soon—the novel had only been serialized for less than a month, with just over 100,000 words released. Still, he figured he would find out once he heard from them directly.
Sure enough, half an hour later, a man claiming to be from Haohan Publishing called. He introduced himself as Xie Yunshan, responsible for signing authors, and asked to meet for afternoon tea to discuss the publishing rights.
Baicheng agreed. They set a time to meet at 2 p.m.
When they met, Xie Yunshan turned out to be a man in his thirties.
"Mr. Xie."
After some pleasantries, Baicheng asked the question on his mind:
"Since you reached out to me, I assume you know my novel has only been serialized for less than a month, with only a bit over 100,000 words published so far. The full story is nearly two million words and will take about a year to serialize."
"Mr. Lin, that doesn't stop us from publishing your novel."
Xie responded at once:
"Generally, a single volume of a long novel is about 100,000 words. Which means that once your serialized chapters surpass that, the first book can be published."
"Your novel is already very popular in Hong Kong, and it looks like it'll only get hotter. So our company is willing to take the risk of publishing now. Whatever happens with the later chapters, once the contract is signed, we won't come after you for compensation."
Baicheng nodded and asked directly:
"Alright then—how much are you offering for the publishing rights?"
That was the key point. If the fee was too low, it would be unacceptable—he was counting on making a fortune from all sorts of copyright deals.