Book price legislation, and don't forget to take care of the "poor talent who loves to read"

【Author Guo Yuanpeng】

Recently, the State Press and Publication Administration released the "Development Plan for the 14th Five-Year Plan period of the publishing industry", which mentioned the plan to promote the formulation of relevant laws and regulations, including the "book price legislation" that has been proposed by the industry for many years. Experts pointed out that after the "book price legislation" landed, the positioning of book prices will also have a law to follow. Creators, publishers, and physical bookstores have more protective barriers, which can carefully polish their works, which will help the book publishing market and cultural industry to develop more standardized.

The "Development Plan for the 14th Five-Year Plan period of the publishing industry" wrote in the section "Regulating the Order of Online and Offline Publishing" as follows: Strengthen the supervision and management of publication prices, promote book price legislation, effectively stop the vicious "price war" in online and offline publication sales, create a healthy and orderly market environment, and better optimize the publishing ecology.

There is no doubt that the publication and sales of paper books are in trouble. Publishers who are not profitable will choose to focus on those books that are "not of high quality and good sales", so why talk about high-quality publishing? It will only make excellent books less beautiful opportunities, which is not conducive to the prosperity of culture. Creators are not profitable, that is, many creators will be forced to "create for profit", writing will become "utilitarian writing", if there are more "everything to see money" authors, then the prosperity of excellent culture will become empty talk. In the final analysis, only by creating excellent works and publishing excellent books can we truly realize the prosperity of culture and make excellent culture the spiritual food of spring wind and rain.

From this point of view, the legislation of book prices is in line with practical needs and is the basis for ensuring the prosperity of excellent cultures. Don't let books fight a price war, let publishing houses publish more excellent books because they are profitable, let creators create more excellent content because they are profitable, and the ultimate benefit is the reader, which is the way to improve social culture. In fact, as early as 2010, the China Publishers Association, the China Book Publishing Industry Association and the China Xinhua Bookstore Association jointly issued the domestic book publishing industry norm "Book Fair Trade Rules", calling for the necessary regulation of discount chaos in book retail, which clearly stated that "new books entering the retail market within one year shall not be less than 8.5% off sales". However, soon after the "rule" was introduced, the "book ban order" was prematurely killed because it was "suspected of violating the Anti-Monopoly Law of the People's Republic of China".

The price war for books is obvious. For example, in many places, there have been "one-dollar books", which look thick and are actually shoddy, and this way of "exchanging low prices for the market" and "using low prices to inventory" is obviously harmful. However, we do not want "dollar books" and do not want "expensive books", the bottom line should be more "books that can be read", and we cannot publish a lot of "books that cannot be read" because of the book price law. What needs to be known is that in general, the more people like to read, the more many people do not have high incomes. Among them, there are also many "poor talents who like to read", which must not discourage their enthusiasm for reading.

In legislation on book prices, it is necessary to draw lessons from the "suspected price monopoly" that has appeared in the past, and must not form a "price alliance", and the pricing should consider the interests of publishing houses and creators, as well as the price affordability of readers. Book price legislation, do not "price war" and do not "price monopoly"!