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The 42nd London Book Fair was held at the Earls Court Exhibition Center in London’s West End from April 15th to 17th, during which over 50 seminars and lectures were organized by the organizing committee of the book fair. In the Chinese-English Digital Publishing Forum held in the afternoon of April 15th, Wang Tao, Vice-president of China International Publishing Group delivered a keynote speech, which is as follows:
It’s a great pleasure for me to be here and talk about the globalization of digital publishing with all the fellow workers from the world. We have mentioned just now many innovative technologies, development patterns, business model and so on concerning digital publishing in the world, which have presented us the international trend in digital publishing. Now I would also like to share with you the current situation and development trend of Chinese digital publishing.
It has been only 7 or 8 years since we put forward the concept of digital publishing in China and there has been great development. In 2006, the production value of China’s digital publishing industry was only RMB 21.3 billion yuan. While by 2010, it has surged to over one hundred billion yuan, reaching RMB 105.1 billion yuan. And in 2011, the number experienced another significant increase to RMB 137.7 billion yuan. The digital publishing has kept a growth rate much higher than that of other industries. And that is just a start. At present, China enjoys a great market for digital reading owing to its 564 million netizens and an internet penetration rate of 42.1%, which means considerable growth potential for digital publishing.
Up to this day, China’s digital publishing has passing infancy to growth stage and started its industrial upgrading and updating. I am sure that everyone here is of the same belief that the China holds great potential for its rapid development in digital. This can be fully illustrated by the fact that recently, Amazon, the world’s largest network and American’s biggest e-commerce corporation has brought Kindle, its E-ink book to China.
In retrospect, I would like to summarize the development of China’s digital publishing industry with a few key words for the discussion of all my fellow workers.
Key word No.1: Micro-payment
The concept of micro-payment is not strange to us. Its successful implementation in the field of game has enabled us to see its great prospects in the field of digital reading and there is also coming the trend of micro-payment plus mobile reading. Micro-payment, relying on the rapid developing domestic market of mobile reading, has been a great means of payment for the new business model of digital publishing. According to the data, by the end of December 2012, mobile readers have reached 414,000,000. The continuous increase of mobile phone and mobile Internet users has brought a bright prospect for development of digital reading by means of micro-payment. By the third quarter of 2012, the revenue of digital reading has exceeded RMB1.2 billion yuan. There are all sorts of reasons. For one thing, there is a growing willingness on the part of digital readers to pay for their reading; for another, readings in the form of fragmentation is more suitable for readers to read by making use of the fragments of their time. With the advent of 4th generation mobile networks, reading content conveyed via a high speed will bring better user experience, which will be support for the in-depth development and promotion of digital content. And by then the convenience of “micro-payment plus mobile reading” will definitely revolutionize the pay reading market in China’s digital publishing industry.
Key Word No. 2: Self-publishing
In 2011, Amazon initiated the mode of self-publishing by directly signing contracts with authors without the participation of publishing houses, which aroused traditional publishers’ concern. Before long, some websites in China like douban.com also started providing a convenient platform for contributions and making sales based on individual pricing of authors. At the moment, the self-publishing mode is still in its infancy but it will have a greater impact on publishing when there comes a feasible business mode through practice and adjustment. To the other way around, the importance attached by Amazon and Douban on authors also reminds us that in the competition of digital publishing, the content and resources of readings are still holding dominancy.
Key word No. 3: Competition between reader screens
The reader competition was often mentioned before. In 2012, the competition in digital reading was still about reader but the focus was on the size of its screen, which can be seen as the competition between reader screens. In 2012, the smart terminal has kept developing and upgrading until the advent of iPad mini, which made people think that era of professional digital reading device was approaching to an end. However, the “mass” reader launched by dangdang.com followed by the exposure of the dedicated reader of E surfing, we are reminded that electronic reader is still alive. At least for now, half of us still hold a strong belief that dedicated readers are more suitable for in-depth reading, which makes an advantage complementary to fragmented reading.
Key word No. 4: Profit model
This aspect is something I really want to discuss with all fellow workers from the world and also hope to learn from your thoughts and profit models. Frankly speaking, although China has been searching for its digital reading profit model for years, it is unprofitable by selling e-books entirely at the moment. China’s digital publishing industry is still sticking in a dilemma. With the inherent advantages of mobile payment, telecom operators allegedly they had found the business model in digital reading, which has been sought-after by the industry over recent years. However, it is left to see how long will this model stick due to a number of drawbacks, such as the powerful position of distributors, the ill-proportioned profit division and low priced e-books, which has caused many heated debates within the industry.
Nowadays, legal paid-for e-book readings in China include the delivery platform for digital publications built by publishing agencies, like www.dajianet.com, reading websites of web portals like yuedu.com and douban.com from community sharing to digital distribution as well as the third party distribution platforms developed from e-commerce websites, such as digital bookstores like www.dangdang.com, www.www.jd.com and so forth. Even though there are more and more channels, the scenario where users are attracted to pay for readings has not come. Even for some extremely popular books like the series books of Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, there has been a good market for in-kind books while not for there digital editions. Therefore, we still need more time to explore a business model before there comes the trend of public payment for digital reading.
Key word No. 5: Socialized reading
With the rapid growth of new communities like micro-blog in 2012, social intercourse has become one of the development trends of mobile Internet. Based on users’ behaviors including reading tendency, interests and hobbies, commentaries, collection and sharing, there is an itemized reading market. And according to the interconnection between friends, attention given and received as well as the increase and decrease of fans, there lies the key to pinpoint publishing selection and provide personal services.
Socialized reading has allowed the combination between composition and reading, between sharing and communication, which shows one of the characteristics of the Internet with content coming first in publishing, free sharing and interaction, and this combination has brought forth a bright prospect for the future development of digital publishing.
Based on the mainstream trends and the powerful momentums of the development in digital publishing, China Publishing Group Corporation put forward its strategic orientation, which is to build an integrated platform for which is open-ended, internationalized as well as expansible the content collection, transmission, trade and service based on its advantageous resource and its development thought with the construction of an integrated platform as the basic orientation and strategic target, with system, mechanism and innovation as the fundamental driving force, with resource pool as the basis, with content delivery and platform trade as breakthrough to gradually realize the aggregation and digitalization of publishing, process management and transmission method. According to the planning thought mentioned above, there are several major jobs we should carry out in digital publishing. Firstly, we should strengthen the construction of digital resources. Through the reorganization and collection of the digital editions of the books over more than 100 years in our group and the deep exploration and processing of the knowledge bases including the base of encyclopedia of terminology, the base of dictionary and corpus and the base of ancient books, we have built a professional and classic digital resource cluster of China Publishing Group Corporation and laid a solid foundation for realizing the scale and intensive management of resources in the future. Secondly, the third edition of the Encyclopedia of China (online edition) have received the national project support and we will construct a platform for the compiling, releasing and operation of the Encyclopedia of China with advanced information and network technology, and also realize multi-level social service to meet people’s needs for knowledge in the information age in diversified manner. Thirdly, the first stage of planning and construction of the reference book platform have been accomplished and the “Hundreds of High-quality Reference Book Database” has also been put into commercial operation. The books on “Foreigners Learn Chinese” launched at the London Book Fair by this database attracted huge attention. We are now actively researching all kinds of classic reference books suitable for overseas markets.
These thoughts are what I would like to share with all of you. I hope to hear more about your opinions and feedback. Thank you!
It’s a great pleasure for me to be here and talk about the globalization of digital publishing with all the fellow workers from the world. We have mentioned just now many innovative technologies, development patterns, business model and so on concerning digital publishing in the world, which have presented us the international trend in digital publishing. Now I would also like to share with you the current situation and development trend of Chinese digital publishing.
It has been only 7 or 8 years since we put forward the concept of digital publishing in China and there has been great development. In 2006, the production value of China’s digital publishing industry was only RMB 21.3 billion yuan. While by 2010, it has surged to over one hundred billion yuan, reaching RMB 105.1 billion yuan. And in 2011, the number experienced another significant increase to RMB 137.7 billion yuan. The digital publishing has kept a growth rate much higher than that of other industries. And that is just a start. At present, China enjoys a great market for digital reading owing to its 564 million netizens and an internet penetration rate of 42.1%, which means considerable growth potential for digital publishing.
Up to this day, China’s digital publishing has passing infancy to growth stage and started its industrial upgrading and updating. I am sure that everyone here is of the same belief that the China holds great potential for its rapid development in digital. This can be fully illustrated by the fact that recently, Amazon, the world’s largest network and American’s biggest e-commerce corporation has brought Kindle, its E-ink book to China.
In retrospect, I would like to summarize the development of China’s digital publishing industry with a few key words for the discussion of all my fellow workers.
Key word No.1: Micro-payment
The concept of micro-payment is not strange to us. Its successful implementation in the field of game has enabled us to see its great prospects in the field of digital reading and there is also coming the trend of micro-payment plus mobile reading. Micro-payment, relying on the rapid developing domestic market of mobile reading, has been a great means of payment for the new business model of digital publishing. According to the data, by the end of December 2012, mobile readers have reached 414,000,000. The continuous increase of mobile phone and mobile Internet users has brought a bright prospect for development of digital reading by means of micro-payment. By the third quarter of 2012, the revenue of digital reading has exceeded RMB1.2 billion yuan. There are all sorts of reasons. For one thing, there is a growing willingness on the part of digital readers to pay for their reading; for another, readings in the form of fragmentation is more suitable for readers to read by making use of the fragments of their time. With the advent of 4th generation mobile networks, reading content conveyed via a high speed will bring better user experience, which will be support for the in-depth development and promotion of digital content. And by then the convenience of “micro-payment plus mobile reading” will definitely revolutionize the pay reading market in China’s digital publishing industry.
Key Word No. 2: Self-publishing
In 2011, Amazon initiated the mode of self-publishing by directly signing contracts with authors without the participation of publishing houses, which aroused traditional publishers’ concern. Before long, some websites in China like douban.com also started providing a convenient platform for contributions and making sales based on individual pricing of authors. At the moment, the self-publishing mode is still in its infancy but it will have a greater impact on publishing when there comes a feasible business mode through practice and adjustment. To the other way around, the importance attached by Amazon and Douban on authors also reminds us that in the competition of digital publishing, the content and resources of readings are still holding dominancy.
Key word No. 3: Competition between reader screens
The reader competition was often mentioned before. In 2012, the competition in digital reading was still about reader but the focus was on the size of its screen, which can be seen as the competition between reader screens. In 2012, the smart terminal has kept developing and upgrading until the advent of iPad mini, which made people think that era of professional digital reading device was approaching to an end. However, the “mass” reader launched by dangdang.com followed by the exposure of the dedicated reader of E surfing, we are reminded that electronic reader is still alive. At least for now, half of us still hold a strong belief that dedicated readers are more suitable for in-depth reading, which makes an advantage complementary to fragmented reading.
Key word No. 4: Profit model
This aspect is something I really want to discuss with all fellow workers from the world and also hope to learn from your thoughts and profit models. Frankly speaking, although China has been searching for its digital reading profit model for years, it is unprofitable by selling e-books entirely at the moment. China’s digital publishing industry is still sticking in a dilemma. With the inherent advantages of mobile payment, telecom operators allegedly they had found the business model in digital reading, which has been sought-after by the industry over recent years. However, it is left to see how long will this model stick due to a number of drawbacks, such as the powerful position of distributors, the ill-proportioned profit division and low priced e-books, which has caused many heated debates within the industry.
Nowadays, legal paid-for e-book readings in China include the delivery platform for digital publications built by publishing agencies, like www.dajianet.com, reading websites of web portals like yuedu.com and douban.com from community sharing to digital distribution as well as the third party distribution platforms developed from e-commerce websites, such as digital bookstores like www.dangdang.com, www.www.jd.com and so forth. Even though there are more and more channels, the scenario where users are attracted to pay for readings has not come. Even for some extremely popular books like the series books of Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, there has been a good market for in-kind books while not for there digital editions. Therefore, we still need more time to explore a business model before there comes the trend of public payment for digital reading.
Key word No. 5: Socialized reading
With the rapid growth of new communities like micro-blog in 2012, social intercourse has become one of the development trends of mobile Internet. Based on users’ behaviors including reading tendency, interests and hobbies, commentaries, collection and sharing, there is an itemized reading market. And according to the interconnection between friends, attention given and received as well as the increase and decrease of fans, there lies the key to pinpoint publishing selection and provide personal services.
Socialized reading has allowed the combination between composition and reading, between sharing and communication, which shows one of the characteristics of the Internet with content coming first in publishing, free sharing and interaction, and this combination has brought forth a bright prospect for the future development of digital publishing.
Based on the mainstream trends and the powerful momentums of the development in digital publishing, China Publishing Group Corporation put forward its strategic orientation, which is to build an integrated platform for which is open-ended, internationalized as well as expansible the content collection, transmission, trade and service based on its advantageous resource and its development thought with the construction of an integrated platform as the basic orientation and strategic target, with system, mechanism and innovation as the fundamental driving force, with resource pool as the basis, with content delivery and platform trade as breakthrough to gradually realize the aggregation and digitalization of publishing, process management and transmission method. According to the planning thought mentioned above, there are several major jobs we should carry out in digital publishing. Firstly, we should strengthen the construction of digital resources. Through the reorganization and collection of the digital editions of the books over more than 100 years in our group and the deep exploration and processing of the knowledge bases including the base of encyclopedia of terminology, the base of dictionary and corpus and the base of ancient books, we have built a professional and classic digital resource cluster of China Publishing Group Corporation and laid a solid foundation for realizing the scale and intensive management of resources in the future. Secondly, the third edition of the Encyclopedia of China (online edition) have received the national project support and we will construct a platform for the compiling, releasing and operation of the Encyclopedia of China with advanced information and network technology, and also realize multi-level social service to meet people’s needs for knowledge in the information age in diversified manner. Thirdly, the first stage of planning and construction of the reference book platform have been accomplished and the “Hundreds of High-quality Reference Book Database” has also been put into commercial operation. The books on “Foreigners Learn Chinese” launched at the London Book Fair by this database attracted huge attention. We are now actively researching all kinds of classic reference books suitable for overseas markets.
These thoughts are what I would like to share with all of you. I hope to hear more about your opinions and feedback. Thank you!