America 1919

Jessica Dole spent her night in anger, dissatisfaction, tension, and humiliation, but upon hearing Donnie's words, her dim eyes finally began to shine.

"Perhaps by that time, some boss will take a liking to you, bring you into his house, and you will be able to live the life you desire!"

Donnie continued.

If it were Carmen Farmer at this moment, she would have immediately thrown herself onto Donnie, but now it was Jessica Dole, who couldn't accept such a sudden change.

She just stared blankly at Donnie.

....

.

The next day, Donnie returned to the Block Tavern.

This time, without the contribution of flower value in the Miss America city contest finals, Donnie naturally lost this source of income.

Your journey continues on empire

However, Donnie didn't mind, because the income from advertisements, documentaries, betting rings, and newspapers were sufficient to offset the loss incurred by the absence of flower sales.

Since the preliminary rounds of the Miss America city contest had concluded, the sales of the "Atlantic City Post" had climbed steadily, reaching 90,000 copies the next day, followed by 100,000, 120,000, 140,000, and eventually plateauing at 150,000 without further increase.

Yet, by the second week, the "Atlantic City Post" began to see a dip in sales in Atlantic City, due to it having completed the acquisition of stakes in three other newspapers, holding 30% in each one. The "Atlantic City Post" paid them the price of 15% of their shares, and the rest of the equity was in exchange for agreeing to the right to vote for Miss America for the other three newspapers.

Initially, these three newspaper companies did not agree to this approach, but in the previous week, their sales volumes had plummeted to rock bottom, with the highest single-issue sales of any of them not exceeding a thousand copies.

Such a result finally made them relent!

The sales of the "Atlantic City Post" suddenly dropped from the peak of 150,000 copies to 90,000 copies per issue.

However, at the same time, the "Atlantic City Post," leveraging the popularity of Miss America, officially entered major cities such as Philadelphia and New York, boosting total sales to 160,000 copies.

As a daily paper, in just two weeks, the "Atlantic City Post" had sold 2.02 million copies, generating an income of $12,120 US dollars!

Then there was the box office income from the Miss America preliminary contest documentary, which had been showing for a week. Its popularity was unwavering, and the Philadelphia Film Company along with its distributors had finally tallied the first week's box office income.

As of last night, the documentary of the Miss America city contest preliminaries had garnered a total of 1.41 million US dollars in box office revenue across the United States. Of course, according to the current film industry's box office revenue sharing schedule in the United States, Donnie would have to wait until the second month after the documentary's run to receive this income.

This was only because Donnie had made strict demands beforehand; otherwise, the profit return time would have been even more delayed.

Most importantly, Donnie didn't have to share this money with Nucky— it was his alone.

But no matter what, the box office of the week provided Donnie with at least $564,000 in income. After deducting the production cost of $70,000, Donnie made a profit of $494,000 from the documentary last week!

Following that was the income from advertising. Due to the success of the first round of preliminaries, the advertising revenue from the Miss America city contest finals was the real bulk of the earnings.

During this period, Starry Entertainment accepted advertisements from 10 companies, consisting of 5 C-level advertisers, 3 B-level advertisers, and 2 A-level advertisers.

This segment brought in 950,000 US dollars of income for Starry Entertainment. After sharing 475,000 dollars with Nucky, Starry Entertainment earned an equal amount of income.

Of course, whether it was the sales of the "Atlantic City Post" or the advertising revenue from Starry Entertainment, these needed to be taxed, as Donnie certainly did not want to attract the attention of the United States Treasury Department.

As for whether or not Nucky would pay taxes on the advertising income, that was his own business.

What remained was the income from the betting rings, which couldn't be taxed through the normal channels. However, Donnie had already had the "Atlantic City Post" post a job recruitment notice seeking an expert capable of helping him legally avoid taxes.

Speaking of the betting ring income, during the preliminaries, betting from the other ten cities reached more than 7 million dollars. By the time of the finals, this betting had breached 10 million dollars, soaring to 13 million, from which Donnie and Nucky each stood to earn 585,000 dollars in income.

Last was the betting ring income from Atlantic City. During the preliminaries, nearly 50,000 people placed bets, amounting to almost 600,000 dollars.

Once the city contest finals arrived, the numbers skyrocketed, with 70,000 bettors placing a total of 1 million dollars in bets!

Donnie and Nucky each received an income of 150,000 dollars.

In other words, the second round of the city contest finals alone brought in an income of 1,222,120 dollars for Donnie, and adding the documentary's box office share, the total income would exceed 1.7 million dollars!

If all taxes were deducted, this sum would definitely shrink considerably, but the American tax system doesn't only look at how much you've earned; it also considers how much you've spent during that time.

There is a very complex calculation formula involved, and the current Donnie did not need to worry about this sum of money.