Chapter 89

After paying the consultation fee, Akiwara Yuto left the law firm and went to a large library in Chiyoda Ward.

After arriving at the library, Akiwara Yuto submitted a piece of paper with "Anjiu Bookstore" written on it to the working staff in charge. After the latter entered the keyword into the computer's indexing system, he quickly printed out an index of the book list.

According to the list of this book list, Akiwara Yuto went to find a relevant magazine in the publishing industry—there is a statistical table of the number of publications of relevant books in recent years.

Through this statistical table, he can get the number of publications of Anjiu Bookstore in recent years and analyze the operating situation of this publisher.

In order to persuade that President Anjiu, this point is indispensable.

After all, if the operating situation of the other party's publisher is very bad, then he can only give up his plan to use the copyright of "The Devotion of Suspect X" as a mortgage and delay payment, and can only find other ways to publish this book.

However, the methods he can think of are estimated to be only borrowing money from Master Seto, or handing "The Devotion of Suspect X" to other big publishers to publish in the form of royalty cooperation.

But these have conflicts with his current plan.

Akiwara Yuto found a table to sit down, took out paper and pen, and began to write, thinking while writing.

From the perspective of publication types, it can be found that before the economic crisis, the books published by Anjiu Bookstore were mainly for housewives and business people, including "Pottery Making," "Red Wine Tasting," "How to Dress Exquisitely," "Business People's Travel Etiquette," "Sincere Bowing," and many other works.

However, the sales of most of these works are only 20,000-30,000 copies, and only "Red Wine Tasting" and "How to Dress Exquisitely" sold 100,000 copies.

This proves that the operating situation of Anjiu Bookstore can only be considered average: most books with sales of less than 20,000 copies, publishers can often only break even or make a small profit, and only those two books with sales of over 100,000 copies can bring a lot of profit to the publisher.

But the sales of these two books also encountered a slide after the economic downturn—after all, everyone's pockets are tight, and naturally they won't spend extra money to buy books to read.

So in the past year, the works published by Anjiu Bookstore have become a large number of "XX Autobiography," "Learn XX with XXX." These works, at a glance, know that they are self-published. After all, there is no statistics on sales.

In short, the other party can only be said to be a small and medium-sized publisher that barely maintains survival.

Akiwara Yuto sighed and doubted his plan a little.

Forget it, let's prepare the relevant legal documents. Then tell his request to that President Anjiu and let him decide for himself.

The next afternoon at 2 o'clock, Akiwara Yuto came to Anjiu Bookstore with the prepared documents.

After walking into the door, a girl wearing a high school uniform found him and said with surprise: "Is it Master Akiwara?"

Hearing this sentence, Akiwara Yuto was a little surprised, but soon, he found that this girl was the female clerk he saw last time.

After the girl saw him, she ran over in a hurry, holding a notebook in her hand, "Master Akiwara, I have read "The Devotion of Suspect X" you wrote."

Anjiu Haruna was very excited. She didn't expect that she would meet the author of this work just after finishing the work.

Originally, she had little interest in the kind of self-published works. After all, that kind of book is generally not market-oriented, purely for the purpose of self-praise by the publisher.

But after discovering that her father was very addicted to this Master Akiwara's work, she had a very strong curiosity.

So she secretly took a photocopy and read it for a while without her father noticing, but she found that the more she looked, the more she was immersed in the plot, especially Ishigami's selfless dedication to the Hanaoka mother and daughter, which made her deeply moved, and even shed tears.

Loving the house and its crow, she naturally admired Akiwara Yuto who wrote this work very much.

On the other side, Akiwara Yuto heard this surname and immediately reacted that the other party was the daughter of that President Anjiu, so he also greeted with a smile.

Just then, Anjiu Haruna stepped forward two steps, bowed, handed over the notebook and said: "Master Akiwara, can you give me an autograph."

Just when Akiwara Yuto took the notebook to sign, Anjiu Haruna said again: "Master Akiwara, can't you arrange a better ending for Ishigami, let him and Hanaoka Yasuko live happily together?"

Hearing this sentence, Akiwara Yuto subconsciously raised his head and looked at this Miss Anjiu, finding that the expression on her face was extra serious, and could only reveal a helpless bitter smile.

"Miss Anjiu, sometimes, regret is also a kind of beauty."

Actually, this reason is what he made up. His true thought in his heart is that if a work wants to be impressive and sell well, then tragedy is often indispensable.

In other words, if the ending is changed to Ishigami's flat ending through the plan, then the most emotional part of this story will undoubtedly lose its color, and even lose the discussability of the topic, becoming a work that is indistinguishable from others. It is estimated that sales will also be affected quite a bit.

Anjiu Haruna was not satisfied with this statement and said seriously: "Master Akiwara, wouldn't Ishigami be too pitiful?"

Akiwara Yuto shook his head and said: "Anyone who does something wrong must have the responsibility to bear the corresponding punishment, and Ishigami is naturally no exception."

He paused, then stared at Anjiu Haruna's line of sight, and continued: "Miss Anjiu, Hanaoka mother and daughter's happiness is certainly important, but is the life of that homeless man not important?"

Seeing Anjiu Haruna speechless, Akiwara Yuto smiled and didn't continue. But to be honest, he really thought so in his heart.

He doesn't believe that someone can build their own life happiness on the sacrifice of other people's life happiness. That homeless man who was killed might also have his own family, and also have people who love him and are loved by him.

From this point of view, if "The Devotion of Suspect X" is designed as Ishigami escaping legal punishment, it will undoubtedly cause huge controversy among his reader fan base.

In fact, from the detective works of his past life, if you want the murderer to escape legal punishment and the reader has no big opinion, then you must design it well in 3 aspects: first, the sublimity of the murderer's criminal purpose, second, the rationality of the victim's reason for being victimized, and third, the criminal process does not harm others.

For example, Agatha's "Murder on the Orient Express," the murderer's reason for killing is for revenge, and the victim himself was also a murderer who was shameful before; for example, the detective movie "Drishyam," the protagonist's purpose is to cover up the crime of his family, and the reason for the family's crime is that they were threatened.

In these two works, the purpose of the criminal is brought with a certain sublimity and does not harm other innocent people.

Looking back at "The Devotion of Suspect X," although Ishigami's starting point for protecting the Hanaoka mother and daughter is good, and as an ex-husband who is a victim, it is enough to make people angry and shameful. But no matter what, Ishigami still harmed an innocent person for his own purpose.

Akiwara Yuto quickly signed his name on the notebook and handed it to Anjiu Haruna. Although Anjiu Haruna got the autograph she wanted, she was still unhappy about the ending of "Ishigami," said "Thank you," and left.

At this time, the sound of "creaking" came from the stairs. It turned out that Anjiu Jin Gangyi heard the movement downstairs and walked down.

Anjiu Jin Gangyi saw Akiwara Yuto and was a bit surprised. After all, it had only been a few days, and even the initial proofreading of the manuscript had not been finished.

Although puzzled, he still asked: "Akiwara-san, what is the business?"

Soon, Anjiu Jin Gangyi heard an answer that surprised him very much.

"President Anjiu, I am here to tell you one thing. Regarding the subsequent payments, I may not be able to deliver them on time."