Today, in its fifth year of publication, the collection of short stories, The Heavenly Bureau, has been reprinted 51 times and printed more than 1 million copies, and five years ago, no one had expected to achieve this result.
Time back to 2017, that year, a phenomenon-level TV series "The Name of the People" turned out to be a reality, a time of thousands of people, the TV series accurate reflection of the real society, making it the peak of the realist theme works in the past decade. From the creation of the plot bibliography of the TV series to the successful publication of the short story collection "Heavenly Bureau", behind it is the result of the overnight planning of the provincial Dengyu and the cooperation of various departments of the Writers Publishing House. It took less than a week to go through all the processes and turn this "plot fake book" into a real book. The TV series has not been finished, and the short story collection "Heavenly Bureau" has been listed in bookstores across the country.
Sheng Dengyu said that he worked at the Writers Publishing House and had been establishing an editorial office for 5 years. At first, the editorial office was called "Provincial Dengyu Studio", but later because the focus of the editorial office was "Writers' Classic Library", it was renamed "Classic Library Editorial Department". It's a very small editorial office, with only two people, mainly doing classic books and books on the road to classicization. At present, his editorial department has more than 200 kinds of live-selling books, with a cumulative circulation of more than 300 million yuan.
10 years ago, The Province's Dengyu engaged in the magazine publishing industry, which laid the foundation for his subsequent transformation into book publishing. As a literary youth, what he did every day was to read and write, and over time, he came into contact with many friends in the literary and publishing circles, which provided a good environment for him to become a book publisher in the future. Sheng Dengyu believes that becoming a book publisher is natural, and he has been in the publishing industry for 7 years.
"When I do book publishing, I don't see spring and winter very well. But when I entered the publishing industry, it was certainly not spring, in fact, whether in terms of publishing varieties or total sales, publishing has been in a downward channel for more than a decade, but because of the increase in the average pricing of books, the total scale data seems to have maintained a period of rise. "Everyone feels that now is a difficult time for publishing, and even many people in the publishing industry believe that every year is the hardest year. But speaking of the cold winter, The province Dengyu believes that it is too early, he believes that the downward trend of paper book sales has been established, but paper books have its unique advantages, and there must be long-term market demand, and he is not so pessimistic about the publication of paper books.
1. How did you make the book "Heavenly Bureau" by the writer Jiaojian in such a short period of time?
Sheng Dengyu: When I saw the line of "Shengtian Half Son" in the TV series, with my many years of editing work experience and professional sensitivity, I immediately Baidu, but I did not see such a book. "Heavenly Bureau" is just a short story by Shandong writer Jiao Jian in his early years, and perhaps Jiao Jian teacher did not take it too seriously. Until the 33rd episode of the TV series, Qi Tongwei read the wonderful clips of "Heavenly Bureau" for Gao Xiaoqin, and explained his understanding of "Shengtian Half-Son", and the novel on Sina Weibo also began to have a hot discussion, so I kept an extra heart, and then further understood the situation of this novel.
A native of Yantai, Shandong Province, Mr. Jiao Jian was the vice chairman of the Yantai Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature, and was a very influential writer in the 1980s, and he once won the highest award for short and medium stories in China. I asked Mr. Wadang to find an orthopedic teacher who had just returned from Canada, and we quickly reached a cooperation.
2. You planned to launch the book "Heavenly Bureau", taking this book as an example, how did you achieve a circulation of more than 1 million?
Sheng Dengyu: "Heavenly Bureau" is a book of special significance in our editorial department, and it is the first bestseller in our editorial department to exceed one million. From the planning and publication of this book to today, there are many accidental factors, and it is also the typical trajectory of a best-selling book. From its initial distribution to the sale of 200,000 copies, it can be seen that there are obvious traces of planning and publicity, and then continue to sell hot, it has little to do with planning. This is also the mystery of publishing: relying on excellent planning and marketing, it is possible to launch a 100,000,000-200,000 best-selling book, and a million-selling book must rely on its own value and vitality, and no one can create it out of thin air. When it comes to Heavenly Bureau, I attribute it to the power of classic content.
3. Similarly, in your editing room, planning the second book "Native China", which is about to exceed 1 million copies, the positioning of this set of books and "Heavenly Bureau" is different, can you share the original intention of the planning?
Provincial Dengyu: "Native China" is a representative book of the "Writer's Classic Library", which currently sells 950,000 copies and will exceed one million in the near future. This is the representative work of Fei Xiaotong, the founder of mainland sociology, and it is a must-read classic for learning sociology, it was originally a market-selling and popular book, but we did some more work in the selection, editing, and annotation of the base book, and designed a cover that is more in line with the aesthetics of current readers. These insignificant jobs are arguably not worth mentioning in the face of this masterpiece, and its big sell is the power of the classics.
4. Books sell well, inseparable from copywriting publicity, on the "Heavenly Bureau" book copywriting, do you think there is no place to be remarkable?
Provincial Dengyu: The copywriting of "Heavenly Bureau", one sentence is the "mysterious book" Written by me, and the other sentence is "a "Heavenly Bureau" contributed by Teacher Zhou Meisen, teaching people to understand the life of heaven and earth", these two sentences of copywriting have added mystery and imagination space to the book. Since the epidemic, more and more people are thinking about the relationship between people and the world, I think this copy has also played a role, Douyin, Kuaishou and other platforms have repeatedly pushed, and also often use these copywriters to make articles.
5. What are the channels for selling a book today? Has the rise of new media given a particularly significant boost to book distribution? How did you use the media to build momentum for your books?
Provincial Dengyu: Now the proportion of e-commerce channel sales is getting larger and larger, and the ground channel is shrinking more and more. Didn't there be a paragraph in the previous paragraph that said that since the epidemic, the details of thousands of people's circulation have been announced, and bookstores have not appeared once in the circulation. Because of its fast and direct, the new media platform has also quickly become our main marketing platform in our publicity process. In this regard, our editorial department is still exploring and learning to apply.
6. I have paid attention to the fact that the writer's publishing house also lets stars sell books with goods, how are the sales of this kind of stars with goods?
Province Dengyu: We have tried all kinds of head traffic of the red people with goods, most of the effect is not bad. Some varieties can reach 4000 to 5000 copies in a single shipment, which is amazing compared with our traditional distribution channels. However, at present, live streaming with goods has not been able to effectively solve the problem of excessive cost, and more often it can only be used as a marketing auxiliary means.
Provincial Dengyu Editorial Office. The picture is provided by the province Dengyu.
7. In fact, in the current book market, classic book series, especially public books, there are not many publishing houses that do this kind of book, how does your editorial office formulate the topic? Was there any emphasis in creating these books? For example, the binding of books and the cover of books, including the screening of some translation anthologies, can you elaborate on one or two?
Province Dengyu: A few years ago, the field of public edition books experienced a relatively large melee, and now it can be said that it has reached the post-stage of the big wave of sand and sand, and eventually a large number of versions will withdraw, leaving some versions. Our editorial department does public edition books, mainly literature. In the domestic part, we will have relatively high requirements for the base, for example, the four masterpieces we published are derived from the first set of four famous works in New China in 1953, which were annotated by the experts of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and several works of Lao She are proofread according to the Lao She collection of the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature. In the foreign part, some of the translations that have been widely acclaimed, we continue to use, such as Zhu Shenghao's translation of Shakespeare, Wang Keyi's translation of "Pride and Prejudice", Dong Yansheng's translation of "Don Quixote", Luo Xinzhang's translation of "Red and Black", etc., some works, according to our own understanding of the work, about some new translators to translate, such as "The Moon and Sixpence", "The Great Gatsby", "The Little Prince", etc., we all use very young translators, the translated version can be said to be superior, but also closer to the current readers. We have also spent a lot of effort on the cover design of books to gather a group of top domestic book designers, and we are confident that most of these books are completely available.
8. Forced to work in the editorial office, the cumulative distribution of 200 books, its yard of 300 million yuan, this is not a small amount. In addition to the books you mentioned, what new books have recently been launched in your editing room that deserve readers' attention?
Provincial Dengyu: Zhou Meisen's new book "The People's Property" has just been listed, which is the original work of the TV series "Breakout" and the companion article of "The Name of the People". Teacher Zhou Mason also has a copy of "The Great Game", which is about Made in China, and will be launched at the same time as the TV series in the near future. "Heavenly Bureau" author Jiao Jian's new novel "Hidden Dangers" will also be available. In the "Works of Chi Zijian" series, we have published ten kinds of "All the Nights in the World" and "Fairy Tales of the Arctic Village", as well as five kinds of "Passing River" and "A Pot of Lard". In addition, the new story of the "Hunger Games" series, "The Hunger Games Prequel: Songbirds and Snakes", has also been released, and these books are worth paying attention to.
9. As the saying goes, if a planning editor publishes a best-selling book, he will even have enough to eat and drink once and for all. Nowadays, your "Tianju" and "Native China" can be said to be best-selling books, and you are also well fed, but you are still very hardworking, do you have an ideal pursuit for the publishing industry? How long do you plan to retire?
Province Dengyu: Publishing is a very tedious and boring job, and it requires strong comprehensive ability, and those who can stick to it in the publishing industry are definitely not running to make money and get rich, most of them are more or less out of love for this matter. A best-selling book can bring good revenue to editors, but it is still very small compared to other industries. I haven't considered changing industries yet, and publishing should be done until it doesn't move.
10. From a publishing industry white to a senior book producer, what detours have you taken, do you have some experience to share, in other words, do you have some experience in avoiding pits?
Sheng Dengyu: The biggest pit avoidance point of making a book is that you must firmly do what you think is valuable content. Don't blindly follow the trend, don't be self-righteous and take it for granted. The cost of trial and error in publishing is not low.
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