The golf ball is rolling on the half-meter-wide artificial turf.
Osborne stretches his body and gently swings the club. The chrome decorative strips on the club reflect the light of the glass chandelier in the office. light.
When I was a BA student at Stanford Business School,
Textbooks liked to call giant groups like Schostic the Eire Empire to describe their dominance in the world. Influence.
Osborne loves this statement very much.
Schostic’s turnover last year exceeded the combined GDP of many small African countries. 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 schostic is compared to an independent kingdom like the Holy Roman Empire,
Osborne spent half his life, as well as the early help from the Elena family, to get the crowd from downstairs. A hard-working but ordinary "hard-working bee" finally evolved into an elector who could have a decisive say in the business of the entire European region.
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 qualified to touch the throne of the entire group.
The premise of all these good ideas is that
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 feels that in the eyes of the board of directors, his performance should be somewhere between qualified and good, probably not excellent, and has nothing to do with adjectives like stunning.
“Million sales, million sales shit, those idiot accountants who can only read reports in the office, really think that it is so easy to make a bestseller with a million sales. This is fucked up. One million."
Ding Dang Dang
Osborne was annoyed. He didn't control the force of the shot, and the golf ball bounced off the ground and hit the door of the office. The metal medals on the decorative tree collided with each other and made a jingling sound.
He threw the golf club on the sofa, walked over and bent down to pick up the white ball, and stood in front of the decorative tree.
no01 Memoirs of World War II, Winston Churchill
no02 Train Bazaar, Paul Theroux
no03
no57 The Wilderness of the Crying Elephants, Graham Meyer
This small pine tree covered with small decorative signs that look like Christmas gifts will be found in the independent offices of any senior management personnel of the company. fixed furnishings and decorations.
"Million Milestone" Memorial Tree,
Whenever the annual sales of a best-selling book published by the Schostic Group exceeds one million copies, a new commemorative plaque will be hung on this 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 of printed books in Europe under his leadership are no worse than those of his previous vice president.
However, he lacks enough bright fist works.
What Osborne needs is a work that can 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. Last year, a total of 82 copies were sold. Thousands of volumes.
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 an illustrated picture book The Elephant Calls, written by children's writer Meyer. The sales of 1.57 million copies created by Wilderness pale in comparison.
After the former president retired, he earned a living by publishing books, which is a Yankee custom. 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 worth it to sell millions of copies. strangeness.
The Wilderness Where Elephants Cry is an example of strong joint publishing with good writing and good illustrations.
The New York Times Book Review commented that "the writing is meaningful, the illustrations are warm, and the concept is 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 issued a report on the North American region’s Wilderness Publishing project team responsible for the “Crying of Elephants.” The figure for the year-end bonus can only be seen on horse racing lottery tickets.
"No58 little prince, how beautiful it sounds"
Osborne muttered 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 are ever-growing, the total annual sales in Europe are only around one million copies.
Moreover,
There are translations from different publishing companies that compete with each other 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 established, the board of directors expected schostic to capture about 30% of the market share in the first year.
In other words, the new version of Little Prince has sold about 300,000 copies, probably ranking close to the top two hundred in the European book printing market.
This number is already huge.
Even in Osborne's opinion, it is 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.
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.
Unfortunately,
The board of directors’ original annual sales target of 300,000 copies has remained unchanged.
This put a lot of pressure on him, and he even wanted 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 the 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 a network. Illustrator.
Even so,
The decision to involve Detective Cat in this book project also caused Osborne to be very controversial within the group.
"Mr. Director, Mr. Director, I'm sorry, you can't go in now."
The secretary's voice suddenly 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 gold-rimmed round glasses made by Gui on his nose walked into his room angrily. office.
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."
< p>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 elevator to the 41st floor of the building without reservation are the core leaders of the group, and Charlie Oliver is among them. one.
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 angry, you don't respect me"
The art director seemed to have been 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 stupid here.Shocked, Osborne, I'm talking about the little prince. "
The art director took out his mobile phone from his pocket, opened the group's official account, and called up the new tweet it had just published.
"I am the art director of schostic, why do I It actually took me scrolling through Twitter to find out that the Little Prince project had been entrusted to a cheap online artist. "
"Don't fucking say it wasn't you. Osborne, you are insulting my intelligence. Fuck, that bitch is your mistress or your illegitimate daughter. It's simply ridiculous to have a web artist take part in such an important project. ”
He has worked in the group for so many years.
Schostic even has some outsourcing projects all year round and will cooperate with various world-renowned illustration artists, but it hired a non-mainstream online artist
Osborne took a step back to avoid the spit on his face.
Director Charlie was not strict with him.
The other party is indeed slightly lower than him in terms of position, but after all, Osborne is only the vice president of Europe, and Charlie is the direct descendant of President Hill of Europe.
The art department is also highly independent.
Basically, Director Charlie is the king of his own land and doesn’t have much respect for Osborne.
Office politics have always been serious in such a large company
“She has been very popular recently. Even Director Tonks approved of Detective Cat and Mr. Sloth’s new podcast. Detective cat her professionalism. ”
Osborne pretended to be nonchalant.
He knew that for such a major project as The Little Prince, he privately decided to hand it over without the consent of the art director. A certain Internet painter has a lot of problems with the process.
But he also knows that it is as if he thinks Anna is crazy.
If a formal office document is issued. Director Charlie will definitely not sign and agree. Osborne can only choose to kill it first.
Mr. Sloth’s podcast is an unexpected surprise.
He was originally worried about editing. Without any relevant excuses, I didn’t expect that Anna shared an art podcast with herself in the early morning.
Detective Cat not only performed very well on it, but was well received by the audience, and even won Taylor. The recognition and praise of Director Tonks of the National Gallery
This is somewhat of a reason for further cooperation.
“So what about this level of network. Painting hand, I have a lot of them. ”
Director Charlie doesn’t do this.
He is the leader of the art department, and he likes to hire external artists for major projects such as the Schostic Group. His behavior is very objectionable.
This is equivalent to giving the most delicious fat in Charlie the Lion’s territory to outsiders.wild lion.
If the goatee had a choice, he would definitely not be happy with it.
It’s just that the illustrators in the schostic cooperation group are generally not easy to work with.
If Charlie pounces on him, he may not be able to bite him, and
it’s hard for him to say anything.
But Detective Cat is no longer a majestic exotic lion. At most, she is a sickly wild cat. She is worthy of competing with me for food.
"Catch a lot of you You must have watched Mr. Hyperion's video. You must grab a lot of Director Charlie. You must be able to find an illustrator similar to Jane Arnold. I will hand over the little prince to your art without saying a word. As long as you can ensure that you reach the annual sales target set by the board of directors." Charlie opened his mouth and tried several times, but could not say the 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 up the little prince to Charlie.
But what happens next
He knows the target of 300,000 copies set by the group. If the target sales volume is not reached, Osborne will definitely give up without hesitation. The basin was placed on his head.
“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, it is better to let Wehrlein Studio do it as originally planned. We have already had several cooperation experiences and have negotiated a preliminary contract with the other party.”
Charlie is not willing to give up such a large order easily.
"Weillein Illustration Studio, I heard that you have a good relationship with the boss there."
Osborne is a bit shady.
"Shit, 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 call Osborne, Director Charlie has some connections with the current first-line illustration studio, Wehrlein Studio. Indescribable friendship.
Different companies have different regulations, and some publishing house art directors will even blatantly hand over all contracts to studios in which they hold shares.
With the relatively strict rules and regulations and internal review of the Schostic Group.
Director Charlie would certainly 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 handed over the little prince to an online illustrator.
“Let’s put it this way, what we are being issued is a trial draft contract anyway. Let Detective Cat send a sample first and then 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 were still handed over to Wehrlein, and multiple painters completed them at the same time.There is no precedent for a set of works. ”
This is the safest idea that Osborne has thought of so far. There will be no delay in both parties’ interests, and he will also have an explanation for Anna.
Of course,
The premise is that the drawing of Detective Cat is at least passable.
“But”
“Don’t go too far, Charlie, I am 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 find mistakes in the draft, so he said angrily, "But if there is a problem with Detective Cat's drawing, it is you who will do it." Take responsibility. "Please remember to bookmark, the latest and fastest website without anti-theft and free reading