Chapter 98: The Preview Meeting

8:00 AM the next morning, Rabbit Mountain Shopping Street.

Fuji Ryuji, dressed in a suit, followed the address on the invitation in his hand and arrived at his destination—the entrance of an izakaya.

He was the operator of a bookstore, and his purpose in coming here was to attend a preview meeting organized by Anjiu Bookstore.

A so-called preview meeting, also known as a bookstore decision-making meeting, is a meeting organized by a publisher to invite representatives from various bookstores to preview books and decide on order quantities.

To be honest, he did not have much interest in this preview meeting.

After all, the organizer of this preview meeting was Anjiu Bookstore, and this publisher, which operated under the banner of a bookstore, had maintained a partnership with the bookstore he ran, but had never had any books that could sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

Moreover, it was rumored that due to poor business conditions, the other party had even focused their main business in recent years on self-funded publishing.

"Tch, what a degradation," Fuji Ryuji shook his head, then shoved his hands into his pockets and walked into the izakaya's entrance.

There were already quite a few people sitting at the venue. Fuji Ryuji glanced around and found that many were familiar faces. He found an empty seat at random and sat down.

"Yo, Fuji, I didn't expect you to come, and dressed so formally, too," a man in simple casual clothes next to him said with surprise.

"What does that matter?" Fuji Ryuji curled his lips in disdain, then continued, "Is Anjiu Bookstore planning to return to its original business?"

The man in casual clothes shook his head, "I'm not sure either, but it's said that they are going to publish a literary novel this time."

"A literary novel? You've got to be kidding me." Fuji Ryuji was somewhat surprised; he had originally thought this preview meeting would be to look at books like "Business XX" or "Home Life XX" again.

He was a little curious inside, but felt more disdain.

In his view, this move by Anjiu Bookstore was too reckless. After all, every trade has its specialty; if it wasn't a large, comprehensive publisher, it should focus on the fields it was good at.

Thinking of this, Fuji Ryuji sighed in his heart, then turned to ask the man in casual clothes, "How many copies is your bookstore planning to order this time?"

The man in casual clothes shrugged and said indifferently, "For the sake of our partnership, I'll order 50 copies first. Besides, if they don't sell, I can always return them."

"That's true," Fuji Ryuji nodded.

According to the industry rules of the Japanese publishing industry, in order to protect the interests of bookstores, books ordered by bookstores from publishers can be returned to the issuing publisher if they cannot be sold, with a request for a refund of the order payment.

Fuji Ryuji pondered for a while and also prepared to order 50 copies first to see how it went.

Although this number was a bit small, it was within a reasonable range and would not make the other party's face too embarrassed.

Having made this decision, he started chatting with others about the situation regarding bookstore operations.

Just as he was chatting, Akutsu Goichi, dressed in formal attire, walked to the front of the izakaya holding a microphone that looked a bit low-quality. The izakaya, which had been a bit noisy, quieted down at this moment.

Akutsu Goichi bowed to everyone and said in a sincere tone, "On behalf of Anjiu Bookstore, I thank you all for coming to the preview meeting organized by Anjiu Bookstore this time. The purpose of this time is to ask you all to take a look at the new book published by Anjiu Bookstore, 'The Devotion of Suspect X'."

"Then I won't say much more. Please take a look at this work. Satake, distribute the sample books to everyone."

Satake Maki, who was standing to the side, nodded upon hearing this, turned, and walked outside, then came back in carrying a stack of books. With the help of another staff member, she placed the books in batches in front of everyone.

Fuji Ryuji was naturally no exception. He picked up the book in front of him and took a careful look at it.

"The Devotion of Suspect X," what a strange name for a book, but it should be a detective novel, right? And this cover, one person going down, two people going up—what on earth does it mean? Could it be related to the content of the book?

His curiosity was piqued, and he opened the book.

Besides him, the man in casual clothes next to him, as well as the other bookstore operators sitting in the izakaya, all started flipping through the books carefully.

For a time, only the "swish-swish" sound of pages turning remained in the bookstore.

Akutsu Goichi watched everyone's expressions and felt a bit worried in his heart. Although he believed "The Devotion of Suspect X" was a good book, sometimes, it wasn't the case that the better the book, the higher the sales.

He had been in the publishing industry for so many years and had seen many books that were critically acclaimed but did not sell well; these books were often ones that even bookstore operators were unwilling to stock in large quantities.

For him, today's preview meeting was a threshold.

If he could successfully sell more than 4,000 copies—no, more than 3,000 copies—to the 30-plus bookstore operators at this preview meeting, then it would further prove that this book had the potential to be a big hit.

Conversely, if the sales of this book couldn't even reach 2,000 copies, then he would have to reconsider his partnership with Akiwara Yuto.

Time passed quickly, and soon it was noon. Akutsu Goichi arranged for the izakaya staff to bring out dishes to treat everyone to a meal, but to his surprise, only a very small number of people put down their books to eat.

Most people were reading while eating a few bites at random. Some didn't even move the lunch placed in front of them, just reading intently.

Seeing this scene, Akutsu Goichi felt a bit happy; this meant that the story in the book had successfully attracted this group of bookstore operators, making them unable to even care about their meal.

However, when he thought about it again, his mood worsened a little.

Damn it, if he had known, he should have booked a cheaper family lunch restaurant; he might have been able to save 100,000 yen in hosting expenses.

Satake Maki, standing next to him, had a bright smile on her face. As a long-time loyal reader of Akiwara Yuto, she was very happy about the scene before her.

Akiwara-sensei, your work is indeed the best!

After lunch, it was supposed to be a break, but everyone at the venue refused to rest and continued reading. It wasn't until 4:30 PM that everyone closed their books one after another.

By this time, nearly 8 hours had passed since the 8:30 AM start of the preview meeting.

Seeing that everyone at the venue had put down their books, Akutsu Goichi coughed and said in a slightly louder voice, "I won't say much more. Please decide on the number of books you wish to order and fill it out on the forms distributed by the staff."

Satake Maki went down to the floor again and distributed the order intention forms.

Fuji Ryuji looked at the blank space for the order quantity on the intention form and fell into thought.

How many copies should he order?