flstandardbreds Chapter 184 Serial Story
Chapter 184 Serial Story
It was another normal day in Le Bonheur. The sun rose from the horizon of Franche-Comté as usual. The streets were bustling with people walking along the main roads towards the city or the suburbs. Looking from a high place, two streams of people lined up on both sides of the main road and moved slowly in opposite directions, just like caterpillar tracks pushing Le Bonheur forward in this war-torn place.
The commercial district near the main road has always been a densely populated area, not only because the commercial district provides thousands of jobs for residents, but also because of John's policy of exploiting outsiders rather than his own people. Now the urban class living in the city has more or less spare money. Naturally, when they have money, they want to improve their lives. Whether they want to buy new clothes or new furniture, they have to go to various stores in the commercial district to buy them.
As John's official business organization, the shops under the Simon Chamber of Commerce have always been the most popular shops among the many stores in the commercial district. Although there is only one shop in the Earl's Castle, its floor area far exceeds that of other shops and its three-story height make it one of the landmark buildings of the Earl's Castle.
Although it is a shop, its operation has become similar to that of a department store. Relying on goods transactions with various countries, the shop has everything from daily necessities to all kinds of furniture. Its stable prices and support for return and exchange services have made the shop widely praised by citizens since its opening.
Naturally, there are places to buy books in shops, but in this era, due to the level of technology, most books are made by handwriting, so naturally books are also valuable items in this era.
The books on the bookshelf were all obtained by Simon in trade with Issu merchants. After John selected some books to enrich his library, he put all the other books in the store.
But since the bookstore opened, except for the parents of students who come to buy those dozen-page teaching booklets on the first day of school every year, there are almost no people coming to the bookstore to buy books at other times.
Even if someone came to the bookstore, they would just ask if there were any cheaper books, and then quietly leave the bookstore after receiving a reply. These people were certainly not keen on learning knowledge, but they thought that if they had a book, they would become knowledgeable people in the eyes of their neighbors, even though some of them could not read at all.
Due to the lack of sales, the bookstore clerks were jokingly called "gatekeepers" by the clerks in other work areas of the store. Basically, a day's work was spent standing at the front desk.
However, on a new day, customers who came to the bookstore as usual found a stack of papyrus neatly placed on the table at the front desk. The customers thought the bookstore had started selling paper, so they walked up and asked:
"How much is this piece of paper?"
Seeing this, the clerk beside him hurriedly explained:
"Sir, this is a newspaper. 50 copper coins per copy."
"Newspaper?" The customers were confused. Looking at the papyrus with words written on it, one of them took out a silver coin from his pocket and put it on the front desk and said:
"Give me two."
Seeing someone buying, the clerk immediately put away the silver coins, took out two newspapers from the pile and handed them to the customer. The clerk only knew about this thing yesterday, and although he didn't know who made it, when the store manager Simon walked into the bookstore and repeatedly told him to try his best to sell these newspapers, the clerk knew that if he didn't sell these newspapers quickly, he would definitely suffer in the future.
The customer who received the newspaper opened it under the expectant gaze of others. At the beginning, he saw the black eagle on John's family emblem on the newspaper, and the words "Franche-Comté Daily" written in bold black letters next to it.
The customer looked down from the title and saw framed articles below the bold words, which included some articles about John summoning his retainers to a meeting and some interesting news in the city. In order to make the content of the newspaper richer, John asked the printer to use a smaller font mold so that a piece of paper could show more content.
After the first customer bought the newspaper, the following customers also followed suit and asked the clerk or bought newspapers. As an ordinary citizen, if he could know more about the noble lords in the territory than others, he would definitely be looked up to by others and even his superiors in the future.
So, with the sound of coins falling on the table, the height of the pile of newspapers at the front desk slowly decreased with the passage of time. After the last newspaper was sold, everyone had to leave the bookstore with sighs. However, some people wanted to ask when the next batch of newspapers would arrive, but they were only told "wait for notification" and walked out of the bookstore in disappointment.
After a day of preparation, most of the citizens in the Earl's Castle knew about a new thing called "newspaper". This thing was only a piece of paper, but it recorded things that only the nobles knew before. This greatly stimulated the enthusiasm of the general public for newspapers.
After all, in this era, people have very few entertainment activities, and many people like to find out some unknown gossip and tell others about it to satisfy their vanity. Now the newspapers are filled with news about the nobles that they like but dare not actively inquire about, which naturally attracts the attention of most citizens.
Before, ordinary citizens wanted to know about the lives of nobles, half of which was through the bards in the tavern, and the other half was through books, hearsay, and their own imagination. Now John directly showed a part of it to the public, which made ordinary people gather together like sharks smelling blood in the sea, and they all asked where they could buy newspapers.
The next day John received feedback from the citizens, and when he learned that the newspaper had been sold out, he began to think about the content of the next issue of the newspaper.
Although war is the most common thing when you are on the border, John does not intend to use all the space to describe the border wars. If he does, it will not be called a daily report but a war report, so John plans to add some other things.
After adding a series of content such as people's livelihood and government affairs, John looked at the remaining blank space and fell into deep thought. He had already written all the recent news in various fields, but it would not look good to leave a blank space like this.
John was thinking this while his eyes swept elsewhere. When he scanned the books on the bookshelf, an idea suddenly came into his mind.
Thinking of this, he immediately picked up a pen and started writing on paper. After an hour, an article of several hundred words filled the remaining blank space.
"Is this the world's first novel serialized in a newspaper?" John thought to himself. Just now, it suddenly occurred to him that those who could not afford novels would become regular buyers of newspapers if they saw excerpts of novels that interested them in the newspapers.
However, when John picked up his pen, he found that he knew very little about the novels in this world. He had not even read the "Journey to the East" that was familiar to others.
Just as John was racking his brains over what to write, his past memories inspired him. John then realized that he didn't need to create a subject matter at all, because he himself was a subject matter. The wars he had experienced far exceeded those seen by other best-selling novelists today.
So, recalling his previous memories, John wrote his first serial novel in this world. The main content was his experience in the Battle of Balden. After John filled in the blanks, he wrote at the end:
"The Baldung Chronicles - by Johann Hohenzollern"