Sari hurriedly took the envelope out but couldn't figure how to open the envelope without tearing it open but Arjun snatched it from her and opened it using a kitchen knife slowly showing her how to open an envelope without damaging the interiors.
There were a total of around ten different drawings for the cover page but since it's going to be a hard cover designs with more than two three colors could not be used. Arjun had already informed Sumanth about this in his call so all of the designs were made of very few colors.
Since each book had it's own title, the designers had to take note of the color being used for title and make sure it doesn't appear anywhere near the title so the title can be easily read which added another layer of complexity to their work.
Arjun still felt they had done their job well but Sari did not feel so but it was a different case for Kavitha who too admired the work designers did with limited colors available.
Arjun liked two designs the most, one was their own P.K company logo used like small dots to illustrate a young smiling boy meanwhile other was of a simple plant in a pot but the plant structure felt very refreshing and very detailed unique in it's own way.
Although Arjun had seen much better drawings, with the current drawbacks of being able to print only 2-3 colors on a hard cover using their offset printers and current books available on the market Arjun felt these would do well in attracting more adult eyes, after all it was them who carries the cash. If the cover is able to convince them that their kid too could draw in a similar fashion if they used their books that would be for the best.
Arjun then took help of his mother to select another three drawings that Kavitha liked and they made some finishing touches to the covers to make them more finished.
Arjun wanted to start the production of these immediately since their output would be considerably slower he had forgotten the issue of new materials for the cover book. Even though he could wait another five days for his visit to town he felt this was too much time to waste.
Especially since he planned show these to his distributor friends when they visit his village for the gathering he wanted to have some stock available in case they were interested in this.
He hurried to Lalitha's house and asked her to visit town with her brother the next day to order the new materials. They together visited Mallesh's house since the press had shut down early today where he explained to Lalitha and Bhargav on what to look for but these two couldn't really get the hang of what he was suggesting.
Arjun then suggested Mallesh to accompany them on their visit to town and handed Lalitha a cheque for one lakh rupees for the materials. Even though he could give more they were yet to finish buying the machinery for the factory or build the temporary one, he wanted to save some money incase of emergencies too.
Arjun felt one lakh rupee worth of materials would be enough for their first batch and he would decide his further actions after seeing the reaction of people who would actually do the selling.
Once he returned home he informed Pratap that Balram would be borrowing car the next day and reminded him not to forget leaving the keys at home.
Then Arjun together with Kavitha sat at the table and started going through the storylines the college kids came up with based on Arjun's guidelines.
There were around six story lines and most of them were word fills. Even though they tried to get the world right there was only so much they could do in the span of a week so most of the descriptions felt like fillers to Arjun who was too spoiled with the world building in manga of his previous life.
Kavitha meanwhile was engaged in these stories much better than Arjun and even occasionally asked him things to get better understanding of the world they were trying to build.
Still there were some ideas which Arjun felt could be made use of. One was of having an epic good vs evil story line where the protagonist would take the help of the monsters to expel or defeat evil beings from their world but Arjun felt this was too dark for the first edition and also it would be very difficult to explain the world which was meant for joy of having pets to have such a story in it's first edition.
This manga was meant to evoke the joy of catching bugs and monsters in kids and not about bad fighting the evil but it would be a different case once Arun who was the protagonist in this manga to confront evil beings once they were done through three or four volumes and most readers get a clear world understanding.
The other idea was for the protagonist to collect important gemstones which could only be obtained by defeating certain opponents or doing some very difficult tasks.
Once the protagonist collects the gem stones, he could slot them into his wrist bracelet which would then give some special boost to the monsters Arun uses. Only once they collect all of them and slot them inside the bracelet would it activate and take the protagonist to guardian of the continent and if the protagonist defeats him he gets the chance to enter another continent.
Arjun felt this was very innovative and perhaps even better than how his previous world's people did it as it felt more relatable and perhaps could even become iconic feature of their series once it gets enough popular.
Rest of the ideas from the drafts were pretty boring and Arjun wanted them to have another go it but include the bracelet thing into all of them so the writers could refine the idea further and make it more concrete so he dialed back to Sumanth and informed about his new task who responded enthusiastically and asked for a deadline.
Arjun did not really know what deadline to set, even though he wanted to say two weeks he would be having his exams and their meet was in the same week too, the week next to that Vladimir would arrive so Arjun just blindly said two weeks but was not really serious about it. He decided he would figure stuff out once the time was upon him.
They left day early in the morning next day to get the raw material procurement done, Arjun wanted to ask them to wait since Bhargav had yet to say anything but instead asked them to call home before they begin and handed Lalitha another cheque for fifty thousand rupees ssince he imagined it would suffice for the advance to the construction company if there was a need.
During the lunch break Arjun took permission of the head master and went to visit Bhargav at Karan's place. Luckily Bhargav was available at the time and came to greet him seeing Arjun.
Hey Arjun, haven't gone to school today?
I have Anna, just took permission to come out for an hour, what happened to the rent thing? have you spoke with Madan?
Yes Arjun, both lands are available for purchase but since it's for you Madan decided to make an exception and hand the five acre land on rent for two years for fifteen thousand rupees as for the purchase of land he has to get permission from above for those sort of stuff but still asked you to quote a price he could work with.
Hmm...fifteen thousand Anna? isn't it normal for barren land to be rented for around thousand rupees a year in our surroundings? Is uncle trying to take advantage of the urgency i am in?
Well.. Arjun he's a businessman too and you know about the upcoming elections too, if he gave a friendly price it would look bad on him. Bhargav tried to leave a way out for his current boss.
Okay, okay i know Anna you don't need to remind me again. Well tell him i'll take the loss for this but i want a proper discount on land purchase deal or at least some tax subsidy for the factory if i am going to pay five thousand extra now.
Okay i will inform him Bhargav replied letting out a sigh. He hated being a middleman just for this reason and he could not say no to both these people and they knew about it too.
Alright, have you managed to find any construction company for taking on this job?
No Arjun it might take another couple of days
Okay...please try to get it done quickly Anna, also Lalitha went to town with extra cheque of fifty thousand rupees to hand it to the construction company as advance but since it might take more time i will ask her to hand the cheque to Tharun instead, just let him know.
Alright Bhargav replied and went on his way.