Exclusive interview with New Hainan | Province Dengyu: "2020 book code Yang, I did not exceed 100 million"

In 2020, affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the offline physical industry has been greatly impacted, and some of the mayang rely on the offline publishing industry and have been affected a lot. According to the data released by Beijing Open Volume, "2020 is the first time in more than 20 years that the annual retail code size of the book retail has a negative growth in the open volume monitoring record, and the annual retail code ocean has dropped by 5.08% year-on-year; while the size of the physical store retail code ocean has declined by 33.8% throughout the year." During the two sessions of the National People's Congress in May 2020, a number of CPPCC members asked questions about the book publishing industry, and expressed concern about the market order and ecological imbalance brought about by the "new book discount", and the price war for online sales of books began, there was no minimum but lower, which became a chronic disease for the healthy development of the industry. New Hainan Culture Channel exclusive interview with the famous publishing planner of the Writers Publishing House, Dengyu, how did he break through in the difficult year of the publishing industry in 2020?

Keywords: industry "inner volume", celebrity with goods, e-commerce disorderly promotion

New Hainan Culture: According to your recollection, what was the situation during the boom in book publishing before 2020?

Sheng Dengyu: In fact, our real book publishing boom period in the eighties and nineties, when books are still a seller's market, there are few good books, the market base is large, basically the publishing house produces a good book, there will be a difficult situation of a book, and even there will be a bookstore carrying cash to the printing plant to queue up to grab books, not to mention the current super long account period, that is, you take cash, you may not be able to buy books.

That was the real golden age of book publishing in China, and many people in the industry often recall it to this day. Of course, I didn't experience that era, but the editors in the company often mentioned that when we published the Qiong Yao series of works in the 1990s, many bookstores came to Beijing, carrying cash on their backs, and lined up to pull books. At that time, it was still lead printing, and it didn't take long for the printed version to be smoothed out, and it could not be used again, and the printed version did not know how many batches were made.

After the nineties, the overall publishing is still more than big than small, almost every year there will be super bestsellers, take our publishing house, there are "Harvard Girl Liu Yiting", "Triple Door", "Ordinary Stranger", "Sophie's World", "Alive", "Good Mother Is Better Than Good Teacher", etc., are millions or even tens of millions of sales of super bestsellers.

New Hainan Culture: Is the corner of the book publishing industry triggered by the outbreak of the epidemic? Or is it that the publishing industry has long had old diseases, and the epidemic is only one of the fuse. The price war often fought by e-commerce now, will it lead the publishing industry to "inner volume"?

Sheng Dengyu: Of course, the epidemic is an important fuse, and the impact of the epidemic on the book market is not only the impact on the channel, but also has a great impact on the reading preferences and reading mentality of the entire reader group. To say that the industry inherent crisis, that is also really existing, after the long-term extensive development of the publishing industry, in fact, there are many problems, and in addition to a few categories such as children, teaching aids, etc., in fact, the development of various categories is not optimistic, the long tail effect is very obvious, and even there are less than ten books sold on the market. After the discount war of e-commerce has intensified, there are a large number of bad currencies expelling good coins.

Before there was a saying that "a responsible editor, planning to launch a good book, you can eat for a lifetime", what you see at the moment, The data of Beijing's open volume is not satisfied, within the publishing industry, whether there is malicious competition, or the operating model has led to a price war.

I also have cases around me that are responsible for compiling and planning a book that earns millions or even tens of millions of performance, but it is ultimately a minority. At present, there are more than five hundred publishing houses in China, tens of thousands of private companies, and there are only a few authors and topics that can really bring social and economic benefits, more monks and less porridge, the situation of malicious competition, and the involvement of the industry is still inevitable.

New Hainan Culture: How do you evaluate the current publishing industry?

Sheng Dengyu: I feel that the current publishing industry is a stage of searching for order in chaos, which can be said to be a stage of big waves and sand. There will probably be people who will rise rapidly, and there will be people who will die quickly.

New Hainan Culture: E-commerce to reduce prices, is it a "bloodbath" publishing industry, lower prices and bundled with channel sales, will publishers have a situation of discounting and stopping losses for the sake of sales? So does this also lead to the fact that the price of books is getting more and more expensive?

Province Dengyu: E-commerce in the current market share of far more than 50%, and this proportion is further increasing, e-commerce disorder promotion, is bound to force publishers in order to ensure profits and increase pricing, high pricing further promote readers in e-commerce to buy books at low discounts, e-commerce share further increased, then further squeeze the discount space, publishers further increase pricing. At present, this is indeed a difficult problem to solve.

New Hainan Culture: Looking back at the difficulties of the book publishing industry in 2020, what are the specific difficulties? And what breakouts have you made?

Provincial Dengyu: Affected by the epidemic in 2020, the most direct problem is that the ground bookstore cannot operate normally, and there is a cliff-like decline. On the one hand, we have to deal with the change of channels, how to lose as much as possible in the current situation; on the other hand, after the epidemic, the readers' reading habits and reading tastes have undergone major changes, the most intuitive thing is that many books that were rarely asked before suddenly sold well, while the books that were previously sold steadily suddenly became unsought-after, and many of our judgments on the market will be completely invalid, and this challenge is more severe.

After the epidemic, we have also tried some new means, such as the new media publicity methods of e-commerce platforms. I have also tried the most fashionable, live streaming with goods, as well as working with celebrities to live stream goods, such as our new book "How Far Are the Stars From Us" by Deng Lun, Jia Nailiang, Guo Jingfei, etc., the effect is still good. But in the long run, how far can live streaming with goods go, I am a big question mark.

New Hainan Culture: In 2020, what is the actual code ocean published by the books you are responsible for editing? What was the average yard ocean in previous years? Offline operations have been affected by the epidemic, how are online sales?

Province Dengyu: My editorial department is a relatively small department of the Writers Publishing House, there are only two people, we shipped more than 70 million yuan in 2019, and only more than 50 million yuan in 2020, down nearly 40%. Ground store sales are almost negligible, and there is no significant increase in online sales.

New Hainan Culture: As a well-known publisher, what books have you published that you are proud of?

Province Dengyu: I set up a brand "Writer's Classic Library" in the publishing house, began to publish books in 2015, and now there have been more than 100 varieties, basically bringing together ancient and modern Chinese and foreign masterpieces, new editing, with the best designers, making a preferred version, a set of things based on their own literary reading taste, or very proud, of which "Native China", "Ai Qing Poetry Selection", etc., have sold more than 500,000 copies.

Ding Limei's series of works is a set of books that I am talking about, publishing the works of the famous writer Ding Limei in a new look, selling more than 1 million copies every year, and the total number has exceeded 5 million copies so far.

When Mr. Lin Qingxuan was alive, we had a good cooperation, and the Writers Publishing House was also the publishing unit with the most authorization for Lin Qingxuan's exclusive works, with more than 20 kinds. "Lin Qingxuan Bodhi Series Of Essays" and "Lin Qingxuan Prose Selection" have become best-selling and popular books.

When "The Name of the People" was broadcast, we contacted the writer Jiao Jian and published the mysterious book of the TV series "Heavenly Bureau" in a very short period of time, which has sold more than 500,000 copies so far, which can be regarded as a good story. We will continue the good story, and the sister article "The People's Property" of Teacher Zhou Meisen's "In the Name of the People" will also be published by us in the near future.

In 2020, I cooperated with the predecessors of the publishing house to publish Jia Pingwa's new novel "Temporary Sitting", which gave Jia Pingwo a new look and was a good learning process.

New Hainan Culture: At present, the publishing industry is no longer a simple industry model of planning and responsible editing, but a combination of planning and responsible editing, similar to the "producer" system in the film. Briefly explain for the reader the errands of the editors in charge of the current model.

Provincial Dengyu: Editors are divided into planning editors and desk editors in some places, and in other places, such as ours, there is no separation of families, and the analogy of "producers" in the movie is still appropriate, for us, it is a book that collects information from the early stage, planning, drafting, editing, cover design, copywriting, distribution activities, marketing, all links, are promoted by the responsible editor as the center, it can be said that the work is very cumbersome.