Chapter 97: Socializing
"Fan Zhiliang really is fickle, and he's extremely good at trimming his sails to the wind. But the price he's offering is genuinely tempting: 210,000 a month for the title-page ad, with the contract running through next March. That's already the price of a two-page spread. Several other companies want that title-page slot too, but their offers range from 170,000 to 180,000. Fan Zhiliang is offering 30,000 above the highest bid. He's taking a very humble approach this time. I think we could at least meet him," Lin Guangdong told Su Can in the car.
The magazine's advertising slots included the back cover, inside pages, inside front and back covers, even the copyright page, the first two-page spread, quarter-sheet posters, and so on. Some magazines with enormous circulation and considerable industry influence even had pop-up pages and added extra pages to accommodate advertisements, making full use of every inch of space. Those flat surfaces could be converted into real money; they were immensely valuable.
When Su Can had approached Fan Zhiliang and the others in the magazine's early days, he had hoped to offer them large amounts of advertising space at the best possible rates. But times had changed. Only two issues had passed, yet Fashion Culture was no longer remotely comparable to what it had been.
If Su Can and Lin Guangdong sold those advertising slots cheaply now, they really would be squandering money, practically inviting divine punishment as they pushed it away. Every one of those advertising slots was worth a substantial sum.
The magazine currently had seventeen separate advertising slots, with fees ranging from a minimum of 30,000 to 250,000. Companies had already begun bidding against one another for several slots that the planning department was keeping a tight hold on. Su Can made