Chapter 781: Production Fees, A New Trend

With the borrowing fees and questions like whether transcription is permitted settled, Xia Duo's book, *Principles*, was finally about to enter the library of the Arcane Union.

"My lord, you need to provide at least two original copies—one for the inventory and one for borrowing. If you only have one, you will also need to pay a production fee of 200 Gold Coins."

Hm?

Xia Duo suddenly realized that many libraries, including the Tower of Time and Giles Tower, contained copies in varying degrees. He had originally thought they were set up just for show, but he hadn't expected there to be this layer to it.

As long as there are more copies, the probability of them being borrowed naturally increases, and relatively speaking, the income increases as well.

Since the goal was to let more people see it, Xia Duo was naturally not satisfied with placing only one or two copies. In fact, he had prepared more than ten, but since he had just given away 8 yesterday, only 6 remained now.

After thinking for a moment, he asked, "Can I come to replenish the copies later? Or can you produce more copies?"

"My lord, both are possible, but if we produce them, you will need to pay a production fee of 200 Gold Coins per book," the administrator replied.

"Is there no bulk discount?"

"I am very sorry, there is not!"

"..."

That is truly unscrupulous!

Xia Duo had produced over ten books himself, so he naturally knew what the costs involved were. Although *Principles* was a book related to Magic, it was in itself a common item.

That is to say, the largest part of the cost lay in the raw materials—ink, paper, and the like—which would cost at most a few dozen Gold Coins!

If it were a matter of using Spellcasting to transcribe the text like Xia Duo did, the labor cost might exceed 200, but one only needs to think for a moment to know that this is impossible.

Can a normal Mage do this kind of work?

As far as Xia Duo knew, he had only obtained a 【Transcription Technique】 from Bailun, the Princess's teacher. The principle was different from Xia Duo's own 【Transcription Technique】; it involved controlling a pen to write, whereas Xia Duo controlled the ink to form the text directly.

The efficiency of that 【Transcription Technique】 was extremely low. It is easy to imagine that if a Mage really used this method to produce copies, they would certainly lose a fortune at 200 Gold Coins.

Clearly, it was just using commoners to transcribe, and the wage for a common transcriber was at most about 15 Silver Coins a day, which is 1.5 Gold Coins per day.

Clearly, a book does not take that long to transcribe.

For the Arcane Union to make such a huge profit on book copies, they really know how to make money!

Xia Duo was certainly unwilling to produce copies at the Arcane Union. He decided to let the Apprentices of the Tower of Time transcribe *Principles*. Since it was intended to be distributed to them as teaching material anyway, transcribing the book could count as familiarizing themselves with it in advance!

Thinking of this, Xia Duo immediately took the remaining 6 copies from his Personal Space and handed them to the administrator, "Use these for now; I will come to replenish them later!"

"No problem, my lord, I will process this for you right away!"

The relevant details had been settled long ago, and now with the copies in hand, completing the registration and shelving was a matter of minutes. Soon, Xia Duo received a standard contract.

The gist was that Level 4 Member Xia Duo voluntarily registered the book *Principles* in the Arcane Union Public Library, and the borrowing fees and whether transcription was permitted were also reflected in the contract.

A key clause among them was that he could come to the Arcane Union once a year to check the number of times it had been borrowed and collect the income from the book being borrowed.

It didn't mention any profit-sharing, which meant that by default, Xia Duo could receive all the income, and there were not even any miscellaneous fees like administrative costs.

Perhaps this was the treatment for a Level 4 Member, but it was actually quite good!

After finishing the shelving procedures and pre-depositing 30,000 Gold Coins as borrowing fees, Xia Duo turned and dove into the library, preparing for his grand plan of scanning books.

Although the collection in the Arcane Union's library looked larger than that of Giles Tower, Xia Duo saw book copies one after another and knew that it was actually inferior to Giles Tower.

Although the Arcane Union possessed 15 Great Arcanists, and almost every High Mage or above was a member of the Arcane Union.

But such a loose organization was clearly not as substantial as a Mage Tower operated by a Great Arcanist themselves.

Except for those highly controversial items, such as the 【Nether Scroll】, which were not suitable for private collection by any single or few Great Arcanists, if there were other good things, how could they not be placed in their own Mage Towers!

Sure enough, after really looking through them, Xia Duo discovered that many of the books here had already been collected by Giles Tower. Of course, there were definitely some that had slipped through the net.

It might be that the Mage responsible for this at Giles Tower didn't think much of them, or perhaps they were overlooked. In any case, Xia Duo estimated this trip would be much easier than at Giles Tower.

Of course, his wallet would also be much lighter!

However, this speculation of his was quickly slapped down after he finished scanning the Public Zone.

The Arcane Union accepted "submissions" from Mages. The Public Zone was one thing, as it was open to commoners, but in the Magic Zones of various levels, it could simply be described as rampant.

A thin little booklet like *The Art of Flame* or *Northland Adventure Guide (Magic Edition)* could be registered to swindle money, and it cost at least 100 Gold Coins to read once.

Xia Duo thought that if his thick *Principles* book were split into 10 volumes, it seemed it could also be done, but he really couldn't bring himself to do such a thing.

He casually took down a copy of *The Art of Flame* and opened it, finishing it after flipping through only a few pages. After reading it, Xia Duo only felt a sense of emptiness, his mind filled with questions like "Who am I?" and "Where am I?"

This book only introduced some usage scenarios for Fireball; some could be called ingenious, while others could only be called courting death.

It couldn't be said that it was devoid of substance; at least for a novice, it provided quite a few real-world cases for reference, but the content was truly too sparse, and there were no Spell details related to Fireball at all.

And this was worthy of charging a 100 Gold Coin borrowing fee!

Xia Duo realized that the Arcane Union library might not be what he had imagined; there were too many books here that Intermediate Mages used to swindle fools.

Although Niya had given him sponsorship money, it wasn't meant to be used like this. Besides, he and Niya were husband and wife, so this sponsorship money also had a portion of his own in it; using it on those books by Intermediate Mages was truly a waste.

Following that, Xia Duo simply skipped the works of Intermediate Mages. Unless the book title or introduction truly gave him inspiration, he wouldn't pick it up to look at it. Fortunately, the current Netheril had not yet seen "clickbait" titles, otherwise that would have been interesting.

His main target was still the works of High Mages and those above. Although Intermediate Mages could join the Arcane Union, their own income was low, and they had to bear significant membership fees at the same time, so it was understandable that they would specifically publish books to make money.

But High Mages basically didn't need to worry about income, and at the same time, there was the issue of reputation; even a villain might not be willing to let others think they were a villain.

In the relatively orderly environment of today, the image of High Mages was generally positive.

After reading several works by High Mages in succession, this conjecture was confirmed; they were indeed much more substantial than those of the Intermediate Mages.

They no longer used thin little booklets to fool people, and even in travelogues, there were a large number of Spell details appearing; all kinds of techniques, experiences, and knowledge were even more ubiquitous.

This is what a normal Mage's work should look like!

The only regret was that Xia Duo never saw a book of pure Magic; it seemed they always had to mix in some storytelling, and most of those with less storytelling were in the form of dialogue.

It certainly didn't look boring, but it also lost its academic rigor and its magical nature.

"I hope that *Principles* book can start a new trend!"