On November 14, 2020, during the 8th Shanghai International Children's Book Fair, at the forum "The Future of Children's Book Publishing: New Traffic, New Ways, New Trends" co-hosted by Publisher Magazine and the Organizing Committee, Publisher Magazine & Zhongnan Media Industry Research Institute released the "2019-2020 China Children's Publishing Industry Development Report"
Report Highlights
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The world children's book market is growing
In 2019, the proportion of children's books in the overall book market in various countries also generally increased by different margins;
During the epidemic in 2020, children's book sales in the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries have grown against the trend.
The domestic children's book market during the epidemic
In the first three quarters of 2020, the scale of the domestic children's book market increased by 24.7% year-on-year. The number of new book varieties declined, and the new digital ocean fell by about half compared with last year.
List of new forces in children's book publishing institutions from January to September 2020
The ultra-low-cost children's books produced by private book companies have become the most important driving force behind the growth of the publishing houses in the list.
New trends in the development of the children's book market
Non-fiction children's books represented by children's science continue to heat up;
Sinking of social marketing channels;
Live streaming with goods normalization.
Book live streaming with goods impact list
Children's books are undoubtedly one of the hottest book categories on the platform after the psychological self-help books that hit Douyin in 2019.
*The data for this report comes from: Zhongjin Yiyun Big Data Platform, JD Books, Douyin, Germany (German Publishers & Booksellers Association), France (SNE), the United States (NPD BookScan), Nielsen BookScan, etc.
World children's book market
In 2019, the overall book market in countries including the United States, Germany, France and other countries has grown, and as the most vital sector of the publishing industry in the world, the proportion of children's books in the overall book market in various countries has generally increased by different margins.
According to Nilsen BookScan, the proportion of children's books in Australia and New Zealand in the overall book market increased by more than 20%, and the proportion of children's book sales in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, South Africa, India and other countries also increased by at least 5%.
According to the NPD Group report, due to the coronavirus outbreak, millions of parents and their children in the United States stayed at home, parents began to turn to online resources and traditional textbooks, sales of children's and teen books in the United States increased by 6.3% compared to the same period in 2019, and e-book revenue in the children and teen category increased by 62.4% year-on-year to $61.6 million.
Children's book sales in Europe are equally optimistic: the BBC report shows that UK novel sales have increased by a third, and sales of children's education books have increased by 234%; in the first half of the year's results, the German book industry has released a 3.6% increase in sales of children's and adolescent books, surpassing the previous year's sales.
In Japan, sales of children's books and learning reference books have soared as elementary, middle, and high schools across the country have closed, starting on Feb. 28, the day the government requires schools to close. Sales of children's books, picture books and manga books in Japan increased significantly from January to March compared with the same period last year.
Overview of China's children's book market
In 2019, from the sales side, the scale of children's book codes continued to rise, accounting for 23.28% of the overall number of yards in the mass market. In 2019, the number of children's books sold in China reached more than 234,000 kinds, of which the number of new children's books sold was more than 18,900 kinds, a year-on-year decline, but the new book code increased by 28.1% year-on-year.
From the perspective of subdivision categories, the four categories of children's literature, low-grade books, animation/picture books and children's science are still the four sub-categories with the largest proportion of children's books (commonly known as the "four king kongs" of children's books). Among them, the proportion of low-grade books and children's science popularization codes has increased significantly compared with 2018.
From the perspective of book pricing, the average pricing of children's books in 2019 was 33, up 39.5% from 2018. If you look at the new book alone, the average pricing is 41.08, up 10.3% year-on-year.
From the perspective of competitive subjects, the total number of publishing houses in the top ten in the children's book market is more than 26%, of which CITIC Publishing House has entered the top 5 of the children's book market with a series of eye-catching performances in the introduction of children's books, and is one of the fastest growing children's publishing planning institutions in 2019.
During the epidemic period from January to September 2020, in the case of a year-on-year decline in the overall book retail market, the scale of the children's book market increased by 24.7% year-on-year. In the overall book market, the proportion of children's yards was 24.94%, an increase of about 2 percentage points year-on-year.
The number of new children's books that were put on the market in the first three quarters was only 9854, down 29.0% from the same period last year. Judging from the dynamic sales code of new books, the impact of the epidemic is more significant, due to the reduction of the number of new book varieties and the lack of publicity and distribution, the first three quarters of the children's new book code yang fell by about half compared with last year. The proportion of new books and yards in the "four king kongs" has increased, especially in the children's encyclopedia, and the proportion of new books and codes has increased by 4.12%.
* List of new forces in children's book publishing institutions from January to September 2020
In the first three quarters of this year, among the Top 30 children's publishing institutions, the 10 fastest growing publishing houses, in addition to CITIC Publishing Group, the growth of the remaining 9 publishing institutions are more or less the shadow of private book companies. Private book companies such as Qinghulu, Xiaohongfan Children's Books, Chuangshi Excellence, Xiao qilin Children's Bookstore, Sunshine Blog, Rizhi Books, Huayang Culture, Shangzuo Zhiyuan Books and other private book companies are important promoters of the ranking of these publishing houses, and they mainly produce ultra-low prices (99 yuan optional 10 books, 99 yuan optional 5 books) of low-childhood enlightenment, habit formation picture books and children's public edition books, and have gained a large number of buyers on e-commerce book websites, and these buyers are mainly from second- and third-tier and below-tier cities.
Publisher magazine has reported that most of these ultra-low-priced children's books are less page numbered, roughly printed, and most of the content is "public".
Look at the children's book market from the book label
Each book has a series of tags, including categories, fit for readers, titles, keywords, authors, forms of expression, reader reviews, etc., based on the sales weight of these tags in the subdivision category, resulting in a tag cloud map. According to the data of Zhongjin Yiyun Big Data Platform, for the first time, we have made a more intuitive and visual presentation of the children's book market by drawing a label cloud map.
By drawing a cloud map of the overall label of children's books, we can clearly see that the main readership of children's books is 3-6 years old and 7-10 years old young readers, and associated with them, picture books, picture stories, preschool education, cartoon animation, popular science encyclopedias, and phonetic books are the most popular categories in children's books. Peppa Pig and Mi Xiao circle are the top traffic IP of these two types of readership.
In the label cloud chart with the fastest growth rate of children's books in 2019, 0-2 years old are impressively listed, and the associated parenting classes, parent-child classes, toy books and baby books have increased significantly. The current share of books in this age group is not large compared with other age groups, and there is no blessing from top traffic authors and IP, but the growth rate in the past two years is very significant.
Judging from the label cloud map from January to September 2020, early education institutions across the country affected by the epidemic in the first half of the year were unable to operate normally, so since March, the low-grade reading category has risen sharply year-on-year. Pop-up books, audio books, musical instrument books, cardboard books, cave books and other forms of early education books have become the young couple's coaxing artifacts.
The pop-up book "Our Body" produced by Le Fun has quickly become popular due to the hot push of live streaming with cargo masters, and it has also brought the "pop-up book" as a form of children's book on fire. It became the fastest growing children's book label in the first three quarters of this year.
The cultivation of children's habits has also become a hot spot for growth, such as the "German Concentration Cultivation Album" series published by Anhui Children's Publishing House, and the "Cultivate Good Habits to Be the Best Yourself" series published by Chinese Publishing House, which has a good sales performance.
Audiobooks are becoming more popular with young parents. For example, the sales of many sound products such as the "Listen, What Sound" series published by The Enlightened Publishing House and the "Who is Arguing in the Farm" series published by the Relay Publishing House have increased significantly compared with last year.
New characteristics and new trends in the development of children's book market
Non-fiction children's books are gaining more and more attention in China, a trend that is both a move closer to the market by Chinese publishers and a response to international publishing trends.
According to Jingdong big data, the turnover of children's literature, picture books, children's science popularization of the three major categories of turnover year-on-year growth rate of children's books more than the overall growth rate of children's books, and in the three major subdivisions, the highest year-on-year growth rate is children's science, nearly 40%, it and children's literature and picture book turnover gap continues to narrow - children's science turnover in 2018 is half of children's literature books, 2019 has accounted for 60%, the future, or will exceed children's literature to become the highest proportion of children's books in the sub-classification.
From 2016 to 2017, when the community group buying was the hottest, the headline of a WeChat public account brought tens of thousands of books to sales, which is not a new thing. In 2016, the large "Little Bag Of Hemp" with 5 million fans sold more than 40 kinds of children's books alone, with a total sales size of 66 million yuan.
By the beginning of 2018, the WeChat public account began to show fatigue and weak growth. In June of that year, Tencent suddenly revised the public account, and the three articles pushed were folded, causing a direct blow to group buying, and the exposure of all sales articles dropped significantly.
Today, community group buying has entered the 2.0 stage. Although the large community sales have declined, the channel has gradually declined. KOLs' ability to carry goods should not be underestimated, and there is a continuous publicity effect, and their recommendation can even make a book go further. These "children's book mothers" are more grounded than experts, have good interpersonal communication effects, and carefully managed communities have also shown super purchasing power.
After more than two years of development, live broadcasting has entered the daily life of the public and is truly "popularized". Children's books also joined this tide without accident, Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou, not only professional children's book publishing institutions that sell children's books on various platforms, but also KOLs on various platforms, such as Wang Fang, Zhang Dandan, Liu Yuanyuan, who have a strong appeal among fans.
However, although live broadcasting has brought considerable sales and immediate cash flow, high discounts and commissions are also seriously squeezing the gross profit space of publishing institutions. Many publishers do live broadcasting with zero or even negative sales profits. At this stage, live broadcasting mainly assumes the role of destocking, and the publisher is mainly the need for brand promotion, rather than the goal of profit. In the future, there may be more special "live customized books" to achieve small profits and quick sales through cost control.
*New Media Influence List of Children's Book Publishing Institutions from January to September 2020
According to the performance of the children's book publishing institution's public account in the first three quarters of 2020, combined with the number of posts issued by each public account, the total number of readings, the highest number of readings, the number of likes and other indicators, we released this list of new media influence of children's book publishing institutions.
As a self-built channel for publishers to speak to readers, the official account is still one of its important marketing means.
In the list, the new media of private book companies occupy more than half of the seats, and the performance of traditional children's book strong societies such as Yangtze River Children's, Anhui Children's Children's, relay publishing houses, etc. can also be remarkable. It can be seen that the leading children's book publishing institutions in the market attach great importance to the construction of new media channels, which in turn must be helpful to the children's book marketing of these publishing institutions to a certain extent.
* Book live streaming influence list
In this year's douyin live streaming with goods - book category anchor list of comprehensive popularity evaluation, in addition to the top ten anchors in addition to the 10th anchor, the rest of the anchors with goods category is mainly children's books, individual anchors such as Tao Tao picture book selection, little eagle, slow picture book, etc., is a concentrated cargo of a specific subdivision of the category of children's books. Children's books are undoubtedly one of the hottest book categories on the platform after the psychological self-help books that hit Douyin in 2019.
As the head anchor of the book live broadcast with goods, Wang Fang, whether it is the popularity of the attention in the live broadcast room or the yard yang with the goods, has a cliff-like gap with the second and subsequent anchors, becoming the absolute top 1 of the anchors of the entire book category of Douyin; although the anchors after Wang Fang do not have her popularity, they also have their own subdivisions that they are good at and focus on, contributing a lot of heat to the sales of books on the live broadcast platform, especially children's books.
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