Li Haitao: Audiobooks are a powerful exploration of the form of knowledge service

The State Press and Publication Administration's "2021 National Audiobook Quality Publishing Project" is currently underway. Xinhuanet client exclusively presented the "2021 National Audiobook Quality Publishing Project Interview", talking with representatives of many publishing houses and industry insiders who participated in the competition, and talking about the future of the audio publishing industry. The interview guest in this issue is Li Haitao, director of the information technology department of People's Posts and Telecommunications Publishing House Co., Ltd.

Xinhua Net: Is it the first time that your copyright institution has participated in the "National Audiobook Quality Publishing Project" (hereinafter referred to as the "Project") of the State Press and Publication Administration? What is the original intention and idea of participating in the "Engineering" works collection?

Li Haitao: This is the second time that we have participated in the "National Audiobook Quality Publishing Project" of the State Press and Publication Administration. In recent years, the Post and Telecommunications Agency has a lot of high-quality books in terms of traditional publishing products, so we feel obliged to actively promote the audiobooks developed by these high-quality publications to the market, and the emerging audio market is exactly where we need to focus. This is the original intention of our active declaration of the "2021 National Audiobook Quality Publishing Project" this time, hoping that through such activities, excellent content can get more attention and provide users with diversified services.

Xinhua Net: What type of works are selected in terms of content and genre? What was the reason for choosing these (several) works? What are the unique designs or highlights of the work?

Li Haitao: There are three categories of works participating in the post and telecommunications society this time, namely theme books, education science and classic children's books.

The theme reading is "Good Work: Chronicle of China's Network Poverty Alleviation", which responds to the requirements of network poverty alleviation propaganda, combines the characteristics of the times, records the fruitful results of China's network poverty alleviation through vivid exposition and rich cases, traces the promotion process of the telecommunications universal service project, and presents the innovative measures of network poverty alleviation and the new style of poverty alleviation frontline, which has practical commemorative significance.

The projects declared for popular science education include the "Biography of Scientists" series, which adopts the form of chapter back novels, integrates elements such as book commentary, cross-talk and comedy into it, and reproduces the style of top scientists in various periods of human history from a new perspective, especially suitable for serving users in the form of audiobooks.

"A Brief History of Communication: From Genetic Coding to Quantum Information" expounds the mechanism and development history of natural communication from a biological point of view, puts forward new ideas that affect the future development of communication, and inspires the exploration of new directions for the development of future communication.

Classic children's book application works include "From Recitation recitation of classical language graded audiobooks (first and second grades)", which is aimed at primary school students, selects classic articles with rich genres, invites senior domestic hosts and dubbing artists to record audio, and creates standard and professional recitation audio.

Listen! "National Treasures Are Talking" is a radio drama about cultural relics stories for children. It aims to bring an immersive small theater experience in the form of a radio drama, telling the story of cultural relics by restoring the most vivid historical figures. Let young people understand China's thousands of years of cultural heritage and build cultural self-confidence.

Xinhua Net: As a new carrier and form of reading for the whole people, the audience's quality requirements for audiobooks are also getting higher and higher, as institutional creators, how should we create high-quality products in terms of content screening, production, packaging, etc.?

Li Haitao: The first is to revitalize high-quality resources, including authors and finished paper books. Taking paper books as an example, from the many high-quality publications of the Post and Telecommunications Agency, the content characteristics and expression styles are carefully selected, which are suitable for the form of audiobook products, and then the secondary creation and processing of its internal text makes the expression more suitable for listening and reading, and the knowledge structure is more intuitive. In short, in the process of content sound, we have always adhered to the strategy of selecting content, deep transformation, and exquisite processing, and only high-quality reading materials can truly get the love of users.

Xinhua Net: For your copyright agency, what is the proportion of audiobooks to other products? What are the future plans for the layout of audiobooks?

Li Haitao: Since the traditional publications of the Post and Telecommunications Agency are mainly scientific and technological, there are fewer varieties directly suitable for audio and sound, and at present, only audio and video are used for popular head works, and the proportion of audiobooks and other products does not exceed 3%, which can be described as carefully selected.

Audiobooks are a powerful exploration of the form of knowledge service. It expands the scenes in which people acquire knowledge, broadens the ways to popularize knowledge, and develops new forms of interpreting knowledge to better serve readers. For publishing companies, works born out of paper books can revitalize stock resources, and native audiobooks have a more time-sensitive advantage than paper book content. Therefore, in the future, we will continue to lay out book matching courses, lessons + books, paper electro-acoustic synchronous three-dimensional, matrix-style development of works, and ultimately achieve a double harvest of economic and social benefits.

Xinhua Net: What are the expectations for the development of the audiobook industry?

Li Haitao: Mainly looking forward to technological progress, the first is intelligent voice, the sound of the machine is getting closer and closer to humans, so that high-quality vocal anchors can be liberated to record audio content with a performance nature, so that the character dialogue and storyline can be more vivid and personalized. The "imitation" of the machine to read some works in a simple form, so that more types of high-quality content can be developed more efficiently. The second is the various conveniences brought by the 5G era, not only mobile phones and computers in the future, but also more terminals will become the application scenarios of audiobooks, and there will be unlimited possibilities for the creation and market space of high-quality sound.

In addition to continuing to develop and utilize existing resources, the Post and Telegraph Agency will actively expand the team of authors in the future, cooperate with more forms of content creators, develop high-quality topics, and build a larger product matrix.

【Error correction】【Responsible editor: Li Ran】