The Versatile Master Artist

The golf ball rolled on the half-meter-wide artificial lawn,

Osborne stretched his body, gently swung the club, the chrome strip on the club reflecting the light of the glass chandelier in the office.

When he was studying for his MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business,

The textbooks liked to refer to giant groups like Scholastic as Empires, to describe their colossal influence in the world.

Osborne loved this saying,

Last year, Scholastic’s annual revenue exceeded the GDP sum of many small African countries, truly deserving to be called an independent business empire.

Every time he stood in his CEO office on the 41st floor at the London Financial Street Building, looking down at the bustling crowd on the street below, a massive sense of power filled his heart.

If Scholastic could be likened to an independent kingdom like the Holy Roman Empire,

Osborne spent half his life, with early assistance from the Ilyena family, evolving from a hard but ordinary ”industrious worker bee” in the crowds below to an elector able to dictate European Region matters.

This quaint office with an indoor golf course and crystal chandeliers was his private palace.

Even a few years later, after the old chief executive retires, he might have the qualification to touch the sect leader’s throne of the entire group.

The premise of all these beautiful ideas is,

Osborne must present the board with a stunning answer sheet in the primary business of the European Region.

However,

At least judging from his track record over the past year and a half since taking office.

Osborne felt that his performance in the board’s eyes should be between qualified and good, probably not excellent, much less tied to adjectives like stunning.

”One million sales, one million sales... SHIT, those fools sitting in the office staring at spreadsheets really think achieving one million sales for a bestseller is that easy, huh? It’s flipping one million.”

Clang clang~

Feeling annoyed, Osborne failed to control the power, the golf ball bounced straight off the ground, hitting the metal plaques on the decorative tree at the office doorway, causing a series of chaotic clinks and clanks.

He tossed the golf club onto the sofa, walked over, bent down to pick up the little white ball, and stood still in front of the decorative tree.

[No.01 ”World War II Memoirs”, Winston Churchill]

[No.02 ”Train Bazaar”, Paul Soru]

[No.03...]

...

[No.57 ”Wilderness of Elephant Roars”, Graham Meyer]

This little pine tree hanging full of little decorative plaques like Christmas gifts is a fixed decoration in any private office of senior management.

”Million Milestone” Commemorative Tree,

Whenever Scholastic Group publishes a bestseller with annual sales surpassing one million copies, a new commemorative plaque is hung on this tree.

There are currently fifty-seven plaques.

Fifty-seven epic bestsellers that built the cornerstone of the huge commercial map the group established over the past seventy years.

As the vice president responsible for publishing sales, Osborne’s leadership over the annual printed book sales totals in Europe don’t lag behind the previous vice president.

But he lacks sufficiently eye-catching flagship works.

Osborne needs a work that could make its way onto the commemorative tree.

Since he took office,

The book with the best sales performance is tennis star Federer’s new autobiography ”Green Grass, Red Clay, Grand Slam”, which sold 820,000 copies last year.

In the publishing industry, this already counts as a super-duper bestseller, but it’s still not enough for Osborne’s ambition.

Especially compared to the two heavyweight works launched by the North American Region last year—a former president’s memoir selling 1.3 million copies and the illustrated children’s book ”Wilderness of Elephant Roars” by children’s writer Meyer achieving 1.57 million copies—his work seemed dull.

After retirement, a former president making money through book sales is a custom among Americans. Publishers are willing to pour in huge resources for promotion, society likes to buy, selling a million copies wouldn’t be surprising.

And ”Wilderness of Elephant Roars” is a model of strong collaborative publishing with good writing and excellent illustrations.

The New York Times Book Review praised it as ”eloquent prose, warm illustrations, profound ideas—a classic work that makes children laugh and adults cry.”

It even topped the North American book sales charts for 62 consecutive weeks.

Last year, the board provided a year-end bonus to the North American Region project team responsible for publishing ”Wilderness of Elephant Roars”, the amount which was usually only seen in horse-racing lotteries.

”No.58 ’Little Prince’, sounds so wonderful...”

Osborne murmured to the ”Million Milestone” Commemorative Tree, then shook his head, smiling bitterly.

He knew it was impossible.

Though the sales of ”Little Prince” have remained strong, the annual European total sales hover around one million copies.

Moreover,

there’s market competition among different publishing companies’ translations.

The group’s estimated print volume for the new edition of ”Little Prince” reached one million copies, but that’s the total sales over the entire future sales cycle, not the task for one year.

When this project was initiated, the board hoped Scholastic might capture about thirty percent of the market share in the first year.

Which was to sell about 300,000 copies of the new ”Little Prince”, likely ranking near the top two hundred in the entire European book printing market.

That number was already significant.