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When he opened the door of the printing house, Zhang smelled a very heavy smell of ink.

Two young men at the door stood inside the door, staring at the yard vigilantly. This was the guard of the workshop. The book printing workshop has officially started production and is printing several books. At present, there are more than 600 engraving workers alone, and many board makers. The workshop has built many houses, and a circle of earthen walls has been built outside. This workshop, with nearly 1,000 people, has now become the largest building complex in Zhangjiagou.

It was built outside the village, three miles away from the land, surrounded by high walls. It not only works, but also newly built dormitories and canteens. These workers usually eat and live in it. They are not allowed to leave without permission, and they are not allowed to bring out a wooden board and a piece of paper from it. A new security team of twenty people was built.

It not only prevents outsiders from spying on, but also prevents workers inside from leaking secrets.

Although Zhang divided the entire printing workshop into several workshops, it adopted the assembly line operation method. The entire printing process is divided into writing, engraving, printing, and binding, so there are special writers, engraving, printers, and binding workers.

It turned out that Ma Zhou was responsible for writing manuscripts, but now there are many books to be printed, so it is impossible for Ma Zhou to write manuscripts all day long. Therefore, Zhang also recruited a group of copywriters, who originally wrote manuscripts and wrote good characters. After recruiting these people, Zhang specially asked them to learn Zhang's style characters.

In fact, this style is Song typography and imitation Song typography. Later generations often say that Song typography was created by Qin Hui. In fact, this is also a kind of rumor. Song typography was really popular in the Ming Dynasty. The printing industry was popular in the Ming Dynasty, and many publications were published and reprinted. However, in order to facilitate, these imitation Song typography often only carves out the skin, rather than the original Song typography. In the reign of Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, it was even specifically stipulated that after that, all cube characters were called Song typography and regular script were called soft characters.

The Song style is not Song, so naturally it is not created by Qin Hui.

Zhang started to want to use running script, but he thought the running script was good-looking, but the regular script was a bit dull. But when he was really engraved, it was revealed that running script was good-looking, but it was not easy to carve.

Finally, Zhang took out the Song style characters, and then finally designated the carved font as imitation Song style. However, Song has not appeared yet, so in the end, everyone called the fonts that Zhang took out Lao Zhang style and the new Zhang style.

By accident, Zhang created a new font sect in calligraphy. However, although Zhang's calligraphy is poor, his hard pen is actually OK. He is made of hard pens made of goose feathers. Zhang's style essay is still very good.

The copyists recruited by the Zhang family took some time to learn Zhang's style quickly, and even out of their own way, they could write Zhang's style very well with their brush calligraphy. Whether it is Lao Zhang or Xin Zhang's style, they are not as bad as Zhang's.

With these writers, the woodblock printing of Zhangjia Bookstore has also become faster.

The first batch of lettering apprentices have now become semi-skilled workers.

Uncle Ke Ba and Carpenter Zheng, these two masters, have even reached the level of carving a carved piece a day, and can engrave more than a hundred words.

His apprentices, the first batch of smart ones, have reached the level of 100 characters a day, and can be carved into a carved sheet in two days.

Zhang gave these apprentices who were learning quickly and all increased their wages of one stone a month, as a reward.

When I saw Zhang enter, everyone in the workshop bowed to him. Almost all teenagers and many girls were there. These are the children of villagers from the Gyeonggi area. They were sent here to work and could earn a lot of wages. Especially, they also learn skills. Now they are apprentices, and they can get a salary if they are successful in their studies. They can get a salary if they are half-skilled and have a salary if they are proficient. If they are proficient, they will have a higher salary if they become a class leader.

The Zhang family’s credit is still very high, so many people still have to rush to come, and they don’t have a chance to come too late.

"Everyone keep doing things, have extra meals tonight, there are fish and meat!" Zhang nodded at them with a smile.

Zhang gave these apprentices a guaranteed commission. He couldn't get started during the initial apprenticeship period and only had a basic salary. When he became half-skilled and could start making boards and engraving, he had a guaranteed commission. Their labor costs were priced.

Basically, a piece of carved plate is more than 100 words. The commission given by Zhang is to engrave a piece of carved plate with ten cents. If one piece of carved plate is engraved, a commission of ten cents will be added in addition to the basic salary.

The price of writing workers is much higher. If you write a version of the work, it will be twenty texts, which is almost a thousand words per volume, and it has even increased a little.

Zhang passed by the plate making workshop, the engraving workshop, and then the printing workshop inside. Finally, he passed by the binding workshop, opened the door, and arrived at the Jiangtou Room inside.

In the room, Ma Zhou, butler Zheng, Ke Ba, and Carpenter Zheng were all there.

"Sanlang, our book printing workshop is a little too busy now." Mr. Zheng said with a smile, "The Lotus Sutra of Qinglong Temple has not been printed yet, and the forty-two chapters of Daxingshan Temple have just begun to be printed. They plan to print a few more scriptures, especially Daxingshan Temple. They are very proud. They want to print the Avatamsaka Sutra, which are the sixty Avatamsaka Sutra."

The reason why the Avatamsaka Sutra is called the Sixty Avatamsaka Sutra is that this sutra has sixty volumes, which is a translation from the Eastern Jin Dynasty. There are many volumes and many words.

"You are afraid of too much business. The sixty Avatamsaka Sutra is better. Anyway, our rules remain unchanged. The scriptures are printed with thousands of rolls. Remember to wait until they pay the deposit, and then go to other temples to talk to see if they are willing to buy some Avatamsaka Sutra. For other temples, we may not require thousands of rolls of rolls of rolls, but if you buy less, you have to add some price."

Anyway, the key is the first edition. After a thousand copies of the first edition can be printed, one thousand copies can be printed to reduce the cost. After all, no matter how many copies are printed, this set of engravings must be made first, writing manuscripts, making boards, and engraving are all costs.

"You have to take the initiative, not just wait. For example, some temples do not have the ability to print 1,000 copies at one time, then we can take the lead and find multiple temples to collect 1,000 copies. So that they can share the cost equally, isn't it good?"

Mr. Zheng said, "This is a good idea, but we are printing a lot of orders now, so we can't be busy."

"I think after we added punctuation marks, especially our typesetting, the number of words per page has decreased, the carving surface has increased a lot, and the carving task has increased a lot, which has affected the printing level."

Zhang chuckled, "You really don't know how to do business." If you do a lot of papers, the more words you have, but we charge for the paper. The fewer the papers, the more unfavorable it is for us. Especially with the more words you have, the more error rate of the papers will increase, which also causes the cost to increase.

Now, punctuation marks are added, and after typesetting, the standard version of 162 characters is actually only typing about 100 characters. Especially for a volume of ten thousand characters, the number of characters will increase by thousands or even more after adding punctuation marks.

A sixty-volume Huayan Sutra is based on the layout method of the sheet, plus punctuation, and retyped it to more than one million words. There are more than 20,000 words per volume, and one volume requires 140,500 versions. If you really want to finish it, you will have thousands of versions.

Even if Daxingshan Temple first prints one or two volumes at a time, it will cost seven or eight hundred coins per volume, starting from one thousand copies, which is seven or eight hundred coins.

Of course, the current layout method is better. Adding a set of punctuation marks not only reduces the cost, but also reduces the difficulty of carving, but also makes the book print more beautiful and beautiful.

As for the increased spending of customers, Zhang doesn’t need to think too much about this. Anyway, they can still make money by hand. Zhang has also considered that printing 1,000 copies in a temple is expensive. You can find various temples to join together to make them intentionally print together, which will reduce the cost a lot.

It can not only meet the starting standard of 1,000 copies, but also the actual expenditure is much cheaper than hand-copying.

"The bookstores in Chang'an City have received a good response at present. There are many people buying books and more people renting books. They only have fewer reactions, so I plan to engrave more books, especially Confucian classics."

The earliest classics of Confucianism were the Six Classics, but later the music classics were lost, and only the Five Classics remained. During the Han Dynasty, the "Five Classics" were established as the "Five Classics" based on Yi, poetry, calligraphy, rituals, and the Spring and Autumn Period.

By the Sui and Tang Dynasties, there were already nine classics, which were divided into "Three Classics" in the Spring and Autumn Period, namely Zuo Zhuan, Gongyang Zhuan, and Guliang Zhuan rituals were divided into "Three Classics", namely Zhou Li, Yi Li, and Li Ji. These six books, together with Yi, Book, and Poetry, were also called "Nine Classics", and were also established as academic officials and used to open up subjects and recruit scholars.

Each of these nine Confucian classics has several versions, and there are many annotations.

People today have to read these nine sutras. Even the imperial court plans to open a vocational examination this year to test the contents of these nine sutras.

The last time the bookstore printed a copy of Mao Shi’s poems, the response was good.

In just a short time, more than a thousand sets were sold, which was quite amazing. The main reason was that the carved books in Zhangjia Bookstore were unprecedented, and the quality of the books was very good in terms of binding form and printing. Not to mention, after the promotion of the two PhDs of Taixue Kong Yingda and 6 Deming after purchase, everyone knew that this version of the book was quite accurate and had almost no errors.

Moreover, this book was printed by Zhang Sanlang, and the font used in it was still in the new Zhang style, which was established in calligraphy.

Some time ago, Zhang was jealous and was sentenced to jail and was exempted from office. Now he has created a woodblock printing book, which is full of gimmicks. In addition, Kong Yingda's strong recommendation in the Imperial College and the recommendation to the 18th bachelor of the Qin Palace, the woodblock printing book and Mao Shi Zhuan became popular soon.

Many students from Imperial College come to bookstores. If their families are in good condition, they have to buy one, and the children of ordinary people also rent it back and copy it. Many students from Imperial College are noble children. They are average, but they spend generously. I heard that this book is good, but no matter whether they read it or not, they can buy one or two sets first and decorate it down the bookshelf.

Later, the nobles and gentry in Chang'an City rushed to buy a set of carved books and went back to buy a set of carved books. Even those rich merchants went to buy them. No matter what kind of books they were, they bought them all in the bookstore.

Zhang was amazed by such sales results. This also strengthened his idea of ​​printing more books. Not to mention anything else, the nine classics will be printed first.

In the future, some other versions will be printed, and some annotated versions will be printed as well.

However, for the time being, only one set of the most widely circulated versions will be printed for each classic. In order to save time and reduce costs, Zhang intends to print the other eight classics first, not those versions with annotations.

After printing the Eight Classics, I also need to print the Analects of Confucius, the Book of Filial Piety, and Mencius.

"The bookstore business is so good. I think we should open some branches in big cities such as Luoyang and Taiyuan, selling and renting books, which is better." Manager Zheng suggested.

"Well, this suggestion is good." To be continued.
Chapter completed!