The traditional publishing industry is undergoing a great change

Absrtact: Support for digital reading is suicide, not support is sitting ducks, all are dead. This is a joke when publishers talk about digital reading. Under the trend of digitalization, the traditional publishing industry is undergoing a great change. At home, by

"Support for digital reading is suicide", not support is ' sitting ducks ', all the way to death. ”

This is a joke when publishers talk about digital reading. Under the trend of digitalization, the traditional publishing industry is undergoing a great change. At home, as the change has only just begun, many publishers are unaware of the urgency of the problem.

October 18, a news from the other side of the ocean began to let domestic practitioners precarious from danger. The New York Times reported that after encouraging readers to abandon the physical bookstore, Amazon began to unite authors to throw away the publishers.

It is reported that this fall, Amazon will publish 122 books of various genres, will provide both print and electronic version. It also means Amazon has managed to get through the entire industry chain from "author" to "Reader", and it will officially become a competitor to major publishers who have been its most important suppliers.

"We've always had direct contact with Amazon, and it's really complicated about this," he said. "A newspaper personage in Beijing told reporters October 21 that he had communicated with Amazon on the matter a day ago."

"Now China's digital publishing is only just beginning, but also in the launch of traditional publishers to participate in the stage." "It is hard to tell how Amazon's approach will impact China, but the mentality of the publishers will certainly have an impact," the people said.

According to the reporter understand, the current domestic has appeared a batch of electronic reading content of the platform, the basic traditional publishing industry outside the company mainly: including Mobile, Grand, Han Wang and so on. People familiar with the matter said that e-commerce sites such as Beijing and Tokyo were also planning to launch a digital publishing platform similar to Amazon's.

"It's really difficult to compete with an internet company if you want traditional publishers to do this market themselves." "The director of the Digital Publishing center of Zhejiang Publishing House said that the time is already late for the publishers to intervene, and the volume of individual publishers is limited." In his view, the main role of traditional publishers in the digital reading industry chain is content providers.

But Kim says Amazon's impact on industry may not be as big as it might think. Publishers have their core value as content providers. Dai, general manager of Mobile Reading base, said in an interview with reporters, "an open digital publishing platform should be a joint effort by all parties to be big." ”

The advantages of digital publishing

Including the traditional publishers themselves, no one can deny that digitization is the future trend, but also the direction of bringing tangible benefits.

Fang, managing director of Chinese Digital Media Limited, a member of China Writers ' Association, told reporters that since last year, many traditional publishers have been doing the same thing, that is, the establishment of a specialized digital publishing company.

In his view, traditional publishers, who are familiar with paper publishing, have realised that "it is a common understanding for us how to get into digital publishing and how to upgrade and transform." This road must be gone, but the way to go is to explore. ”

The traditional publishing house set up a specialized digital publishing company has two main purposes: one is to comb its own resources, complete the digitization of traditional book resources; the second is demand cooperation, docking with platform side.

At home, there are many such platforms, including telecom operators, internet companies and even bookstores and other booksellers are also beginning to change. However, in terms of income and size, mobile phone reading platform is currently the best cooperation with the publishing house.

"We uploaded 300 books last year, divided into several categories, including bestsellers, famous masterpieces, literature books, etc." Last year, starting from May to the end of income at about 2 million. According to Fang, revenue from mobile platforms accounted for more than 80% of Chinese digital reading income.

And from Zhejiang Publishing Group, Zhe Big Press and other data are similar, mobile reading base brings income accounted for their digital reading income of about 80%.

Mobile Reading Base general manager Dai told reporters that the advantages of digital reading is obvious. In the traditional publishing industry chain, a paper book from the Planning, Selection, ISBN Declaration, manuscripts, writing, proofreading, layout, printing, listing, publicity, the shortest period of three months. From the cost, the printing cost accounted for about 20%-25%, the royalty cost accounted for 8%-12%, the warehousing logistics distribution cost accounted for 3%-5%, the publishing house generally by 60 percent to the wholesaler, this conversion down, the publisher's profit in 10%-15%.

But the digital publication because eliminates the intermediate step, the cycle can shorten greatly. "Save printing, transportation, warehousing and other cost links, the marginal cost of nearly 0, easier to obtain the scale advantage." "Dai said.

"From the absolute value of earning, frankly speaking, the income from digital reading is not very high." Fang said, but the first year of last year's attempt did dispel many concerns. For example, publishers are worried about whether it will impact on the sale of physical books.

"With the addition of digital reading, we have no direct evidence that traditional reading has been reduced and that the reading community has increased." Fang said that the traditional publication is now about 60 billion of the output, has entered a platform period, and digital publishing is beginning to grow rapidly.

According to our observation, the same book side in the mobile phone and other channels to read, the paper books is actually promoting the role. "Zhejiang Publishing Group Digital Media Co., Ltd. deputy general manager Wang Hui told reporters, because there are many people who have seen the electronic version of the book after the good, and then to buy paper books to read or collect."

Fang that the most advantageous aspect of digital reading for the publishing industry is that it activates the imagination of traditional publishing and increases the volume of reading. In addition to the broadening of readership coverage, traditional publishing units are published in a very limited variety of products each year, and more can be tried in electronic reading in the future.

Publishing houses digging their own graves?

For the domestic rush to the digital transformation of the publishing house, just dismissed the digital reading impact on the sale of paper books, but also because Amazon's approach to greater concern.

According to foreign media reports, Russell Grandinetti, one of the Amazon's top executives, even directly said, "the eventual demise of publishers is a trend that will come sooner or later." He believes that only the author and the reader are really necessary roles in the publishing process, while the other intermediaries are confronted with both opportunities and challenges.

Amazon's approach is really enough to worry publishers, as it prepares to open part of the backstage data, in addition to the direct contract authors, so that all writers can directly see how the work is sold in various regions, whether they let Amazon publish its work or not. In addition, the author can be directly with the fans for one-on-one communication.

However, due to publication qualifications and content restrictions, Amazon has no way to immediately bring its game rules into China. Therefore, for the domestic publishing house, now more is the mentality of the impact.

Fang told reporters, at least a year ago, the traditional publishing house for the majority of digital publishing is not optimistic. Now, as more and more platform vendors and channels start to build a new digital reading system, publishers are beginning to try to put their content on the new platform.

"After last year's Test water, it was a crucial period for the end of this year and early next year. Fang said, but Amazon's approach has made publishers have a sense of crisis, whether this will affect the progress of digitization remains to be seen. King More Tatsu told reporters that there will be impact, but the impact of the strength of the media is not as big as imagined.

As for the transformation of the publishing house, Fang that even in the digital publishing age, publishers will not die, but for the selection of books, content editing and the operation of copyright will appear more important. Dai said that the selection of books, classification, editing, planning, promotion, and so on, these capabilities are platform vendors do not have.

Jin Tatsu that the future in the digital reading will form the publishing industry outside the content operators, channel operators, technology operators as the main body of the system, because the publishing house is really difficult to dominate. "The core of the publishing house is still in the content, including selection and processing, promotion and so on." In addition, in the area of digital education, the company also believes that publishers or publishing industry companies still have opportunities.

Dai said that the industrial chain of reasonable division of labor is certainly the general trend, such as mobile phone reading now encountered the problem is the number of copyright comb, audit and so on. In his view, there are huge opportunities for future digital publishers, digital publishing, digital content makers, and so on.