The poplar of the east gate has leaves and lungs. For a long time, the star will be the star.
Chang Geng flashed. At the Jingdong Express Distribution Center in the West Third Ring Road of Beijing, I looked at the thousands of "Apocalypse" "packages" neatly stacked and about to be loaded onto the truck. I recalled the bumpy publishing process of this book and had mixed feelings.
Waiting for tepid products and unsatisfactory results is a common state among publishing practitioners. We founded Everything Is a Mystery in the hope of making a small contribution to the innovative exploration of the publishing industry, so we decided to make a new attempt and chose the creative publishing form of "puzzle books". Why is
a puzzle book?
Creative publishing requires "content + creativity" and always reminds oneself not to be constrained by traditional inertia. The second is "form + creativity" and chooses new carriers suitable for content expression in the wider non-traditional publishing field.
puzzle books are a form between traditional books and games. Compared with traditional books, it is more dynamic; compared with games, it does not lack the warmth of words. Prior to this, the introduced version of the puzzle book "S. Ship of Theseus" and the Forbidden City series of puzzle books have caused great response in the market. In addition to the amazingness of the product itself, the former was published earlier and occupies the right time; the latter is blessed by the IP of the Forbidden City and enjoys a favorable geographical location.
Unlike many puzzle books where the stories serve puzzles, we prefer to choose stories as the main body, create stories that contain culture and ideas, and design puzzle types that will never be repeated around the advancement of the story. In the past, we always told readers the conclusions in books; now, we prefer readers to find answers in books.
Cross-border team
The core of the cultural industry is people. Everything Is a Mystery is a cross-border team focused on creative publishing. It is committed to melting the boundaries of the cultural industry, using content as a carrier, breaking industry barriers, reconstructing the logic of cultural products, and injecting new vitality into traditional publishing.
The main creative team of "Apocalypse" has a very broad industry span, with members coming from publishing, games, film and television, cultural creation, design and other fields. For example, the team's game architect studied at the University of Delaware and Stanford University . While in school, he developed Simnect, the earliest real-time bidding system for games, and wrote many best-selling books on games. The academic consultant is a Ph.D. in economics from Renmin University of China, a visiting scholar from the University of Cambridge, a former researcher at McKinsey & Company and a researcher at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the author of many best-selling books on economics and history. The story architect is a well-known film and television producer. He graduated from Communication University of China. He has participated in film and television businesses such as "Mermaid " and "The Righteous One", and integrates content and user psychology research methods into actual creation. The design director is a design consultant for many large-scale events, and has participated in the secondary logo design of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the visual image design of the Beijing Water Cube National Aquatics Center, and the visual image design of a well-known domestic stationery brand. The editing and publishing team of "Apocalypse" is a star team that has created many million-level best-sellers...
We look forward to the glimmer of enlightenment that cross-border, collision, and fusion exploration can bring. How to make
puzzle book?
Creative publishing is a systematic project. Compared with traditional publishing, it involves more and more complex links. We must deal with it with a project mentality and planning.
Build a worldview : A worldview includes the spiritual core, theoretical system, operating rules, etc. of the work. The process of building a worldview is like starting a new universe. Works with a complete worldview tend to have more vitality. We regard “whether history can be changed” as our spiritual core, the grand strategic view of history as our theoretical system, and the dual story framework of ancient and modern times as our basic rules. All background choices, character portrayals, plot settings, etc. are specific manifestations of this worldview. In the end, we aimed at the critical era that turned things around-, Ming Dynasty, , and the Apocalypse Years.
Story building and gamification design : These two steps need to be carried out at the same time, so it is particularly difficult. One is the origin and transition of the storyline, and the other is the fit and distribution frequency of the gamification transformation. If done separately, it is often difficult to press the gourd to float. ladle. At the same time, the cost structure and production effects must also be taken into consideration. We even brought the printing shop owner into the preliminary design meeting to discuss the feasibility of various materials and processes. This should be the most difficult moment for breakthroughs in creative publishing technology. Rather than writing a book, I am actually more of a producer who boldly crosses boundaries. When editing, I mostly consider what paper to use and what format to decide... But now, I have to pay attention to the pixels of the pictures in the mini program, worry about the range of errors when readers fold the props, and struggle with what text to print on the canvas bag... After many running-in tests, the overall presentation effect was finally achieved.
Literary transformation of : Why are the same jokes funny when told by some people, but boring when told by others. The arrangement and combination of words is a great science. To this end, the team members have tried a variety of styles, hoping that even readers who cannot solve a single puzzle can read the beauty of the story. In order to optimize the reading experience, the plot has also been slightly adjusted.
prop design : Props are an important part of the puzzle book. They not only need to fit the plot development, but also match the setting of the puzzle. We spent a lot of thought on the sources and materials of the props. For example, we bought a horse tag rubbing from hundreds of years ago as a reference for prop design; we specially customized a small pencil with Shanhai Publishing House (the virtual unit in the book) printed on it, with the right diameter to lock in the answer. In the origami questions in the book, the words are randomly distributed. Readers need to fold an "object" to see the folded answer. Our earliest idea was to fold paper cranes , but we soon discovered that everyone’s origami angle is slightly different. After a few steps, the superimposed error will not accurately lock the answer presentation effect. Therefore, we finally chose the "southeast, northwestern" which is a standardized fold in every step and full of childhood memories.
In addition, in order to ensure the uniqueness of the brush calligraphy in the book, famous calligraphers were specially invited to write it themselves. We also buried many Easter eggs, such as the names of the authors of poems and journalists, etc., which are all extensions of the world view.
internal test : The puzzle book test is not a simple repetition of finding a few more people, because readers in reality are very different. In order to ensure the diversity of the sample and the balance of the game experience, we successively recruited professional players, entry-level players, and amateurs who had never heard of puzzle books or played games to participate in the test. We hope to control the difficulty of the puzzles to a level that the general public readers can reach on tiptoe. This scale is very difficult to grasp, and is what is often referred to as "weak frustration" in gamification settings. At the same time, in order to ensure a fresh experience for readers, we have decided that there will be no repeated types of puzzles in the book, which ensures that every solution for readers will be a new challenge.
applet : In order to enhance readers’ game experience and better interact with readers, we decided to compile a small program that can verify the answers to puzzles, which is far beyond the scope of traditional publishing. After writing the program for the first time, the WeChat backend was upgraded uniformly, and we had to readjust the code again. In order to test lower case, we "exhausted" various conditions, different mobile phone bugs, different networks, intentional typos many times, intentional input of garbled characters... Sometimes adjustments will be submitted for review, and the backend will review the inaccuracies for various reasons. pass. The mini program can help us see the reader's clearance rate and speed, and we can make decisions based on the situation and make timely adjustments. This is an advantage that traditional publishing does not have.
Polishing cultural creativity like polishing words
In order to cooperate with Modian crowdfunding, we also designed peripheral derivatives: sachets, random signatures, canvas bags, pillows, a large historical timeline, and also developed gift scripts to kill...
Many Cultural and creative derivatives do not belong to the traditional printing field, and we all learn from scratch. This is a comprehensive test of product design capabilities and supply chain.
sachet: many products cannot provide customized effects and can only provide references for past products.At this time, you can only choose high rather than low. If the supply chain sample can reach 80 points, then the customized effect will often be 60 points. Therefore, we can only cooperate with suppliers whose samples have 100-point scores and monitor the entire process as much as possible. For example, for sachets, we originally chose a high-quality and low-price supplier. However, after mass production, we found that the color saturation was insufficient and the stitching was rough, so we had to reluctantly cut the parts and switch to another supplier. Although the several times higher cost is distressing, the feedback from readers on the final product is worth the trouble.
pillow: pillow is even more confusing. Xin'er couldn't bear to look at the pillowcase manufacturers we were optimistic about; the pillowcase manufacturers we were optimistic about could not make satisfactory covers... In the end, we chose two companies to cooperate. Send it to another company, assemble it with Xin'er, put it in a plastic bag, vacuum it, and send it to us. Vacuuming is a very good decision, and you will know it when it is shipped.
Historical Timeline: The inspiration for the Historical Timeline comes from a memorial in the Ming Dynasty: In 1628, Xu Guangqi proposed "degree bypass" in his "Articles on Calendar Correction of Precession" to the Emperor Chongzhen Ten Things” suggestions. This "ten things by degree" include calendar, measurement, music, military, financial management, construction, machinery, geography, medicine and timekeeping. Basically, it included all the scientific knowledge from China and the West at that time, which was equivalent to establishing a national academy of sciences. So, is there another possibility for history? In the process of creating "Apocalypse", we searched through historical materials to find those interesting and mysterious time points - just like the large and small bifurcations of the parallel worlds in "Loki", all of which are presented in the big history. in the timeline.
At the same time, although rice paper is more suitable for ancient style , the texture difference between the front and back sides is large, the timeline has a lot of words, and it needs to be presented on both sides, so in the end I chose the more compatible silk tissue paper . In order to avoid unpleasant splicing, the design must be adjusted to the printing range of the folio.
script killing : Characters in novels often have their own story lines, and script killing often requires multiple people to "take one shot" of the same scene, which requires the transformation of the story itself. We added two new characters to balance the player experience and re-created the branching plot. Moreover, multiple rounds of internal testing and continuous debugging have also been conducted.
In addition, there are many trivial lessons learned. For example, you must choose Jingdong or SF Express when shipping, but you cannot relax. You need on-site supervision throughout the entire process. You can negotiate a lower discount when delivering hundreds of pieces. Hardcover Books must come in boxes, and boxes are standard for bargaining. However, sometimes it is not always what God has calculated. The sudden epidemic has blocked logistics in one-third of the country. Therefore, you must find a distribution point, because express delivery that cannot be sent out temporarily can be stored there.
The road to the future
Although we have been emphasizing for more than ten years that we should not draw a line as a prison, but should look more at the film, television, game and other industries other than publishing to find commonalities with publishing, but we have found that this is not enough - culture The industry is undergoing new changes: traditional industry category boundaries are beginning to blur, and barriers between different cultural products are being broken down. The new cultural industry is roaring to integrate all products - people are more concerned about a seemingly nihilistic overall cultural experience, and no longer obey the traditional business narratives of books, magazines, toys, cards, stationery and other classic divisions. In this revolution, creative planning capabilities and powerful supply chain system will integrate design, production, sales... and continue to detonate in diversified subdivisions.
When crossing the river by feeling the stones, we will inevitably stumble, but our hearts are full of expectations. This is at least a meaningful attempt, and we have learned a lot along the way. Publishing is a mature industry, and people are so used to the way it has been for a long time that not everyone is willing to try to change. So, let us take the trip for you.Not only the publishing industry, but also the entire cultural industry will face huge internal and external pressures in the future, but this is also a good opportunity to keep upright and create new ones. Based on its own comparative advantages, divergent product and model innovation must belong to the future of culture.
In the process of creating "Apocalypse", we searched " Ming Dynasty Records ", Ming History and Western historical records, looking for clues scattered in time and space. The more time we find, the more we discover the magic and absurdity of this world. People always unconsciously try to "extract" the laws of the world's operation, and use those taken-for-granted principles in our brains to reverse effects into causes. But in fact, even the word "law" is full of human traces. The same goes for the road to creative publishing. We have not summarized any profound theories, but just shared some insights and thoughts.
Everyone is a small quantum . Your existence has made this world different. When more and more such changes occur, they will eventually stir up ripples in time and space.
END
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