The Versatile Master Artist

”The ’Little Prince’ is the group’s main business this year... Anna, do you know what this means?” Osborne asked.

”I know, this book is very important to the Scholastic Publishing Company, and it’s also important to you,” Anna said softly.

Making a book is indeed very expensive.

Especially with ’The Little Prince’ being a hardcover classic-style work, the paper used is thickened pure paper from Holland, costing three to five times more than the lightweight paper commonly used in ordinary publications.

In the context of rising prices in the paper and printing industry over the recent years, the initial print run ordered by the group is still in the hundreds of thousands.

And that’s just the printing.

The promotional costs are even more astonishing.

Similar to the film promotion process, we need to place book reviews in major newspapers across Europe, buy ads on Amazon and GoodReader (International Douban), organize dozens of translator and reader meet-ups, hold related events in major chain physical bookstores throughout Europe, and so on.

A massive amount of US Dollars has been thrown at this.

This is a book that is not allowed to fail, nor is there any reason for it to fail.

To put it bluntly, this newly published ’Little Prince’ already has all the makings of a new classic bestseller with famous names and translations.

If Osborne doesn’t do it well, the loss is a small matter; the board will seriously question your ability.

”Then you should also know the importance of illustrators for fairy tales like ’The Little Prince’, don’t you?” Osborne asked calmly.

Appearance determines sales.

This is especially true for classic works.

You are selling ’The Little Prince’; other publishers are also selling ’The Little Prince’.

Why should anyone buy your version?

The physical book market abroad is high in sales but also highly competitive; there might be five or six different versions on a single bookshelf.

The first factor influencing a reader’s purchase choice is the quality of the translation.

Professional readers, like those in Dongxia, who care about details, buy Zhu Shenghao’s version of Shakespeare, Feng Zikai’s version for Turgenev’s novels, and Fu Lei’s translations for Balzac’s works...

Next is the illustration and cover.

If the translation quality of a translated work is the ”bones” of the book,

then the illustrations designed by the illustrator are the ”appearance” of the book.

A beautiful book with high-quality illustrations is naturally liked by readers.

In some sense, whether the illustrations, especially the cover illustration, can attract readers is even more important than the content.

Humans are visual animals.

Regardless of whether the content of the book is good or bad, the cover illustration is the first impression you give to the readers.

The group’s marketing department has statistically analyzed big data,

and, in front of a shelf, ordinary readers often subconsciously choose the version with the most visually appealing cover illustration to put in their shopping cart.

Moreover, Osborne also understands that the publisher conducted professional questionnaire surveys early on.

In the annual sales of ’The Little Prince’, a large proportion is parents buying it as a Christmas gift for their children, a token gift between art-loving couples, or as a stylish display piece on the home bookshelf... The gift attribute even outweighs the reading attribute.

If your cover illustration is ugly, you’re directly sentencing this part of the sales to death.

”If it were an ordinary illustration project, Anna, if you approached me, I wouldn’t be able to refuse. However, ’The Little Prince’ is different; the group plans to hire a famous first-line illustration studio externally to ensure the success of this work. Even the veteran internal illustrators won’t have a chance to take up the pen.”

Osborne candidly shared his difficulties.

Scholastic, as a large publishing group valued at tens of billions of US Dollars, naturally has its own art design department.

Most of the publishing designs are completed by internal staff, which is more cost-effective.

Only particularly important flagship works will adopt outsourcing policies.

This is entirely similar to how the group also has its own professional translation department but hired Dean Hawke from the University of Oxford to handle the translation.

In Scholastic’s plan, since ’The Little Prince’ has already entered the public domain, only two aspects of author sharing expenses are involved.

To achieve the best final presentation for this book, the conditions offered to translators and illustrators are very generous.

Dean Hawke can receive an 18% royalty from the book’s sales, which is the largest share, followed by the illustrator.

The main cover illustration is quoted at twenty-five thousand US Dollars, while the small-sized internal illustrations range from three thousand to nine thousand US Dollars each, and they can also receive an additional 5% royalty share.

This offer is very enticing,

nearly enough to hire any renowned first-line illustrator.

It’s an industry norm that an illustrator for a deluxe edition book can receive a 3% to 4% royalty share; for children’s fairy tales, it might fluctuate slightly upwards.

A 5% offer doesn’t seem absurdly high.

But that’s not how the accounts are calculated,

in the general Europe and America book market, many niche works have sales ranging from just a few thousand to ten thousand copies.

Being able to sell several tens of thousands of copies is considered a not-too-high or not-too-low normal level; the majority of mainstream publications with a certain level of renown hover around this sales range.

With the standards of the Scholastic Group, selling around a hundred thousand copies can be considered a bestseller.

As long as one doesn’t overspend, having a bestseller under one’s name generally allows for a leisurely lifestyle of skiing in the Alps in summer, sunbathing on a Mediterranean beach in winter, and applying sunscreen to bikini-clad beauties.

And ’The Little Prince’ is expected to reach an annual sales volume of about one million copies, a terrifying magnitude where each additional percentage point equates to a significant sum of money.