Borrowing the tide to play the concept of launching a "book blind box", what books to buy depends on luck; the anchor sells "1 yuan book", and the live broadcast breaks through the reserve price with goods...
Recently, the book publishing industry has launched an endless stream of sales "new ways", which has caused a lot of controversy. Some people praise it as an industry breakthrough innovation, and some people criticize it as quenching thirst.
Consumers frequently "step on the thunder", and publishing houses "lose money and make money"
The traditional book publishing industry has recently become more and more trendy.
The "blind box economy" continues to be hot, and some institutions have launched "book blind boxes" while they are hot, containing different numbers of books, specifically what books are known after purchasing and unpacking.
The reporter searched on multiple e-commerce platforms and found that there are many types of "book blind boxes", most of which are priced far below the total price of the books included, and even have the extremely low prices of 6 yuan 10 books and 4 yuan 5 books.
"Book blind box" products on e-commerce platforms
However, many consumers reflect that most of the books in the "book blind box" purchased are of low quality, and there is a suspicion that the inventory of unsalable books is cleared. Moreover, most of the "blind boxes" do not accept returns and exchanges.
Ms. Lin of Beijing has purchased a "blind box for books" twice, and the experience is not good. She told reporters that once purchased in the live broadcast room, the books in the blind box had nothing to do with the type introduced by the anchor, "all of which are very biased books." "Another time I bought it from an e-commerce platform," with creases on the pages and typos. ”
"The 'book blind box' is a new marketing strategy. Some merchants launch blind boxes focus on the selection of products and are welcomed by readers; some merchants only use blind boxes as a gimmick to satisfy the reader's curiosity, and even the purpose is to clear inventory, which is undesirable and difficult to attract readers to continue to consume. Xiang Liping, general manager of Shandong Little Dolphin Culture Media Co., Ltd., said.
Even more popular than the blind box is the live streaming of goods, and more and more publishing institutions are pouring into this new track.
In September last year, "Big V" Liu Yuanyuan achieved sales of nearly 80 million yuan with a 16-hour long book broadcast, which caused shock in the industry. In the live broadcast, "500,000 books broke the price to less than 10 yuan", and "100,000 books for 1 yuan", and the price was low "cheaper than pirated copies and pulp". This pushway to the industry's price floor is controversial.
Industry insiders revealed that live sales have indeed enabled some books to achieve large sales, but the pit fees, logistics fees, discounts, etc. of live broadcasting have left a very limited profit margin for publishing houses.
"Live selling books, on the surface, readers get benefits, publishing institutions clear inventory, but the cost of investment is huge, and even 'lose money and make money'." Zhao Qiang, a veteran publisher, said that what seems to be hot and abnormal is actually a kind of "false prosperity".
It is difficult to continue the "cheap sale" of books, and it is difficult to solve anxiety by "drinking and quenching thirst"
Behind the "fancy sales" highlights the general anxiety of the book market. However, if you only take "playing tricks" and "breaking prices" as selling points, rather than relying on high-quality content and new ideas to attract readers, it is tantamount to drinking and quenching thirst.
In recent years, the traditional book physical retail channel has been affected by the double impact of e-commerce and the epidemic, and the situation is difficult. According to the "2021 Book Retail Market Report" recently released by Beijing Open Volume Information Technology Co., Ltd., the size of China's book retail market in 2021 was 98.68 billion yuan, up 1.65% year-on-year, but it did not return to the pre-epidemic level; of which online channel sales accounted for nearly 80%.
On September 14, 2021, at the Beijing International Book Fair, a publishing house staff introduced books through a live webcast. Photo by Ju Huanzong, Xinhua News Agency
Luo Dongqi, dean of the School of Business Planning of Chongqing Technology and Business University, believes that the rise of online sales channels such as live streaming with goods and short videos has indeed led to the sales of some books, and authors, editors, and sales personnel can directly dialogue and interact with consumers, which is conducive to broadening channels and better serving readers. However, under the limited profit margins of practitioners, there is a general sense of urgency of "small profits but high sales".
Xiang Liping said that the discount is so low that there is no bottom line, which will cause polarization. The resources of the head anchor are concentrated, the bargaining power is strong, the profits of the publishing house will become thinner and thinner, and the sustainable investment will lack guarantees, affecting the long-term development.
"Grain is cheap and hurts farmers, and books will also hurt the bones and bones of the publishing industry, losing the ability and motivation to produce fine products." Zhao Qiang said.
"Low-priced books have become eye-catching gimmicks, which will affect consumers' perception of the price of books, and over-bind low prices to purchases, 'only recognize the price and not recognize the book'." Ma Ruijie, associate professor of the School of Journalism and Communication of Nankai University, believes that this market environment will force publishing houses to further reduce costs and compete with peers in price, which can easily lead to the phenomenon that high-quality books are difficult to appear and inferior books flood the market.
Ni Wan, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of Shandong University, said that the blind box marketing strategy, the sales orientation of e-commerce "explosive model-driven" and the drainage mode of "algorithm recommendation" are not fully consistent with the "richness" requirements of books as content products. Book selection and recommendation is also a key part of selling books, and quality control cannot be ignored because of sales anxiety, which affects the reader's consumption feelings.
There is an urgent need to improve the book pricing system, and publishing houses need to "content is king" to cope with challenges.
People in the industry believe that books are a special cultural product, which has an important role in enlightening wisdom and inheriting civilization. The blind dumping of books at low prices has a negative impact on the long-term healthy development of the publishing industry and the improvement of the quality of the entire nation.
Consumers complain about "book blind boxes"
The "price war" online and offline has always been a "pain point" in the book publishing industry. According to the survey, the price of books in online bookstores is about 20% lower than the average price of physical bookstores. The addition of live broadcasts and short videos has further exacerbated the price dispute.
"The 'price war' of books is ostensibly beneficial to readers, but in fact it disrupts the order of the book market and destroys the book publishing industry chain." Wei Yushan, president of the China Press and Publication Research Institute, said.
Ma Ruijie said: "We can learn from foreign price limit policies, such as new books can not be sold at a discount within a few months of publication, to protect high-quality book content." At present, the pricing of some books in China is inflated, just to cope with the discount sales after that. ”
Recently, the State Press and Publication Administration issued the "Development Plan for the 14th Five-Year Plan period of the publishing industry", which clearly put forward "standardizing the order of online and offline publishing", "strengthening the supervision and management of publication prices, promoting book price legislation, effectively stopping the vicious 'price war' of online and offline publication sales, and creating a healthy and orderly market environment".
"China's publishing should transform from quantitative scale growth to quality improvement, implement the strategy of high-quality products, and produce more good books, and must legislate to improve the book pricing system to prevent winning or losing by discount alone." Bai Bing, editor-in-chief of Relay Publishing House, said.
In addition to regulating the market, the industry generally believes that to cope with challenges, it is necessary to "content is king".
"At present, the deep-seated reason for the anxiety of China's book market is still in the output of high-quality content." Ma Ruijie said, "Book sales can't always use their brains in skills and channels. The publishing industry should understand itself as a 'knowledge service provider', the core is knowledge and content, can play a professional specialty, starting from the source of the industry, explore IP operations, research and development of peripheral products, etc. ”
Xiang Liping believes that as a large population and a large developing country, China still has great potential for reading population and reading volume, and the development prospects of the publishing industry are still broad. She suggested that the government should play a good role in guiding, supervising and serving, promote reading for all, and let original and high-quality content have a larger market and more readers.
"The essence of publishing is to disseminate knowledge, transmit information, and inherit culture, and the carrier form of publications has changed many times in history, but the essence has never changed. China's publishing industry is still far from the world's advanced level, and we need to use the concept of high-quality development and consciously use new technologies to catch up. Wu Shulin, chairman of the Publishers Association of China, said. (Reporters Shi Jingnan, Bai Jiali, Wang Yang)