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Today is World Book Day, let's take a look at the latest trends in the book sales market. Although digital reading and emerging technologies have had a certain impact on the book sales market, the book retail market in 2023 will still show a trend of resuming growth, with the scale of yards reaching 91.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.72%. From the perspective of book consumers, the "post-80s" group has the highest proportion of book sales, more than 50%, among which teaching and auxiliary books are particularly popular.
Buying books with short videos has become a trend. In terms of book sales channels, the short video channel has become the second largest book sales channel after e-commerce platforms in 2023, with a year-on-year increase of 70.1%, becoming the main driving force for the growth of the overall retail market. Qu Hongbin, president of Guomai Culture, revealed that with the popularity of mobile Internet and the increase in the amount of time people spend using mobile phones, the conversion rate of physical bookstores has further declined.
In recent years, short video channels represented by Dongfang Selection have played an increasingly important role in the mainland book sales market. As the head live broadcast room of the short video platform, Dongfang Selection has promoted book promotions many times and has become an important representative of short video book purchases.
Liu Xiaochun, director of the Internet Rule of Law Research Center at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that live e-commerce lowers the reading threshold, stimulates the interest of potential readers, and allows many short video users to directly convert into new reading groups. This shows that the short video channel plays an important role in driving the growth of the book sales market.
The short video industry in mainland China is developing rapidly, with a huge user base and diversified content. Through innovative content forms and accurate recommendation algorithms, major short video platforms have attracted a large number of users and become an important platform for people's daily entertainment, learning and consumption. Short videos have become an important tool to promote cultural communication, product sales, and social interaction, and have played an important role in shaping the trend of the times and meeting user needs.
In 2022, short video users will account for nearly one-third of the usage time
According to data from QuestMobile, as of December 2021, the average monthly usage time in the short video industry has increased to 53.2 hours, surpassing instant messaging and becoming the industry with the longest user usage time. The total time spent in the short video industry accounts for 25.7% of the total time spent on the entire network. In the first half of 2022, the total time spent by short video users accounted for nearly one-third of the total time spent by Chinese mobile Internet users, reaching 28.0%. Applications in various industries are also strengthening the construction of short video content sections, and the live broadcast mode has become the main way for various industries to provide services based on content scenarios.
Short videos are further penetrating among middle-aged and elderly users and lower-tier cities
In addition, short video platforms are also accelerating the tapping of middle-aged and elderly users and lower-tier cities, which continue to grow in size. The proportion of users over the age of 40 increased from 28.3% in 2019 to 32.8% in 2020, and the proportion of users in third-tier cities also increased from 56.7% in 2019 to 57.8% in 2020.
Note: The inner ring is for 2019 and the outer circle is for 2020.
The development trend of the short video industry
Short videos are being cross-integrated with multiple fields and become part of the Internet lifestyle. In 2021, the short video industry began to get involved in the fields of local life, paid short dramas, and graphic planting. In the future, short videos, social networking and life will be further integrated. At the same time, short video platforms are actively exploring commercial monetization, especially in combination with e-commerce. With the rise of live broadcast e-commerce, the addition of short video platforms to live broadcast e-commerce has become a hot spot in the market. The development prospects of the short video industry continue to be optimistic, and it has become an important product that occupies the user's time. Pinduoduo, Tencent and other companies continue to increase investment in the field of short video, and the short video market may be reshuffled in the future.
Industry observation points out that one of the significant changes brought by the live broadcast room to the book retail market is the increasingly prominent head effect - the top 1% of book varieties can contribute nearly 60% of market sales, and the top 5% of book varieties can contribute more than 80% of the sales of the retail market.
Ding Lijie, director of the marketing department of Shanghai Translation Publishing, pointed out that in the era of traffic, readers' book-buying behavior and mentality have changed. In the past, they only bought books when there was a big sale, but now they are more focused on placing orders as soon as they "plant" a success. Whether online or offline, the key to the success of "planting grass" lies in understanding the needs of readers and conforming to their aesthetics. Therefore, in addition to the head bloggers, some "waist" reading bloggers distributed on platforms such as Douyin, Video Account, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili have gradually become an important force in reading promotion, and they can sell thousands or even tens of thousands of books.
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For more research and analysis of this industry, please refer to the "Analysis Report on Market Prospect Forecast and Investment Strategic Planning of China's Short Video Industry" by Qianzhan Industry Research Institute
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