Printing House

In the morning, Will checked in with Elder Thaddeus before the weekly meeting with his senior clerks, city administrators, and vassals.

With Elder Thaddeus healed, Will turned his attention to his inaugural World Economic Forum in Kukes. Will anxiously anticipated Vincent and Gideon's progress report.

If the construction and infrastructure fell behind, Will planned to visit Kukes himself to speed progress along.

However, the meeting derailed after Elliot's turn. After all the senior clerks, city administrators, and Vincent submitted their ledgers to Will; they update Will on any important local news.

When it was Elliot's turn, he informed Will that one trading ship helped abscond a political escapee.

The escapee's name was Diego. He was from the Theocracy of Ionic. The Theocracy of Ionic believed there was only one true God. A revolutionary idea, in this polytheistic world.

According to Elliot, Diego was branded a heretic because he developed a way to easily print the religion's Bible.

The Cardinal of Ionic was not pleased that bibles were being sold in the market. Their religion believed that only priests had the divine inspiration required to read or disseminate their Bible. Thus, Diego was branded a heretic and sentenced to life imprisonment.

To escape his persecutors, he escaped at night to the docks where he secured passage to Fermion.

He bribed the ship's captain to stowaway and promised the captain, that Will would reward him when he arrived safely at Fermion.

While the captain did not believe Will would reward him, he was thrilled to receive a bribe.

When the ship docked at Durres, the captain led Diego to Elliott's office at the Silver Phoenix Shipping Company.

When Elliot met Diego, he treated him respectfully and rented him an expensive apartment in Durres because he did not know if Diego was a charlatan or if his claim were legitimate.

After Elliot finished his report, Will told him to hurry up and invite the man to this meeting. When Diego finally arrived, the meeting was over, and Will and Elliot were having tea in the shipping headquarter.

"Esteemed Earl William vont Ballard. Greetings, I am Baron Diego vont Castillo," the portly bearded man bowed deeply. He and Jesper had the same round waist and spectacles.

"Greetings Baron vont Castillo. My Naval Commander tells me you have a printing machine. Tell me how does it operate?" Will asked politely nodding his head.

"Please call me Diego!" the fat man bowed again. "The printing press uses moveable type. If you follow me to your warehouse, I have the machine stored there. I'm happy to give you a demonstration," Diego said exuberantly.

"Did you create this machine yourself, so did you learn the craft elsewhere?" Will asked.

"My father built this machine, but he died before he could finish it. After my father died, I followed his blueprint and finished the machine. But I was not allowed to patent the blueprint, because the cardinal declared it heretical!" Diego said sadly.

"I'm sorry you had to flee your home," Elliott said.

"Tell me how fast can you print a small book?" Will asked excitedly. He had secretly been looking for a way to make a printing press.

"Depending on the pages, the printing machine is capable of producing a book in hours," Diego said proudly.

Before this development, every book, document, or manuscript was written by hand. They were developed through intense time-consuming labor, a centuries-old, labor-intensive, undercapitalized form of production that was able to create only a very few texts for nobles or merchants.

Since most literate people in Fermion were nobles or wealthy merchants, books were costly and considered a luxury. A quick way to determine a person's wealth was the size of their book collection.

Handwritten books were extremely expensive, and they ultimately separated the old wealthy from the nouveau rich.

Currently, books were created by using wood-cut printing. This was another time-consuming labor as a new block had to be carved in reverse for each page.

When the king wanted to distribute his book, he paid the Churches of Aether and Gaia to use their priests as scribes. Additionally, he employed freelance scribes. Together, the priest and freelancers were able to copy and print 1,200 books a month.

After finishing King Roland's, Will's, and Dean Treavor's books many nobles and merchants either gave them away or resold them.

Will knew if Diego did develop a working printing press, he'd ultimately change the world and paved the way forward to increase the spread of information.

On Earth, Martin Luther used the printing press to spread his ideas to countless cities. The possibility of the same ideas being shown to vast amounts of different people in different countries was an amazing achievement as it helped spread information like never before.

But, Will was not some Protestant reformer. He was an entrepreneur and businessman. And he knew the five biggest wealthiest businesses on Earth were entertainment, banking, energy, transportation, and media.

He currently monopolized the energy and mass transportation sectors, and his monopoly on entertainment and banking had only recently been released. And now he could finally get his hands on media.

Will knew the development of print would open up the news in a way that had never been done before. The news would be able to circulate faster and the print itself wouldn't be altered through word of mouth. Fermion's gossip mill was notoriously hyperbolic.

Inside the warehouse, Diego led Will to a machine that looked like the Gutenberg Printing Press.

"This is the machine. Watch, and I'll demonstrate to you how it operates. First, you have to place the movable print in the correct order. Then you have to use the beaters to apply the ink evenly.

It's important to make sure each letter has enough ink, but not too much. If you add too much ink, the words come out messy and illegible.

Once the ink is evenly applied to the surface, then you add on the paper. But the paper can't be moist because then the ink won't set. Flax or wood paper works the best. But, as long as the paper is dry, it'll do the job," Diego said proudly.

After the demonstration, Will's eyes lit up with greed. This was exactly what Will wanted. But he first had to negotiate with Diego.

Yet, that did not stop Will from thinking about his paper's name. He ran through some names: the Fermion Times, which reminded Will of his two favorite papers: the New York Times and the Financial Times. Or, the Fermion Journal like the Wall Street Journal. He also liked Fermion Globe, after The Globe in London. There was also the Fermion Sun, Fermion Gazette, Fermion Post, or the Fermion Tribune.

Will finally settled on The Fermion Guardian. Guardian made the most sense since Gadreel was a guardian deity.

"Boss Will!" Elliot call waking Will from his daydream.

"Yes, I'm sorry. What is it?" Will said waking from his daydream.

"Diego said he'd sell you the printing press as long as you shelter him from the Theocracy of Ionic," Elliot said.

"That's it?" Will asked stupefied.

"You don't know the Theocracy as I do. They are relentless, they'll never stop pursuing me. I heard you took in refugees during the plague. I beg you Earl vont Ballard please protect me?" Diego said kneeling.

"Diego from now on you're my employee. I'll buy you a house in Tirana and pay you 10 gold a month. My Senior Clerk, Mei shall be your supervisor. I'll introduce you when we get to Tirana.

For now, head back to your apartment and pack. We'll leave for the capital when you return," Will advised.

"My lord, I left in a hurry. The only clothes I have are the ones, I'm wearing," Diego said embarrassingly.

"Then we'll leave now. Elliot, who knows about Diego outside of you and the ship's crew?" Will asked.

"No one else," Elliot replied.

"Good! Here are 40 silvers. Remind them to keep quiet about Diego and inform me if any Theocracy ships dock in Durres," Will said.

Will summoned the printing press into his dragon storage ring and teleported to Tirana with Diego.

"Eh," Diego screamed when they arrived in Mei's office at the bank.

"First time teleporting?" Mei asked Diego.

"Uh-huh," Diego said gasping for air.

"Mei, this is Baron Diego vont Castillo. You may call him Diego. He's my newest employee?" Will said.

"Greetings Baron vont Castillo," Mei curtsied.

"Please call me Diego. I'm no longer nobility in my home country nor this one," he bowed to Mei.

"Do we own empty storefronts?" Will asked.

"No, but there is one that just came available. As I reported, there has been a rise of bankruptcies in Tirana," Mei said.

After Will released his patents on his banks, auction houses, and casinos; a rash of banks, auction houses, and casinos opened. And just as fast as they opened, they closed. The markets had yet to reach equilibrium.

"Send a clerk to purchase a nice two-story office building, and a house for Diego," Will ordered.

An hour later, Diego had a corner office building and house in an upper-middle-class district.

"Diego, Mei, I want four printing presses on the first floor and offices on the second story. Mei, I want you to hire a clerk for Diego. I plan to hire 12 scribes across Fermion, who shall write articles. Diego, I want you to publish a newspaper. You and your apprentices shall publish the kingdom's news, the scribes write.

Mei makes sure you give Diego the FTSE numbers after the closing bell. Make sure one of the stockbrokers also lists the top 100 companies and the average rise or fall. And list the 10 companies whose stock rose the most and fell the most.

A week later, the first edition of The Fermion Guardian was published. The 10-page weekly newspaper sold for ten coppers. For the first time in human history, a newspaper was mass-produced and sold.

Each scribe was responsible for a different region of the country. Citizens in Tirana could read about what was news in Yorkshire, Gadreel, or Durres. There was even news from Kukes, Lezhe, northwestern and northeastern fringe, the northern Whitby Duchy, and the former Khan Duchy. In addition to news and the stock market, there was a book chapter and a society page.

However, the biggest unanticipated problem was the exorbitant cost of paper. For 25 kilograms of paper, it cost 10 silvers. Even worse, importing paper costs as much as it was to buy it domestically. Which meant Will lost money until he could lower the cost of paper.

However, Will didn't care about the newspaper earning a net loss in the short term. Why not? Because Will planned to use the newspaper to help his other business. As long as his company overall made a net profit, he wouldn't worry about his small newspaper company.

In the long run, to make up for the lost profit, Will planned to eventually sell ads. With ads, he analyzed he'd be able to make a profit. Even better, ads would only increase his profit margin and widen circulation.

'Soon,' Will thought. Soon he'd monopolize media. By owning the media, he could indirectly tell citizens what to think.