Farmer’s Blessed Girl

Zhou Man turned around and ran, "You go home and wait, and I'll find you when I find out."

Mingda: ... She hasn't had time to say that this bookstore is considered to be a family of two, and also, the time for the next office has not yet arrived, does this count as an early departure?

Zhou Man ran back to the county master's mansion, got into the study and began to look for it, "I remember seeing it in a book, there was a new method of paper making on it, so I bought it."

"But after reading it, I found that the records in it were very complicated, and it mentioned a printing method called movable type printing." Zhou Man squatted in front of the bookshelf and rummaged through it, talking to Keke while flipping through it.

"Didn't we deduce that method is not applicable?"

The sudden sound made Zhou Man sit on the ground with a buttocks. She turned to look, and saw Bai Shan in plain clothes, standing in front of the innermost bookshelf with a book in his hand.

Bai Shan helplessly closed the book and stepped forward to help her up, "It's rare to see you being frightened."

"What are you doing at home when you're not in the imperial city at noon?" Zhou Man said angrily, "Don't you know that people are scary and will die?"

Bai Shan "...From childhood to adulthood, Bai Er and I hid in the dark many times and tried to scare you, but we couldn't scare you once. I thought you weren't afraid of people making noises suddenly. How do I know you were really afraid?"

Zhou Man looked at him suspiciously, "You really don't know, or are you pretending?"

Bai Shan tried hard to maintain the expression on his face, but Zhou Man stepped on his foot, crushed it, and said with gnashing teeth, "I knew it!"

With a hiss, Bai Shan hurriedly hugged her and said, "My fault, my fault, forgive me, ma'am, I will never dare again when I am young."

Bai Shan finally helped her find the book from the shelf, handed it to her, and asked, "How did you come up with this method?"

"Mingda said that he wants to open another bookstore. There are a lot of books on the book list. Mingda sent so many sets, and the bookstore could not run, so he wanted to open another bookstore."

Bai Shan frowned, "Do you want to use a new printing method in the new bookstore?"

Zhou Man nodded, "What do you think?"

"But we have deduced it before, and the new printing method is probably not as good as the current one." Bai Shan said: "The movable type typesetting is too laborious and the cost is too high."

"I was thinking about it on the way back, but I think it's a little different, maybe I can give it a try."

Bai Shan: "What's the difference?"

"Compared with when it was deduced more than ten years ago, more people are literate now. You don't even say that more and more people take part in the imperial examination every year, but the number of people recruited by the imperial court is still limited every year, so there are A large number of people are unemployed."

Bai Shan: "...Do you want them to do the typesetting? Are those scholars who lack this kind of salary?"

Who can afford to read, who doesn't have a few acres of land?

Zhou Mandao: "There are always people who lack this amount of wages. Do you count how many people participate in the imperial examination every year? As long as one of so many people enters the bookstore, one a year, the bookstore can do as many things in a few years. already?"

When Bai Shan thinks about it, it is true. Today is different from the past, because after the popularity of women's schools, private private schools have also flourished, and more and more people are reading and literate, and not everyone is rushing to the imperial examinations.

There are still many people who are literate and unemployed.

"However, the cost of hiring literate people will still be relatively high."

"Oh, but books aren't cheap either. Those who can afford it are there. Let's not be too stingy with wages."

"Since your purpose is to reduce book prices, you must control the cost of each book, including labor costs."

Zhou Man: "This can only be known after the calculation, so you also think this is feasible, right?"

Bai Shan basically didn't block what Zhou Man was going to do. Even if he felt that he couldn't do it, he would let the other party try.

Bai Shan nodded and said, "You can give it a try and find me if you need it."

Zhou Man happily closed the book, turned around and was about to leave, Bai Shan grabbed her and said, "Copy the method on paper and send it, and leave the book at home."

Although he put the book on the bookshelf without fear of people reading it, it is still different from sending it to smart people on purpose.

Zhou Man agreed after thinking about it.

Turning to the page where the print was written, he began to transcribe, "Mingda has found the disciples of the Mo family. With them here, it should be much faster to figure this out. Then let them think about reducing costs."

Woodblock printing does not require people who know too many characters, or even literate people, as long as they print it out one by one;

However, movable type is different. The typesetting person must not only know the characters, but also know each character, and even read the textbooks well, so that there will be no mistakes, and the efficiency will be efficient.

If the printing volume is not large, the cost of movable type typesetting is too high. At this point, movable type is completely inferior to engraving.

However, movable type also has a very convenient place. First, as long as there are enough fonts, the bookstore can quickly typeset a new book, and it is not necessary to re-characterize each word like a woodblock, which is very slow;

Second, if some characters are damaged during the printing process, the movable type can be replaced quickly, and the cost is low, unlike the engraving.

Zhou Man said while copying: "Another reason why I recommend movable type is that there are more and more people writing books now, especially the type of essays and essays, as well as the collections of poems and manuscripts published by various literati. The entire Jin Dynasty, Except for a few people, the rest of the books are placed in the bookstore and hired to copy them."

"Why is this? Isn't it because the engraving is not easy, and the bookstore will not pick it up if you can't measure it?"

A new book, like Bai Erlang, who has already accumulated a reputation, does not matter, the bookstore will carve it out, and republish hundreds of copies every year. ;

If a book written by an author can only sell a few dozen copies in the capital, then it is sold to other places, and there are only a few hundred copies in total. The engraving will be discarded after the bookstore prints it once, and the cost of printing is too high.

Few booksellers will pay for this, and unless the author pays for it himself, most of the books are actually copied by someone.

It is the tradition of the children of the Zhou family to read and copy books to earn pocket money. After they write well and become proficient in writing, they can copy the manuscripts of poetry collections and these miscellaneous talk books in the bookstore.

The price is a little higher than that of copying "The Analects of Confucius".

Zhou Manjian copied all the content about movable type printing, and then sighed sadly: "But I remember one Mid-Autumn Festival, the printing technique I mentioned when I was drunk was printed in a few clicks, you explain If Da Ruo insists on asking this..."

"You said that you saw it in a dream, it seems to be the practice of the gods in the sky."

"It's a lie to hear that."

Bai Shan: "But according to you, it doesn't seem fake at all. Don't worry, she will believe you, because this is also true, but it's not the way of the gods in the sky, but the way of the underworld."

But the underworld doesn't sound good, but the gods in the sky sound better.

Good night