Golf balls roll on the half-meter-wide artificial turf,
Osborne stretched out and swung the club gently, its chrome trim reflecting the light from the glass chandelier in the office.
When I was studying for an MBA at Stanford Business School,
Textbooks like to call giant groups like Scholastic Empire to describe their giant-like influence in the world.
Osborne loved this statement;
Scholastic's turnover last year exceeded the combined GDP of many small African countries, and it deserves to be called an independent business empire.
Whenever he stands in his CEO's office on the 41st floor of London's Financial Street Building and looks down at the busy crowds of people on the street below, a huge sense of power fills his heart.
If we compare Scholastic to an independent kingdom like the Holy Roman Empire,
It took Osborne half his life, as well as the early help from the Elena family, to evolve from a hard-working but ordinary "hard-working bee" in the crowd downstairs to a person who can control the entire European business. Yan Jiuding's elector.
This quaint office with indoor golf course and crystal chandelier is his personal palace.
Even in a few years, after the old CEO retires, he may be eligible to touch the throne of the entire group.
The premise of all these beautiful ideas is,
Osborne must deliver a stunning answer to the board of directors in the main business in Europe.
However,
At least judging from his resume in the past year and a half since he took office.
Osborne felt that in the eyes of the board of directors, his performance should be somewhere between qualified and good, probably not excellent, let alone stunning.
"Millions of sales, millions of sales... SHIT, those idiot accountants who only read reports in the office, really think that it is so easy to create a bestseller with a million sales! This is a fucking million. "
Ding Dang Dang~
Osborne was annoyed. He didn't control the force of the shot. The golf ball bounced off the ground and hit the metal medal on the decorative tree at the door of the office. The metal medal collided and made a jingling sound.
He threw the golf club on the sofa, walked over and bent down to pick up the small white ball, and stood in front of the decorative tree.
[No.01 "Memoirs of World War II", Winston Churchill]
[No.02 "Train Bazaar", Paul Theroux]
【No.03……】
…
[No.57 "The Wilderness of the Crying Elephant", Graham Meyer]
This small pine tree, covered with small decorative signs that look like Christmas gifts, is a fixed decoration in the independent office of any senior management member of the company.
"Million Milestone" Memorial Tree,
Whenever a best-selling book published by the Scholastic Group reaches one million copies in annual sales, a new commemorative plaque will be hung on the tree.
Today there are exactly fifty-seven commemorative plaques.
Fifty-seven epic best-selling books have formed the cornerstone of the group's huge business landscape in the past seventy years.
As the vice president responsible for publishing sales, Osborne's annual sales volume of printed books in Europe under his leadership is no worse than that of his previous vice president.
However, he lacks enough bright fist works.
What Osborne needs is a work that will go up on the memorial tree.
Since he took office,
The best-selling book currently is the new version of tennis king Federer's autobiography "Green, Clay, Grand Slam", which sold a total of 820,000 copies last year.
This is already a super best-selling work in the publishing industry, but it is not enough for Osborne's ambition.
Especially in the face of two blockbuster works released in North America last year - a memoir of a former president with annual sales of 1.3 million copies, and the illustrated picture book "The Wilderness of the Crying Elephant" written by children's writer Meyer. Compared with its sales of 1.57 million copies, it looks bleak.
After the former president retired, he earned a fortune by publishing books. It is a custom among Americans. The publishing house is willing to spend a lot of resources to promote it, and the society also likes to buy it. It is not surprising that millions of copies can be sold.
"The Wilderness of the Crying Elephant" is an example of strong joint publishing with good writing and good illustrations.
The New York Times Book Review commented that "the writing is timeless, the illustrations are warm, and the ideas are profound. It is a classic that will make children laugh and adults cry."
It even topped the North American book sales list for 62 consecutive weeks across the New Year.
Last year, the group's board of directors provided the North American project team responsible for the publication of "The Wilderness of the Crying Elephant" with a year-end bonus figure that can only be seen on horse racing lottery tickets.
"No.58 "The Little Prince" sounds so beautiful..."
Osborne muttered something to the "Million Milestone" memorial tree, then shook his head and laughed dumbly.
He knew this was impossible.
Although the sales of "The Little Prince" continue to flourish, the total annual sales in Europe are only around one million copies.
and,
There are also translations from different publishing companies competing for the market.
The group expects to print millions of copies of the new version of "The Little Prince," but that is the total sales volume for the entire future sales cycle, not a one-year task.
When this project was originally initiated, the board of directors expected Scholastic to capture about 30% of the market share in the first year.
In other words, the new version of "The Little Prince" has sold about 300,000 copies, which probably ranks it close to the top 200 in the European book printing market.
This number is already huge.
Even... in Osborne's opinion, it's a bit too high.
In the past five years, especially since he took over the project, the traditional printed book market has been shrinking due to the impact of the epidemic and Amazon e-books.
The economic situation across Europe is average, and fewer and fewer people are willing to pay high prices to buy such collectible books.
Moreover, although "The Little Prince" is very popular, the market is not endless. Hundreds of millions of copies have been sold, and the total sales volume is getting smaller every year.
Osborne believes that if it sells 100,000 to 150,000 copies in the first year, it is actually considered a successful bestseller.
pity,
The board of directors' original annual sales target of 300,000 copies has remained unchanged.
This put him under a lot of pressure and even made him want to give up on himself.
He was prepared for the book to fail.
This is also the reason why Osborne made up his mind to agree to Anna's request.
If this is really a book that has a chance to hit millions of copies in annual sales - even if Osborne owes the Irina family a favor, he is not willing to hand over such an important project to an online illustrator.
even so,
The decision to involve Detective Cat in the book project also caused Osborne to be highly controversial within the group.
"Mr. Director? Mr. Director? Sorry, you can't go in now."
Suddenly the secretary's voice came from the door.
The next second,
No one rang the doorbell, and Osborne's office door was pushed open very roughly.
"No, no, no!"
A man with a goatee on his chin and a pair of Gucci gold-rimmed round glasses on his nose walked into his office angrily.
The man pushed the secretary aside and shook his fingers. There was anger in his eyes, and he looked like an angry bull.
"Osborne, I totally don't understand the company's decision. You absolutely cannot go around me and hire some damn detective cat. I'm making a formal protest to the board of directors."
Osman frowned.
He waved to the secretary who was standing in a dilemma at the door of the office to exit.
"Director Charlie, what happened?"
Those who have the authority to take the VIP elevator to the 41st floor of the building without reservation are the core leaders of the group, and Charlie Oliver is one of them.
He is the top person in charge of the art department of the group in Europe and the art director of the publishing house.
"I'm so angry that you don't respect me!"
The art director seemed to be greatly insulted.
He stood in front of Osborne, stared into Osborne's eyes, and breathed on the vice president's face.
"There must be some misunderstanding..."
"Don't fucking act dumb here, Osborne, I'm talking about The Little Prince."
The art director took his phone out of his pocket, opened the group's official account, and pulled up the new tweet it had just posted.
"I am the art director of Scholastic. Why did I need to check Twitter to find out that the "Little Prince" project was entrusted to a cheap online painter?"
"Don't fucking say you didn't do this. Osborne, are you insulting my intelligence? FUCK, that bitch is your mistress or your illegitimate daughter. Let an internet artist participate. For such an important project, it’s just ridiculous.”
He has been working in the group for so many years.
Even though Scholastic has some outsourcing projects all year round and collaborates with various world-renowned illustration artists, this was the first time that he hired a non-mainstream online illustrator.
Osborne stepped back, avoiding the art director's spit on his face.
Director Charlie does not have a strict reporting relationship with him.
In terms of position, the other party is indeed slightly lower than him by half a level, but after all, Osborne is only the vice president of Europe, and Charlie is the direct general of President Hill of Europe.
The art department is also highly independent.
Basically, Director Charlie is the king of his own third acre of land and doesn't have much respect for Osborne.
Office politics have always been serious in such large companies.
"She has been very popular recently. Have you heard of Detective Cat and Mr. Sloth's new podcast? Even Director Tonks recognizes Detective Cat's professionalism."
Osborne pretended to be nonchalant.
He knew that for a major project like "The Little Prince", he privately decided to hand it over to an online artist without the consent of the art director, which was a big problem in the process.
But he also knew, just as he thought Anna was crazy.
If a formal office document is issued, Director Charlie will definitely not sign and agree. Osborne can only choose to kill first and play later.
Mr. Sloth’s podcast is a bonus.
He was originally worried that he couldn't make up a relevant excuse, but he didn't expect Anna to share an art podcast with him in the early morning.
Detective Cat not only performed very well on it and was well received by the audience, but was even recognized and praised by Director Tonks of the Taylor National Gallery of Art.
This is somewhat of a reason for further cooperation.
"So what? I have a lot of online painters of this level."
Director Charlie doesn’t do this.
He is the leader of the art department, and he has strong objections to the fact that major projects like the Scholastic Group like to hire external artists and give away their talent to outsiders.
This is equivalent to giving the most delicious fat in the territory of Lion King Charlie to the foreign wild lions.
If the goatee had a choice, he would definitely not be happy with it.
However, the illustrators in the Scholastic cooperation group are generally not easy to work with.
If Charlie pounces on him, he may not be able to bite him.
It was hard for him to say anything.
But the detective cat... this is no longer a majestic exotic lion. At most, it is a sickly wild cat. Is she worthy of competing with me for food?
"Catch a lot? You should have watched Mr. Hyperion's video, are you sure you want to catch a lot? Director Charlie, you need to find an illustrator similar to Jane Arnold. I will say something immediately Don’t say anything, just hand over “The Little Prince” to your art department. As long as you can guarantee to reach the annual sales target set by the board of directors.”
Charlie opened his mouth and tried several times, but couldn't say a word "good".
In front of legendary artists like Jane Arnold or Andy Warhol, Charlie didn't even have the courage to raise his paws.
He knew that if he agreed at this time, Osborne would definitely give "The Little Prince" to Charlie.
But what then?
He knew that the group had set a target of 300,000 copies. If the sales target was not reached, Osborne would definitely put a shit basin on his head without hesitation.
"If I can't achieve it, Detective Cat can achieve it? Even if Jane Arnold rejects our invitation to cooperate, if you invite Detective Cat, you might as well let Wehrlein Studio do it as originally planned. We have had several This is a cooperation experience, and we have already negotiated a contract of intent with the other party.”
Charlie was unwilling to give up such a large order easily.
"Weillein Illustration Studio... Well, I heard that you have a good relationship with the boss there?"
Osborne is a bit eccentric.
"Bullshit, Osborne, be careful I sue you for libel."
Charlie took a step back warily.
The painting circle is a network society;
Just like Anna can make phone calls to Osborne, Director Charlie has some unspeakable friendship with the current first-line illustration studio, Wehrlein Studio.
Different companies have different regulations, and some art directors of publishing houses will even blatantly hand over all contracts to the studios they hold shares in.
With Scholastic Group's relatively strict rules and regulations and internal reviews.
Director Charlie would definitely not dare to blatantly hold shares in certain studios, but the exchange of interests is unavoidable.
The cooked duck flew away,
This is why Director Charlie was so angry when he found out that Osborne had given "The Little Prince" to an online illustrator.
"Let's do this. After all, we are sending out a draft contract. Let Detective Cat send out a sample first? If the painting is really not good, we will only take a few small static scene paintings and give them to Detective Cat. The main drawings will still be handed over to Detective Cat. In Wehrlein, it is not unprecedented for multiple painters to complete a set of works at the same time."
This is the safest idea that Osborne has thought of so far. There will be no delay for both sides, both sides will benefit from it, and Anna has also been given an explanation.
certainly,
The premise is that Detective Cat can at least be drawn in a general way.
"But……"
"Don't go too far Charlie, I'm the person in charge of this project."
"Okay, you are the boss."
Director Charlie was silent for a few seconds. He felt that it was not difficult for him to make mistakes in the draft, so he said angrily: "But if there is a problem with Detective Cat's drawing, you will be responsible."
(End of chapter)
