Blurb self-publishing opens the civilian market [Wang jilong]

The San Francisco-based blurb self-help publishing company officially announced its business in May 2006. The core technology of this business is booksmart software, and the company is constantly developing this software. Compared with the pioneers such as xlibris, iuniverse, and arthouse, booksmart software is offered free of charge and can be downloaded as long as you log on to blurb. Professional electronic publishing software such as indesign and Quark Xpress costs about $700. Currently, the technical features of the bookmart1.7.7 version make blurb publishing affordable.

 

As an emerging publishing model, the traditional paper media book publishing industry is aimed at the authors of the social elites. Take China as an example. Currently, only 5‰ of all original works in China can be published through the publishing house, and the Publishing House mainly relies on the books of well-known authors to expand the publishing and obtain market profits; self-help publishing is different. It mainly implements the profit model of on-demand printing (POD), that is, blurb's user positioning is any individual who has a demand for publishing books. Pods print books as needed.

 

Blurb's on-demand printing market is quite different from the traditional market. blurb's digital publishing market is aimed at the author market, not the reader market.

 

Since the 1990s S, the emerging media represented by the Internet has completely changed the traditional idea of the publishing industry. The low cost of electronic publishing and the zero economic threshold of blogs have brought a large number of civilian classes into the publishing and creation fields. Taking blogs as an example, there are currently 36 million blogs in the United States, accounting for 12% of the total population of the United States. New content is added at a rate of 75 thousand per day and is updated on a daily basis. It is no longer important to read a blog, because it is unlikely that people will see too many popular and endless civilian blogs. Blog creators are pursuing self-expression, this has inadvertently changed the driving force of the entire book publishing market: the previous book was made to make money, and now the book is becoming more and more entertaining.

 

Self-entertainment is also a huge publishing market. According to the operating method of blurb, the printing fee for a simple blog on 40 pages per blog is USD 18.95, and the price for the blurb bookstore is USD 29.95, among the costs, blurb publishers earned more than $2 (including less than $18.95), and blog authors earned more than $11. If 1/2 of bloggers in the United States are willing to publish their own blogs on their own, the sum of a blog book is $36 million; The sum of the profits for selling a blog book is 0.198 billion. Due to the low economic threshold of blurb publishing, the number of one publication is as small as 1 ~ 10, the possibility of updating and publishing is greatly increased. It can be seen that blurb is opening a huge market. In the trial phase of this software in May 2006, blurb's booksmart software invited 600 bloggers to participate in free Publishing. The bloggers favored self-published books, at that time, 10 thousand people signed the software during the trial period, and an enviable self-help publishing tornado occurred in the American publishing industry.

 

The published market is also worth noting. After a market survey, blurb founder, Chairman and CEO Elin said: "We have met many bloggers who want to publish books using free advanced technologies. In many cases, bloggers only want to demonstrate their achievements in this way. Of course, some people want to share non-online publications with family and friends in this way. Of course, others want to make profits ". By the end of 2006 alone, according to blurb's CEO Elin, blurb's total self-publishing revenue reached $10 million, achieving a one-year profit target.

 

With the gradual maturity of blurb's booksmart technology, the functions of booksmart have been further improved. After the trial in 2006, blurt spent $2 million to further develop and improve the slurper function with a huge market. This software function is mainly aimed at the blog publishing market, in addition to completing the book layout design of Blog content within several minutes, it also strives to develop online sound, images, and other functions to attract more bloggers to the book publishing market.

 

On the other hand, with the increase in market share and the maturity of software application, the cost of blurb publishing has become increasingly low. At the beginning of May 2006, for blurb's self-help publishers, it would cost $18.95 to publish 40 fully-colored and simplified books, and $29.95 on hardcover books of the same specification. A 440-page full-color lite book costs $69.95, and a similar hardcover book costs $79.95. In just one year, the cost of this type of self-published books has been reduced. In the past, for example, a 40-page full-Simplified book dropped from 18.95 to 12.95 US dollars, and a hardcover book dropped from 29.95 US dollars to 17.95 US dollars. This reduction in the cost of publishing books further stimulates the popularity of civilian Publishing. Since 2007, blurb's publishers have become more extensive and diverse. Unexpected categories such as self-made travel manuals, teaching books, product lists, and evening books have gradually been included in blurb's product scope. Book Publishing in the United States is quietly undergoing a revolution in civilian self-publishing.