Chapter 2202 - 2199: Pinyin

This is truly a big money-making business.

Other shops can’t spread across Great Chu as chain stores, so they won’t make much profit in the short term.

It seems that cement must be put on the agenda.

"Madam, there’s only a little over a hundred taels of silver left, so I returned."

"Hmm, you’ve done very well; you’ve worked hard." Ye Muyu sighed softly; just buying a manor requires a few hundred taels, and a decent shop also costs over a hundred taels, not to mention needing a house.

The expenses needed are considerable.

No wonder Tang Dongfeng returned.

Ye Muyu gave him the prepared silver rewards.

"You’ve worked hard this time; this is a bonus." With both rewards and penalties in place, and since she trusted Tang Dongfeng’s work, she naturally needed to win him over.

Ye Muyu gave a hundred taels just in silver rewards.

This amount isn’t much.

But in the steward industry, it is quite a lot.

After all, Tang Dongfeng had only been out for two or three months.

To receive a hundred taels as a bonus is quite impressive.

Tang Dongfeng accepted without hesitation; he had long known the Chu family’s rules and knew he would be treated well, which is why he stayed.

"Thank you, Madam," he said happily.

"It’s what you deserve."

"Since you’re back, I have a new task for you." Ye Muyu had been considering what kind of business to do with the purchased shops.

She now had an idea: to enter the bookstore business, but first, she intended to release pinyin in Chu Heng’s name.

Tang Dongfeng was a bit surprised: "Although the bookstore business is good, there’s a limit to it. At most, it could only bring in so many taels of silver, and customers are quite limited. Even if all the local scholars came to buy books, the monthly profit would be limited. Moreover, scholars are reluctant to buy books; most just copy them. The real collections are stored in book towers and other places of the noble families. Even if we open a bookstore, we might not obtain those collections."

"Acquiring them would likely cost a lot of silver, not worth the investment."

"Actually, the real money-maker is the money shop."

Ye Muyu agreed with him: "Forget about money shops for now; we don’t have the qualification to open one yet. Let’s talk about it later."

"What if, in the future, eighty percent of the Great Chu’s people become literate?" Ye Muyu noticed several profit points in the bookstore business.

First is the Oil Smoke Ink produced by the factory back home.

Although it hasn’t made a name for itself yet, it’s only a matter of time.

If the Chu family’s Oil Smoke Ink were promoted all over Great Chu, many scholars might want to try it.

Besides, because the current bookstore market still has many segments unexploited, existing bookstores have limited content for sale, thus limited business.

But if pinyin emerges.

Some adults may be too old to want to learn literacy.

But they would certainly be willing to let their children learn to read.

So, storybooks with pinyin, idiom books, the Four Books and Five Classics with pinyin annotations, as well as dictionaries of idioms, Chinese dictionaries, novels with pinyin, and various trade books with pinyin.

The market potential here is enormous!

Truly discussing it might take three days and nights to cover.

Moreover, with pinyin, pencils could also be introduced, along with math books, etc.

By then, Chu family bookstores could become a nationwide chain in Great Chu, making a name, and generating continuous income.