Do E-books really make a whole success on replacing printed paper books? Let's talking from the process of manufacturing, delivering, usage, recycling and destroying of book products. 2010-08-03
E-Books about to Win?
Ever since Apple’s iPad went into market early this year, despite all the troubles, the sales figure is very good and soon surpasses 3 millions of devices sold. The figure is far beyond the e-readers launched years ago. Although e-readers try to stimulate the sales through low-pricing strategy, the result is still weak. On the other hand, iPad will soon launch second generation in the year end, which is smaller, lighter and with a screen size more close to e-readers’. The intention to take away the market share of e-readers is obvious.
Since last July, there’s a digitalize trend in Taiwan’s publishing industry. All kinds of e-readers, trading platforms, digital contents appeared all over the market, this situation clearly indicates the determination to push the publishing industry to a high peak through digital publishing. Regardless the obstacle of copyright authorization for online content, it’d be still difficult for e-readers to compete with other panel PCs (in the future, not only Apple will launch panel PCs, all the other major brands will do as well). Overall, in general, there’s positive attitude toward e-books on the market. People think e-books will replace printed paper books in the near future and become the new standard of reading medium. The constitution of books and publishing will be different from the past.
The Foundation of E-books is Electricity, Petroleum and Precious Metal
Although I don’t believe in the optimistic opinion that e-books will soon replace paper books, I do believe that informative contents like newspapers and magazines will soon transfer to digital medium from printed paper. However, I still think it’s quite impossible for paper based books, especially those with clear theme, broad structure, large volume and through content, to be replaced by e-readers. Cause e-readers haven’t reach the level that people and machine can co-exist in the same space.
After reading several books supporting printed paper based books (like Eco’s “Nobody will Finish with Books”) and works that illustrate the process of manufacturing, delivering, usage, recycling and destroying industrial products ( i.e. Annie Leonard’s “ The Story of Things”), I’ve began to doubt whether digitalized networks highly depending on electricity, petroleum and precious medal can survive in a modern culture with endless consumption and wasting, exploitation on materials without any planning. If e-readers can’t develop a more sustainable business model like the example of “cradle to cradle”, I think their chance of success is very limited.
Manufacturing Process of Printed Paper Books and E-books
To be honest, both the manufacturing process of printed paper books and e-books are not environment friendly at all now.
For printed paper books, the bleaching process of paper requires adding lots of hazardous chemical materials (Mercury is also used in the process and will produce dioxin). For the printing ink, although there’re green materials made from soybeans, most publishers choose cheaper options. Pure white paper is the least environment friendly, but most books are printed on white paper, except for those books advocating environment protection using recycled paper. All of these leave an impression of green-washing (not to say recycled paper is not actually good for the environment).
Paper books are mostly criticized for the excessive logging in order to produce paper (taking US alone, there’re 30 million trees cutting down to make paper). Many environment supporters and scholars are criticizing people over usage of paper by the number of deforestation each year. People who support e-readers over paper books are taking this figure as supporting evidence. They talked as if we give up paper books; we’ll slow the deforestation and therefore stop the global warming effectively.
However, it’s a misunderstanding. The manufacturing process of electronics products uses more precious raw materials than paper does, and creates more hazardous waste during production than paper does as well. In addition, after production, these products rely on highly civilized electricity system for usage (unlike paper books, once the printing is done, no other energy will be consumed anymore).
Taking PC for example, a large part of its raw material is plastic, and the basic material of plastic is PVC which is extracted from Oil. Oil is a nature resource store underneath the earth ground. People can only dig out oils but not create them. The regenerating speed of oil is far less than the speed we are digging. Scientists estimate that we’ll run out of oil within 50 years.
So far we haven’t mentioned the environment damage coming alone with the oil digging process. The recent Mexico Gulf Oil leaking incident can’t be solved on time, and has already caused a serious damage to the world’s third largest fishing field. It’s estimated that one third of the seafood products are affected. This kind of oil leaking damage will exist more than 20 years. Imagine how many problems there’re among all the oil fields in the world.
During the process of making PVC, a lot of carbon dioxide and dioxin are emitted to the atmosphere. In addition, to transfer it into plastic products, hazardous chemicals like leads and mercury are added in the final product, which causes serious damage both to the environment and human health.
In addition, in order to manufacture wafer from silicon, a lot of chemicals (between 500 ~100 different types) had to be added in during the whole process. There’ll be a lot of hazardous chemicals added and produced during the whole manufacturing process. Especially the usage of flame retardant, it will not only be dangerous during the production, but will also is risky once used by consumers and later in the lifecycle of dumping and recycling. These kinds of chemicals will pollute the earth and the environment without proper managing procedure.
Illustrated above are not the worst problems of electronic products. After all, through better design, we can eliminate the use of plastics and poisonous materials. The critical points are the usage of precious metals like gold, barium and cadmium using in the production. These precious metals usually come from politically unstable countries in Africa. Major manufactures usually ignore the brutal and cruel conducts of mining in order to secure the cheap supply of these metals. It’s not different with trading blood diamonds without any evaluation system.
Precious metals are largely wasted in cheap sales and over consumption. In addition, there’s one Moore law in the IT industry which is totally against the idea of proper environment resource management (in every 18 month, the efficiency of each product will be doubled with only half percentage of resource required). Moore law seems to be the optimized usage of nature resources. In reality, there’re always new launched new versions, advocating upgrade and creating customer’s unnecessary purchasing desires. There’re upgrades in PC, mobile phones and cameras every year and the industry encourages customers buying new devices and abandon old ones. Increasing the consumption/upgrading frequency can create huge economic value for the IT industry each year. However, the long-term ignorance of the externalities and over-consumption of nature resource will result in the understatement of the damage to the environment (especially when the recycling processes are not environment friendly either).
Taking Apple’s iPhone and iPad for example, there’s always a new version each year. Eco once talked sarcastically that the development of PC ever since first launched in 1970’s has passed through many times of both software/hardware upgrading and contents in the old software can’t be accessed anymore unless you copy them to the new PCs. Although e-books seems to be efficient, comparing with printed paper books who can exist for more than hundreds of years after printing, e-books actually waste more nature resources and are less efficient. E-books rely on endless copying and format transformation, and can’t be compares with paper books who can solely exist once printed.
Some people said that the life span of discs is more or less 20 years. Regardless the accuracy of the figure, it’s not disputable that the life span of discs is far shorter than paper books. The Guthenburg bible printed in the 15th century can still be read now if we just open the book without charging first or purchasing a new laptop. It’d be difficult to imagine how people in the future can open a digital content without proper devices 500 years later.
Which is more Sustainable, Printed Paper Book or E-book?
Regarding the life cycle of raw materials used in producing printed paper books and e-books, the logs required for making paper take only 20 years to regenerate and can be cultivated by people in a near sustainable way. The existence of e-books is different. They rely heavily on petroleum and precious metal which can’t be synthesized and can only be produced by mother nature after billions of years’ time.
If people can’t change dramatically the manufacturing process of electronic products including mining of raw materials, manufacturing, delivering, recycling and disposal management, there’re serious doubts whether e-readers can survive a nature resource limited future.
Annie Leonard suggests the attitude people evaluate “things” on price and function is not sufficient. A thorough and systematic view based on environment and human being’s life span considering each production element including raw materials, manufacturing, delivering, recycling and disposal management are required. It’s not sufficient enough to consider whether e-books will replace printed paper books based on the functional view of “things”, we should also consider the whole manufacturing process of “things” and take the possibility of sustainable management into account.
Repeated Purchase: Assumed as New Books, but Only Covers and Titles are New
Awhile ago, I bought some books with the same thesis for reference on doing research for work. Some books already passed their new book period and were difficult to find in bookstores (bookstores nowadays sell only best-sellers and new books). Owing to the time pressure, I bought those books online.
When I received the books, I found two of them, although written by the same author, have different names, publishers and different copywriting. I thought they were different books written by the same author and purchased both of them. In the end, these are books republished with exactly the same content and only difference in cover design. Although they were published by different publishers, as everybody knows, the same publisher can have different names or several brand names. Moreover, the publisher whose name was printed on the cover is not necessary the real publisher.
This shopping experience is very frustrating; after all, this is not the first time that I bought the same book twice. I thought I found a new book from the writer, in the end, it’s just the same book with different cover or title. Much to my disappointment, these kinds of books are not refundable. The rules in Taiwan regulates that books, unlike other products, are not refundable. You can only claim flawed condition of the book and ask for a new copy. Therefore, when encountering situation like this, there’s nothing I can do.
Afterwards, I start to pay attentions to books on the market. I found that it isn’t rare case that new books and old books co-exist on the market. Customers can buy both of them. I believe there’re quite some customers who have the same experience like I do for buying wrong books.
That’s also why online bookstores would clearly state keywords like “new edition”, “second edition” or “extra edition” on product information pages. That’s all for better clarification so that customers won’t buy the wrong book.
To my regret, in my investigation, not all publishers are ethical enough to state the information either on products or in online product information pages. There’re still books of totally the same content with only different cover designs on the market and it’s very difficult to tell them apart on Internet where information is limited to few pictures of the books.
In my opinion, if publishers can clearly state on the book or in online product information page that the book is republished and also mark the original edition, then customers should take the blame for buying the wrong book. However, if there’s no relevant information, plus the online bookstores didn’t filter for customers, then customers buying wrong books like me will be pretty upset and even decide not to buy books from the same publisher anymore.
Timing and Strategy Matters for Republishing
However, this experience of buying the wrong book allows me to discover that there’re quite a few republished books on the market. In fact, there’s much know-how in republishing.
Timing/Reason of Republishing
I.Revise Old Editions
It’s just like new editions of classic movies comes out every certain year. There’re re-edited editions of classic literature every certain year. If it is translated books, publishers either will find new translators to retranslate the book or at least edit the original translation, adjust the concept of vocabulary usage, correct errors and publish new translated editions or extra editions.
Besides, the aesthetic taste, the skill and ability to design cover and edit content differs every few years. Therefore, it’s better to re-edit the book, re-design the cover, and re-write the copywriting. These give long-term sellers a new look, just like dressing pretty new clothes. People said, every ten years there’s a major transition in aesthetic perspective. Therefore, that might be the reason of republished books on the market every ten years. This might be the reason of many new editions of classical books this year.
II. Republished Old Books When the Author is Publishing New Ones
I discovered that many republished books on the market are published just two or three years ago. However, the publisher has changed the entire cover and others. New editions indeed look more elegant than old ones. However, since I have old ones, plus there’s not much difference in the content, I had to give up purchasing.
Then I found out that the reason of these republishing are that the authors have written new books. These books are republished either they were popular when published or the movie and TV series based on the book are going to be on screen. I have no opinion regarding the limited edition for promotion with movies or author’s visiting trip to Taiwan. These are all marketing strategies for selling more books. I am only a bit upset, being a heavy reader, plus working in the industry, I always bought books just published. However, it makes feel sad since I am not rich enough, or have enough storage space to buy all these limited republished editions. I believe there’re many royal readers also have the same sad feelings as I do for not being able to buy all these better editions.
If it were possible, can publishers design the cover of new edition as book clothes (or an extra book clothes edition)? So customers who have bought old editions can ask for book clothes to satisfy their pride of having new editions.
III. Revised/ Extra Editions
The third most common reason of republishing is revising or putting in extra content in books. For academic books, in order to prevent the circulation of second-hand books on the market that will damage the sales of new books, and also to update with the latest academic development, there’re new editions every year. Some classic academic books can have dozens of revised editions. In general, titles of these books also indicate which edition no. they are. The higher the number; the more important are the books. Therefore, people would know the importance and popularity of these books.
IV. Copyright Transformation
In addition, when copyright expires, new publisher will publish new editions to separate itself from old ones. Of course, it’s illegal for publishers to sell books whose copyright already expired. However, owing to the diversity of copyright recognition, some contracts allow publishers to circulate these books on the market until sold out. Therefore, there some cases where old and new editions both sold on the market at the same time.
V. Market Test with New Titles
The fifth reason, and also the most distaste one in my opinion, is that publisher want to test the market again for books that weren’t sold well or below the expected sales figure after publishing. Therefore, publishers decide to change the cover and title and try their luck on the market. As I’ve mentioned before, if publishers clearly state on the book the republished edition from the original one, then it’s fine. Publishers who did nothing to notify the customers aren’t responsible. Otherwise, publishers should at least recall the old editions on the market to prevent the co-existence of both editions. To my regret, in most cases, you can buy two editions in the same bookstore.
Different Styles of Revised Editions
From the discussion above regarding the timing of republishing, we can conclude that, revised editions range between totally the same content and totally different ones. Totally different one means the title, index and content (extra notes or revised content), copywriting, editing, paper, cover design and printing are all different. The case of totally the same are fewer, at least the cover design would be different.
The Annoyance of Republishing: the Display and Selling of Revised Editions
Although the intention of republishing is good (offering better editions to customers), however, the loose way of republishing has caused some annoyance.
For example, short intervals between new and old editions, like less than a year, will cause customers who have old editions doubt the quality of their purchased books.
In addition, there’re also issues of repeated purchasing when the revised editions are too different from original ones and customers can’t tell whether they’re new books or republished books.
Taking online bookstores for example, if publishers didn’t provide the information of original editions spontaneously and bookstores also didn’t give enough attention to the usage of online product illustration pages of the original and new editions. Customers can’t tell whether they’re republished editions especially when the title, cover design, copywriting are all different. Customers can’t refer to the content itself; anyway, content information is always very limited on the Internet.
I strongly suggest that all respected publishers should clearly notify customers on republished books, at least state the original book titles or indicate that they’re revised/second/new editions. In addition, they should notify sale channels that these books are republished books.
Online bookstores should help customers filter these books, or otherwise offer services like exchanging goods (despite the difficulty in execution). The best way is to clearly state on the website content the book being the revised edition of which book. If possible, they should include the product information of original editions, or mark the original editions as sold out instead of selling both editions online. This could prevent customers from buying books with exact the dame content and only different names.
Online bookstores will risk their trust from customers if they fail to fulfill the responsibility, and so do publishers. Maybe they can sell more books when customers did pay enough attention. However, it’d damage their long-term profits and also harm brand image of bookstores and publishers.
The famous black writer John Edgar Wideman, who has published many books, won several major prizes and work with the influential agent Andrew Wylie, did a surprising thing lately. He published his latest book Briefs: Stories for the Palm of the Mind with Lulu.com. Lulu.com is a self-publishing website specialized in providing services for amateur or inexperienced writers. Lulu.com is considered less professional and hardly used by famous authors.
Self-publishing, or publish on your own is a fast-developing publishing trends growing with the Internet development. Bypassing the traditional complicated publishing process, authors just upload their work to the service center. After editing, the book is sold online and will be printed only when readers purchase the book. Traditional publishing have to consider the selling points to the market and spend long time in processing. In addition, new authors are often rejected by the tradition publishing. With self-publishing, they can gain full control with a fee paid to the service center and therefore never get rejected for publishing. This business model is totally different from those who earn profit by selling books.
There’re editing tools for writers to download in self-publishing centers. After uploading the content, they can choose the size of the book, different kinds of paper and assembling style with a minimum service charge. Some service center has advanced services like cover design, layout design, diagrams, word editing and even content consultancy. All these services take extra charges and hardly used by amateur or general writers. Without the guarding of traditional publishing, the quality of self-published books varies. Therefore, most famous authors are careless about this style of publishing.
Wideman is a famous author, why did he use self-publishing? He asks “why not, why not publishing with Lulu.com?” Not only this new book, he also signed the publishing rights of his first three books and short stores to Lulu.com. He is the first VIP author of Lulu. "Stories, in a way, are about time," Wideman says, now age 68. "What's that mean?" he asks. "I've lost the best of what I have? Or is there something that I can look forward to in another scale, as life crystalizes?"
Lulu is the largest self-publishing service provider. And it claims to have gradually changed the world’s publishing industry by allowing author gain full control of their editing and copyrights. The number of registered users has exceeded millions. They have branch companies all over US, UK, Canada and India with a monthly visitor rate over 2 million and clients all over the world. The standard of quality is indeed lower than the traditional publishing. However, with the joining of famous authors like Wideman, the reputation might be promoted.
The publishing economist Joseph Webb once told a story in his book “Disrupting the Future”. He said, when Gutenberg invented the printing machine, there’re 50 million populations in Europe, among them, only 1%, that is, 500 thousand people who can read. With the printing technology, the reading population grows. After 100 years, the percentage of people who can read grow up to 50%. By that time, the population in Europe already exceeds 70 million, which means over 35 million population are literate.
Following the same logic, it had been 100 years of development that enable 50 million people to read. On the contrary:
l In 38 years, 50 million people listen to radio.
l In only 13 years, 50 million people watch TV.
l In just 4 years, 50 million people connect to the Internet.
l In 3 years, 50 million people have bought iPod.
There’re ever faster developments:
l The user number of Face book users grows to 1 billion in 9 months.
l iPhone application has been download more than 10 million times in 9 months.
l The population using twitter exceed more than the overall population of Ireland, Norway and Panama.
What’s the meaning of these figures? “Stories happened in the past are traces of how people will change the future through technology and innovation,” said Joseph Webb. That is, technology and innovation constantly “disrupt” the future.
E-books have been invented 10 years ago. They were not popular owing to the underdevelopment of technology and market. Now, with the invention of Kindle and iPad, and the growing trend of environment awareness, it’s predictable that e-books will replace paper books.
It’s the same for publishing; years of tradition are delicate but complicated. The widespread of Internet has raised people’s interest in writing and publishing. Self-publishing goes along with the trend by satisfying everyone’s wish through easy processing and low-pricing. These books might not be professional enough. These writers might not get popular through the books published. However, we can’t deny that this alternative way of publishing has eaten up the market of traditional publishing.
As any publishing professional would know, although there're large quantity of books been published each year, the best-selling themes are few, i.e. love, relationship, investment, health and career development. These are all different forms of the same themes to try to hit the sweet point of customers.
Staying longer with the publishing industry, gradually I have some interesting observations. For instance, books on theme of publishing are not major marketing hit, but there're diehard support group of people. Therefore, there is always certain amount of revenue with this kind of books if the quality is not too bad. For outstanding products, they're going to be in bestseller list for weeks even without a big amount of marketing budgets.
Cat Books and Kyoto
For instance "cat books", for instance "Kyoto"
The reason of former is because there's a group of diehard cat person in Taiwan, and somehow cat lovers get together well with art-lovers. Although there're not much people in this group, the reading and purchasing ability are higher than the general public. Therefore, for every book about cat, the sales won't be bad. With careful observation of Taiwan's publishing market, almost every month there're "cat books" published.
"Kyoto" is also a very special popular theme in publishing. Almost every month there are one or two Kyoto-related books published. Most of them were translated from Japanese (from history, travel, food, architecture, to the people of Kyoto, and Kyotoism). A small part of them is written by Taiwanese (and most of them are traveling literature).
The popular book "Kamogawa Holmes" by Manabu Makime, it's background is in Kyoto. Onmyouji series, which was very popular a few years ago, is also based in Kyoto. Not long ago, there's a couple (bloggers) publishing their travelling book "Kyoto Crossroads" at their own expense and the book soon get popular in the market. Their second book is soon taken over by an important publisher. The translated works from Akiko Jugaku like "Millennium Prosperous", "Joy Kyoto", "Kyoto Ideas" has been long-term bestsellers (the reissuing format is back in the bestselling list agagin recently). You can only say that the people of Taiwan really like Kyoto, in addition to practical action of supports (visiting Kyoto), but also willing to buy books related to Kyoto.
The source of cat books is not limited to Taiwan. Writers across five continents are all contributing. Although Kyoto is a world-famous historic city with 50 million tourists visiting each year, after all, it's just a city with 1.5 million populations. However, they're able to continuously introduce new works to the world.
To some extent we can say, in Taiwan, there're a group of Kyoto fans, as well as cat fans, who enthusiastically supports Kyoto.
Visiting Kyoto in Person
After visiting Kyoto in person, I'm impressed with the dedication and delicacy Japanese publishing industry has for Kyoto. I remember seeing several large shelves of books about lifestyles, entertainment, economy, social history, education, culture, writing books, photo album, picture books, Mook, Magazine ..., all of them are Kyoto-related books (not including novels with backgrounds in Kyoto) in the Sanseido bookstore located in Kyoto Station's underground shopping mall. There's even one school of detective novel in Japan, which specialized in setting the story background in Kyoto.
If you think only bookstores in Kyoto are filled with Kyoto-related books and magazines, then you are wrong. While travelling in Kyoto, much to my surprise, in every store ranging from a small neighborhood restaurant to hotels, B & B, tourists crowded restaurant, shops, no matter large or small, there're sizeable numbers of Kyoto books / magazines, usually informative travel guides and magazines, but also in-depth description of Kyoto. Like the hotel I stayed, there're many series of books displayed illustrating Kyoto elements (garden, town homes, old bookstores, temples, shrines ...). Visitors can buy or borrow these series of books.
Of course, you may say, Kyoto, a worldwide known historical and tourism city, should have a large number of book publications associated with it. But is this really so? Taking Taiwan for example, the ancient capital Tainan has over 400 years of history but even less than one-tenth the publication of Kyoto. Taipei area (Taipei and new Taipei city), which is four times the population of Kyoto, there're not as many publication for Taipei as for Kyoto.
Even for major city with more than a thousand years' history like Beijing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, there've never seen such a full range of publications to introduce themselves.
The Publishing Power of Kyoto
In my opinion, the reason why that Kyoto, a city with population of only 150 million people, was able to launch large number of fine classification of publications, in addition to being the ancient capital of Japan, retaining many of historical monument, but also that Kyoto people and Japanese are all proud of Kyoto, loving Kyoto, and willing to promote and preserve Kyoto. The stores in Kyoto are also willing to partner with publishers for displaying Kyoto-related books in their stores. It is important that these stores are the most direct and strong supporters for the publishing industry.
Try to recall that which store owners in Taipei (or the city you live) that are willing to display books that are related to Taipei, providing free copies for consumers to read. Apart from the small stores, you rarely see that even in stores that are illustrated in tour guide books (not to mention partner with publishers to sell the books).
We must admit that, so far, although we have good tourist spots like Taipei, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Nantou (Sun Moon Lake), Chiayi (Alishan), Wanhua, Tamsui, Lukang, Hualien, Ilan, Taitung ..., and we are eager to promote Taiwan tourism. There're still shortcomings in the travel guide publications market here. We can even can say that we do not even have one classic long-sell travel guides, let alone profound description of Taiwan's culture and scenery (maybe "Taiwan to re-visit" by Shu Guo Chi can count as one, but it is too short and too abstract). What I meant are the books that we can sell the copyright overseas, just as we bought a lot of foreign travel tour/literature.
Comparing with the large number of translated tour guides and overseas travelling books written by locals, there're not many people paying attention to the market. Despite the fact that we should have known Taiwan better than the other cities and also that department of culture affairs of local counties all held competitions each year with a lot of money, dedicated to promote city/county writing.
Rational Calculating, Niche Market is also Good Market
I was in Kyoto. And I saw the publication in strong force.
On the other hand, most of the Kyoto books can't be bestsellers anymore. However, because of everyone's love to Kyoto, they can be long-term bestsellers. In publishing business, everyone wants to publishing bestsellers, but bestsellers are also unpredictable. There're number of publishing areas, with very little chance to be in the best-selling list, but earns steady revenue.
Being prudent on production costs, sales forecast and profit, is also a way of doing business. Although you're not going to be rich over one night on best-sellers, you can sustain a long time. Like romantic novels, there're very few big sales, but still it's a good business with stable publication, fixed cost and small profits. Bestsellers bring in more revenue and also more risk. Therefore it's controversial whether to spend a lot of money fighting for bestseller copyrights or not.
More importantly, in my opinion, is that when Japanese publisher launching products related to Kyoto, what in their hearts is not only a profit (of course, profit is very important), but also the unique style I am going to present Kyoto in front of everyone which no one else had ever did before (after all, the market has already so many "Kyoto Books"). This consideration is the test to the publisher's editorial planning as well as marketing. "Kyoto" has become cultural core for creativity innovation.
As in "Kyoto Book", in addition to distribution to bookstores in Japan and overseas, Kyoto books and magazines can be seen in various shops in Kyoto. Distribution channel is not limited to bookstores and extends to stores related to Kyoto. Through this cross-industry alliance, they would distribute books to anywhere there're customers and even turn their alliance partner into customer.
Thoughts on Publishing from Kyoto Books
In Taiwan, what publishers often do is "cultural processing". They buy bestselling copyrights overseas and translated them into Chinese. Then sell the books by marketing. They don't even know well the theme they published (as long as there's money to buy copyrights of foreign bestsellers).
Without through understanding of the publishing theme and just introduce translated works might result in market failure in the Taiwan market. After all, there are complex issues like cultural barriers, differences proportion of the reading population, etc. Even when introducing translated works, the publisher should have a certain level of understanding or research to the field.
Only in-depth understanding of the theme you're going to develop and publish will you know the target audience, channels and what possible sales are, what type of books they are interested in and what form / theme can be interpreted and how you edit / packing / distribution / marketing the book.
If you have the opportunity, you should make a trip to Kyoto. Beyond all the beautiful sceneries, take a look at how Japanese develop such a diverse array of books on a single theme of Kyoto. This would be really insightful for your current publishing projects.
People always misunderstand Hong Kong as a culture desert and think it quite difficult to do publishing. However, I think the publishing industry is quite abounding and the reading needs quite strong.
Newspapers and Magazines are the Dominant Players
Taking newspapers for example, there are dozens of Chinese newspapers like Wenhui, Singpao, Mingpao, Takungpao, Singtao, Sun Paper, Hong Kong Commercial Newspaper, Economic Journal, Economic Daily News, Apple Daily, Oriental Press and Hong Kong Daily News. Both their quantity and quality are better than Taiwan's newspaper.
The market size in Hong Kong is only seven million people. There might be greater demand for newspapers in Hong Kong than in Taiwan. Or the operation cost is lower in Hong Kong since the population is more condensed and therefore there's less needs setting up local branches and journalists. However, if there's no stronger market demand, they can't offer a newspaper market size like this.
There're also quite a few number of weekly magazines. Besides gossip ones like One magazine, there're all-around magazines like Mingpao and many other cosmetic, beauty and pornography magazines. In addition, there're also stores specialized in magazines (the enlargement of newspaper stands).
I also discovered that Hong Kong streets are filled with newspaper stands. There are not only magazines, newspapers, comic books, but also books from famous authors. Newspaper stands, not bookstores, are the most thorough distribution channel in Hong Kong. Most mass readings are sold through newspaper stands.
That is to say, the reading demand in Hong Kong is actually large. The main focuses of everyday reading are newspapers and magazines owing to social style, time/spatial utilization factors.
There're not only news reports in newspapers, but also a vivid array of columns. Many popular columns are published as books later. Authors like Chua Lam, Lin Xingzhi, Steven N.S. Cheung, Yishu, Ma Ka Fai, Liang Wen Dao all have published books as column collections.
To some extent, the exuberant magazines and newspapers support the publishing market in Hong Kong. At first, authors publish on newspapers and magazines, and then publishers look for suitable articles to make into a collection.
Observing the local publishing, the trend stays close to everyday urban life. Most of them are novels (romance), or books related to relationships, gourmet, travel, comics, fortune telling, politics, investment, celebrity and Hong Kong. There're fewer books about society, humanity, translated or Chinese literature and most of them are imported from China and Taiwan.
The Diversification of Niche Market
However, the niche markets in Hong Kong are vibrant. The total sales volume isn't comparable with China or Taiwan who have larger population. However, the quality of theme selection, writing/translation and editing is extremely high.
Christian publishing is one of the best. Looking at China and Taiwan, there is probably least Christian population in Hong Kong. However, they publish more Christian books than the others (not to mention the restricted China, even in Taiwan where there's freedom and democracy, Hong Kong still outnumber Taiwan.) From the most arduous theology orthodoxy (Tao Fong Shan has spent more than 15 years translating and editing hundreds of Christian classics. This is the most difficult and also the largest publishing project), bible translation, daily devotion to empowering leaders, Hong Kong Christian publishers make all their effort for publishing (there're even more Christian bookstores in Hong Kong than in Taiwan).
Besides, Hong Kong government largely subsidizes local publishing in recent years. Kubrick has published a series of books regarding Hong Kong's history, architecture, literature and poem which are for niche markets but with excellent quality.
Bookstores Divided by Mainstream and Niche
As mentioned before, I suppose newspaper stands are the dominant distribution channel (lately, convenient stores in Hong Kong also sell mainstream books and magazines. It's still a special phenomenon regardless the slow moving rate of the books in the small-sized stores with expensive rent and sales quantity outnumbered by newspaper stands). However, it doesn't mean the stores in Hong Kong aren't interesting.
Speaking about chain stores, although Hong Kong tourist like shopping in Eslite here in Taiwan, their own bookstores aren't anything less. The chain stores in Hong Kong are vivid with different styles. Chung Wha Book Co., for example, is of traditional Chinese scholar style. There're even Chinese style gardens and furniture in the Yau Ma Tei store. The whole atmosphere is traditional Chinese with spatial areas and large collection of books. The book collection in history, literature and philosophy is abundant. Overall, it's a comfortable shopping experience in the store.
Page One is specialized in architecture, design and imported books. You can find all kinds of English books in the L-shaped store called Another City in Tsim Sha Tsui. The store of Joint Publishing in Wanchai is decorated with pure white (the decoration style and walking zone arrangement is similar to Eslite NTU store closed years ago) is also a good place for shopping with a large collection of both Chinese and English books in there four-story high store.
The advantages of Hon Kong's chain stores are not interior design or spatial area. There're both Chinese/Hong Kong/Taiwanese books and also imported books sold in the store. The extent of internationalization defeats all the other bookstores in China and Taiwan.
Besides traditional famous second-floor books stores like Cosmos, Best Reading Book Stores, Garden, Xue Jin, Lok Man Books Company, Sino books and Green Readings all provides customers books with discounts. Some newly established bookstores put more emphasize on their themes and decoration. The store sceneries in Mackie study, People bookstore, Bookeasy and Meixin Shushe are even better than the books sold there.
In addition, there're many specialized and second-floor bookstores with unique features in Hong Kong. Basheer Design Books in Island Building, Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay is specialized in architecture. Kubric located in Public Square Street, Yau Ma Tei is specialized in movie books (with a movie library and a café). Tsi Ku Chai in Queen Victoria Street, Central is specialized in art (besides art books, there're also antique collections). There are also One Fine Day bookstores specialized in feminism, Hong Kong Reader in Sai Yeung Choi Street, Mong Kok specialized in humanity and sociology and an Armani bookstore in The Landmark, Central (the store is specialized in fashion, similar to the LV bookstore in the LV flagship store on Chung Shan N. Road in Taipei.)
Regarding second-hand bookstores, there're not as many stores as here in Taipei (probably the source of books are limited), but still we can't neglect them. Flow Again Bookstores on Lyndhurst Terrace, Central is specialized in English second-hand boos with a huge collection ranging from literature, history, philosophy, sociology, science and fictions.
I recommend most the Book Attic stores in Amoy Street, Wanchai. The store seems to be in a mezzanine with small apace and limited collection. The hostess is an elegant lady. The whole atmosphere is cozy and comfy. There're even desks and chairs in the stores. The small and delicate store represents the mature of Hong Kong's humanity in the time of sky-high rental cost.
Not forget to mention the Christian bookstores, among them the larger ones with rich collections are Tiendao (Queen's Road in Central), Elim (Jordan, Causeway Bay, Admiralty), China Alliance Press (Tsim Sha Tsui), Logos Book House (Mongkok), Chinese Christian Literature Council (Yau Ma Tei ), Chinese Baptist Press (Lai Chi Kok). If you are not a Christian, you can also visit Breakthrough (Causeway Bay, Yau Ma Tei). Besides Christian books, there're also self-development and psychology books in Breakthrough.
Although there are quite a few stores in Hong Kong, many of them are for niche markets (they are Christian, imported, second-hand or art bookstores targeting specific customers). Many of them are second-floor stores (almost all Christian stores are hiding in big buildings. Elim Bookstore's Jordan and Causeway Bay branches are both located in 10th floors and easily neglected except for Christians) with short opening hour (many stores close on weekends and open only from 10 am to 7 pm and therefore difficult for office workers to visit). All these reasons tend to make people overlook bookstores in Hong Kong.
Despite of the challenge, there're a group of people consistently devoting in publishing and running bookstores. These people might not be rich. They are devoted although they know that they won't make much money, or even lose some. I suppose this group of people is the foundation and power of Hong Kong's cultural evolvement. Currently they are still categorized as niche markets. Hong Kong people are steadily recognizing their self-identification (that they are not only Chinese, and living in Hong Kong as permanent residents). In the process of developing self-recognition, these people will be a great aid. That might be also why the vast amount of knowing/exploring Hong Kong type of books published in recent years.
During earlier times when I was working in bookstores, I have observed that some old publishers still earn good revenue even after seldom publishing any books for a long time. After careful analyzing, the publisher is specialized in world classical literature. Those books are long-term bestsellers; quite a few of them have steady sales return each year. In addition, the publisher has a long history of publishing with quite a number of bestsellers. Overall, the revenue is pretty good.
Relying on these long-term best sellers for daily operation cost and even making some profit is the dream of many publishers. However, not only me, many elder publishers have discovered that recently there're fewer and fewer long-term bestsellers on the market. Book market is filled with bestsellers with huge marketing campaign. Or else, they are books soon disappearing from the market not long after being published.
Because publishing covers a wide range of industries, it requires more accurate sales figures to say that long-term bestseller is really gone. For example, the market structure for academic field and mass public can be quite different. There are still a number of long-term bestselling textbooks on the market. As long as teachers use them for teaching or as testing materials, the market exists.
However, generally speaking, the main entities of long-term bestsellers in the retail channel, not for specific target customers, seem to be really decreasing.
After careful considerations, I discover that long-term bestsellers are not really disappearing. The form of long-term bestsellers has changed and their presences aren't that obvious owing to the rise of following phenomena.
The Explosion of New Books' Publishing Number
The direct impact to the market size of long-term bestsellers is the explosion of new book numbers. The book market has changed from a seller market to a buyer market and thus leads to the proliferation of various publishing themes.
40,000 books being published each year and the exceed market supply are the phenomena post year 2000. In early years of martial law and thought control, there're not many books published each year. From the viewpoint of overall publishing quantity, it's not until 1986 that Taiwan's market publishing more than 10,000 books (that is, 10255 books, and not including government and individual publications).
In 1982, there're Kingstone bookstores that represent new style of bookstores with spatial and bright interior design. Each store needs large amount of books to fill in the shelves. Is not until 1970 that the number of books published each year has risen from 2~3000 to 8000 each year (many of them are collections or encyclopedia). Publication before are government policy avocation materials or reissuing of books published before 1949.
That is to say, to sum up bravely, for a long time before the publication explosion the book market in Taiwan is a seller market. Whatever published to the market is eagerly absorbed by the large chained stores and channels to fill in the space. In addition, the end the martial law and the rise of the economy and living standard all make books stay longer in bookstores than they are now. Moreover, the special reading habits lead to a wide array of worldwide classic titles in Taiwan's early publication market.
Factors like publication themes (mainly classic), quantity (low number), bookstore scale (rapid expansion) and market needs altogether contribute to the flourishing of Taiwan's publishing market and thus create a niche for long-term bestsellers.
After 1994, the number of publishing titles is steadying increasing and reached 30,000 in 1998, 40,000 in 2002 and ever since never stop. However, the scale and number of bookstores are not following. On the contrary, owing to the overall industrial structure change (out shift of the manufacture industry to mainland China), the internal market needs have decreased/shrieked. In year 2002 along, there're over 200 bookstores closing business.
The explosion in publishing quantity that outnumbered shelf space will in the end lead to the decrease of display space in stores. It will be difficult to find all the books ever published by one publisher in any one store today. However, it's a common scene in the past.
Besides, publication themes also diversify, especially in informative or consuming titles like travel/gourmet guide, travel literature and photo collections of celebrities.
Moreover, B grade books, which was written by China's writers and published by Taiwanese publishers, are also increasing with the interaction between China and Taiwan. The quality of these books varies and therefore smaller the chance of becoming bestsellers (few publishers publish for some other reasons like publishing books to afford publishing more books).
That is to say, from the theme of publication, there're many published books who are not even qualified (or intend to be) as long-term bestsellers.
Plus, the publishing market in Taiwan is heading toward to heavy capital intensive market with more and more large publishers/ publishing groups. There're more and more publishers who are willing to spend on marketing campaign for certain bestsellers. Publishers and bookstores all rely on the income from new books to make profits (for bookstores, they also have to consider inventory cost). The importance of new books is higher than long-term bestsellers.
The growing number of new books and bestsellers but not the overall market will naturally lead to the decreased sales in traditional long-term bestsellers.
The Rise of Online Bookstores
Taiwan's first online book store, Books.com.tw was born almost at the same time with Amazon.com in 1995. However, it had a rough beginning encountering Asian financial crisis and Internet bubble in 1998 and almost sank with Nari Typhoon in 2000.
Fortunately, it had survived and stabilized it's footsteps through Sars and the gradual population increase of Internet usage each year. It's even capable of carving up the market share of physical bookstores (depending on its logistic system, especially the feature of receiving products in convenient stores). Today it has turn from drowning to become the major three book retail channels in Taiwan.
In my opinion, online stores didn't take away the market share of large chained stores but smaller stores in towns, small cities and remote areas. That is also the reason of the closing down of physical stores in non-urban areas in recent years. Online stores' competency like is price discounts (with 30% off for new books, much higher than offers from local stores), product drop off in convenient stores. With the highest density of convenient stores in Taiwan, no matter where you live, buying books is easy as long as there's convenient store nearby your house.
That is to say, the disappearing revenue from physical stores actually transfers to online stores. Are sales of long-term bestsellers also transferring to online stores? Market for long-term bestsellers might be shrinking but not disappearing.
Book Store Display and Product Mix Management
The rise of online shopping and the decrease of physical bookstores actually have great impact on the sales result of long-term bestsellers. The scale of physical bookstores isn't expanded with the growing number of new books. Therefore, the return rate grows higher and books are more difficult to find by their customers. Ordering books in physical stores can't compete with ordering on Internet on price, convenience and other factors. As a result, the sales of long-term bestsellers are gradually transferred to online bookstores (so-called long tail effect).
Online bookstores take one step further taking away revenue of long-term bestsellers. To compensate for the loss, physical bookstores places more inventories on promoting bestsellers (or marketing campaigns) and therefore sacrifice the maintenance of product mix. For customers, it's more and more difficult to find books they want. In the end, physical bookstores substantially increase the revenue share of new bestsellers.
However, in my opinion, the fundamental reason of long-term bestsellers' retreat from physical stores is the lack of professionals to maintain the long-term bestseller list in store. Except for flagships stores like Eslite Shinyi store or San Min Bookstore, most of the bookstore staff lacks the ability to manage the product mix in the store.
Those staff is already over occupied to cope with the influx of new books each day, to put them on/off shelves and to order/return more books. In addition, they have to handle casher, product inquiry, sorting/checking the store and all strange demand from customers. There're always promotion events and marketing activities taking away most of the working hour. Only very few hours are left for ordering books or managing product display. If the staff isn't familiar with the book market, he/she will have to decide on the sales record, fully follow the current market trend and will never have the opportunity to build its own store's bestseller list. In the past, each store's bestseller list was an important source of profit and accounted for 50% of the revenue (also known as the 80/50 rule, 80% old books accounted for 50% of the performance, 20% of the new book, accounted for 50% of the revenue. today it has become probably 80/20, 20% of the new book, accounted for 80% of the revenue).
Clear Market Positioning and Revised Product Mix
In the long run, large-scale chained stores will continue to exist. For smaller ones, their market space will shrink, except for independent bookstores like Small Ideas, Tonsan and Hungya who know their market position and whose owners are capable of choosing their own product mix. Medium-sized books will not survive if they can't make a breakthrough over their product mix.
In fact, it's not difficult to make a breakthrough. Bookstores will need to have the proper product mix and store atmosphere according to the districts' feature, target audience's preference and historic best-seller lists. Make customers enjoy the experience in stores better than on the Internet. Rebuild their habits of visiting stores to read and to shop. Then the store can win customers.
Recently, there are more and more discount activities from publishers and channels in Taiwan's publishing market. I discovered that, with proper arrangement, I can have 40% off discount for new books and 50% off or more for others. The presale discount has also raised from 21% off to 25~30% off.
It always occurred to me that either the profit/lost equation is different in the publishing industry or the publishers care only about revenue but not margin. Changing profit/lost equation results in higher and higher tag prices. Prices have been trading up. Tag prices have been raised by 10~20%. Raising tag prices and offering more discounts is just playing with words but not offering customers extra bonus.
Although the market situation in Taiwan is a severe price war (looking at the 1 NTD/90% off sales events on TV news everyday), still marketing is not only discount promotion. Otherwise, customers will ask for more and more discounts. Margin is more important than revenue. If managers can't remember the rule and indulge in price
wars, they will earn revenue but not profit and jeopardize their own business.
Offering discounts is All Right
Book is a vary special product. One person will buy only one copy. Even if one bought many copies to give away to their colleagues, friends and family, in the end, each person will have only one copy. That is to say, if you sacrifice margin for revenue, you will never earn the profit back. Of course there are worries that without discounts, there will be no sales. After all, the whole market is in a price war and customers are willing to delay their purchase for more discounts.
Recalculating the Publishing Cost
Leaving the structural/environment cause of price war aside, discount promotion is still applicable. As mentioned before, the publishing cost has to be recalculated. The traditional profit/lost equation has to include discounts offered.
For example, when calculating royalty fee for authors, should we calculate it with tag price or selling price?
Publishers should find the sales percentage in each discount interval. For example, 5% of the total sale falls in tag price, 15% with 10% discount, 35% with 20% discount and 15% with 30% discount. Then the cost and profit of each interval should be calculated to estimate the real cost.
Usually we refer return rate to the returning rate of books in newly published period and assume the sales low after the newly published period (besides classic titles).
High discount won't necessarily lead to high sales. Publishers should find the optimal discount rate (to maximize revenue and profit simultaneously). If one book can be sold with 40% off, then don't go to 50%. Then you can meet the market need for discount and lower the damage of profit loss.
Be Careful with Quantity Orders
Be careful with quantity orders. Don't sell the book with very high discount just because of the large quantity. Even if customers offer low prices and you are willing to do so. You should at least be aware of their purchasing period, purchasing rule, budget resource and reason of purchasing. Quantity orders are great opportunities to earn
more profit. If you know the need of the customer to certain books is "irreplaceable", then you don't have to accept the discount request from your customer. If not, then evaluating how much you want the order and offer an equivalent price.
Don't be Stingy with Discounts when Facing Sales Threshold
However, there's one condition that publishers should sacrifice margin and offer discounts.
When you have a book you assume to be popular and indeed get good sales result, every week there're are good news from the sales report. However, the sales volume reached a certain quantity and didn't move at all. There are enough books in the store, the books just don't move anymore. At this point, you should go far discount promotion. The discount should be high enough to attract customers.
I suppose the whole processing of selling books is like throwing stones in still water and making ripples. In the beginning, the ripple can be small but obvious and quick. Then the ripple will become larger and slower. Not knowing when, the ripple will disappear and the water is still again. The ripple effect is a word-of-mouth effect. In the
beginning, the impact might be small but quick since heavy users spread the new quickly. However, information from heave readers will take longer to reach common reader. To reach those readers who seldom read this kind of books, the spreading will be even longer and require some buzz-marketing techniques.
Now, offering discount promotion is just like throwing stones into the water again to create more ripples (in fact, all marketing activities are like throwing stones to make ripples). This is especially useful when facing a threshold. Certain types of books will have a selling threshold of 5,000,000 copies. After reaching 5,000,000 copies, the sales figure will either stop or reach 10,000,000 copies. However, your sales figure stop at 4,600,000. You don't know whether the sales figure can reach 10,000,000 or not. Before reaching 5,000,000, the ripple effect had already vanished.
You never know whether the book has reached its limit or has more potential. However, what publishers can do is to take the risk and help the book overcome the threshold. Then we can leave it to the market to decide. However, if it were topic books and have short life span, you shouldn't hesitate on discounts. You have to sell all the stocks within its life span at all cost. Topic books (i.e photo collections of celebrities, books about recent discussed issues) will become useless papers outside their life span. Publisher can keep as much as 20 copies for future research needs or fan collection.
Do We Need Discount for Classic Books?
Although the market is constricted for classic books in recent years, there are still classic titles. The number is just less than previous years. If a classic book can be sold for a certain quantity each year, does the publish need to do discount promotion?
I think there're two judging criteria. The first one: does the sales volume already pass the threshold? Secondly, does the sales volume equal with the figure last year? If the book has not yet reached its threshold and its sales figure is less than last year, then publishers should consider offering discount promotions to stimulate the purchase
and let the book overcome the threshold or surpass last year's figure.
However, publishers should be careful when offering discounts. There should be limited amounts of discounted copies (to reach the same sales volume as last year). Otherwise, discounts will attract exceed purchase and publishers will lose their potential customers who will purchase at regular price in the future.
I suggest that there's no need to offer discount promotions for classic books under the request from resellers unless the sales situation is worsen. That will only damage the profit of publishers. If publisher want to offer a favor for resellers, be sure to offer it
with limited discounted copies.
Selling All Books with All Means
We should abandon the traditional belief that books becomes stocks after the newly-published period. When one book is published, the publisher should try all different ways to sell all the books.
Some books can't be sold even with high discounts.
When encounter situations like this, and with large stocks, I suggest publishers should use these books as bonus gifts. Biding them with new books or giving for free to royalty customers and in cross-industrial promotion activities.
If the quantity isn't large, I suggest publishers should give away the books to it's original target customers, schools and institutions, school libraries in remote areas, or NGOs. Some publishers are emotional with books. In my opinion, books are media for thoughts but not equal to thoughts. The ultimate goal for publishers to publish books is making profits to sustain the company. Sale is the major goal of publishing.
Books are made for sale. For those can't be sold, publishers should use them for brand building or better public relationship. They should not sell books in very low prices or keep them in storage. Putting useless stocks as assets is to deceive oneself as well as others. Giving these books away will at least saving the storage cost and earning better brand image. It's better than doing nothing. The duty of publishing books is to sell all the books. Complaining market situation or quality of the book won't be helpful, even if the complain be valid.
Try changing your thought to "selling all the books". I believe that will generate endless marketing ideas. Discount promotion is just one of them (as long as you don't use it as the only promotion strategy, you can do anything that can maximize profit & revenue and earn money for the company).