Over the past year, Lin Zixuan has made a lot of money.

In Shanghai, he earned a reward from famous artists to write novels and made a lot of money in his recordings. Mingyue Song and Dance Troupe toured the country, making a lot of money and making movies.

Even Wanxiang Bookstore did not lose money, mainly because it required a lot of funds to open up markets across the country in the early stage.

Just two days ago, Peterson, a lawyer from the United States, sent him a telegram, and Paramount Film Company bought the film adaptation rights for "Gone with the Wind" for $50,000.

In this way, he will be the winner of his life after traveling through time.

But let's calculate the cost.

A audio movie machine alone costs $16,000. The German audio movie machine purchased by Shanghai BD Records is even more expensive, at $18,000. Lin Zixuan is extremely suspicious that BD Records makes profits.

There are two cameras, which are used for shooting silent films, totaling $5,000. Adding to other auxiliary camera equipment, more than $10,000. Film is needed when shooting, which is another big sum of money.

Lin Zixuan knew that even if audio movies were on the rise, silent films would still exist for a while, so he did not intend to give up the silent film market.

This is not the end. He established a celebrity acting school and recruited many young men and women from poor families.

A regular film company cannot have its own studio and studio. This is the big part of the investment of the film company, which requires at least 10,000 silver dollars.

These are all the funds that Lin Zixuan can afford.

As for running a theater and forming a theater alliance, he was powerless and had to use bank funds.

Lin's Commercial Bank has just been established for a year, and its main stocks come from the Lin family and Feng Jingyao, as well as the commercial families with good friends with the Lin family, including large merchants in Suzhou and Wuxi.

This is just a small private commercial bank, with dozens of such banks in Shanghai, which is incomparable to the Ningbo Gang China Commercial Bank.

If Lin Zixuan wants to use the bank's large amount of funds to invest in the theater construction, he needs to obtain the permission of shareholders.

He believes there will be no big problem, but there will be controversy over how much money is invested, and at least it will not affect the normal operation of the bank. If any shareholder urgently needs to withdraw funds, the bank cannot say that it has no money.

There is another way to quickly gather funds, that is, recruit shares from the outside world.

Whether it is Mingyue Song and Dance Troupe or Star Film Company, they are all profitable companies. As long as they are willing to release part of their shares, there will definitely be capital to compete to come in.

This is the same as the listing of companies in later generations, but in this era, most of them were mainly private equity.

The funds raised in this way are all familiar businessmen or friends in the same circle. These people pay for investment, not for reselling, so that the company's equity can be maintained.

Lin Zixuan hesitated about this.

To be honest, he doesn't like anyone to point fingers, but he comes from later generations and knows that if a company wants to become bigger and stronger, financing is the only way for the company to develop.

Only when the scale is expanded can you occupy a leading position.

He plans to go to the bank first. If he still needs funds, he will choose some like-minded businessmen in the business district of Suzhou.

So, Lin Zixuan needs funds very much.

He is currently writing "The Smiling, Proud Wanderer" and the "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" that he is about to write. He writes sketches in his spare time, which is no longer his main way to make money.

He handed over the books he brought back from the United States to Pingqianya. The main job of Vientiane Book Company in the future was to translate and publish these books. Although this method was not easy to make money, it was better than the long flow of water.

Among them, English dictionaries are the most troublesome.

When translating other books, you only need to have a precise general meaning and not affect reading, but the English dictionary should be used for students and there should be no sloppy at all.

Although Lin Zixuan wants to make money, he still has this professional ethics.

In China, the world's first English-Chinese-Chinese-English dictionary was published in 1815. The author was a British missionary named Marryson. The Chinese-English Dictionary was mainly used to help Westerners learn Chinese, understand China, and also to preach.

The first Chinese-English dictionary compiled by the Chinese was the "New Chinese-English Dictionary" published by Qiao Yizhai in Tokyo, Japan in 1908.

In 1912, Commercial Press published the "Chinese-English Dictionary", adopting the principle of sorting according to the number of strokes of Chinese characters, breaking the Western language ordering tradition commonly adopted by Westerners when compiling Chinese-English dictionaries.

Lin Zixuan also wanted to compile an English reading book suitable for Chinese students based on the English textbooks of later generations.

On the one hand, if it can be promoted in schools across the country, it will make a lot of money. On the other hand, it is also for the sake of students' English teaching.

During the Republic of China period, schools attached great importance to English education.

Of course, Lin Zixuan had many English dictionaries in his mind, such as "Spark Fire English CET-4 Dictionary", English CET-4 Test Questions, Test-taking Magical Weapons, etc.

The reason why he didn't have any related content about CET-6 in his mind is that he had no hope for CET-6.

It’s just that these so-called dictionaries are written for exams, which do not conform to the background of this era. Examination-oriented education does not seem to be advocated in this era.

In order not to mislead others' children, Lin Zixuan gave up his plan to do it himself.

Lin Zixuan has many translator friends, including Zhou Shujuan, Zhou Zuoren, etc., but these people are very busy and have no time to calm down and compile English-Chinese dictionaries.

After several turns, under the introduction of Hu Shi, who had a broad relationship, Lin Zixuan got in touch with an American woman.

This woman is called Pearl Buck and is teaching in the Foreign Languages ​​Department of Nanjing Jinling University.

Pearl Buck was born in western Virginia on June 26, 1892. Four months later, she came to China with her missionary parents, and spent most of her childhood in Zhenjiang.

She first learned Chinese and got used to Chinese customs, and then her mother taught her English.

In 1900, due to the Boxer Rebellion in northern China, Pearl Buck returned to his hometown in the United States for the first time.

She returned to Zhenjiang, China in 1902. On May 13, 1917, she married American young agronomist John Booker, and moved to Suzhou, Anhui after marriage.

In the second half of 1921, Pearl Buck came to Nanjing with her husband Booker and was hired by Jinling University run by the American church.

Pearl Buck is familiar with Chinese and English and teaches English at university. Because her newborn daughter suffers from congenital diseases and needs money to treat her illness, she often writes manuscripts or translates to supplement her family income.

Lin Zixuan suggested that she compile English textbooks and English-Chinese dictionaries, and gave her extremely high salary, and Pearl Buck agreed.

After that, the two often wrote letters to discuss related matters.

Lin Zixuan felt that he had made a profit.

He came from later generations and naturally knew that this woman named Pearl Buck later wrote many novels based on China, and the book "The Earth" won her Nobel Prize in Literature.

As soon as the Earth was published in 1931, it caused a sensation in the United States.

"The Earth" sold 1.8 million copies that year, topped the list of best-sellers in the United States for 22 consecutive months, and won the Pulitzer Prize the following year.

This book describes Chinese farmers, although not profound enough, but allows Americans to recognize a completely different China.
Chapter completed!