The Paper's reporter Gao Dan
On September 16th, the "Second China-ASEAN Children's Publishing and Reading Forum" jointly organized by China Book Import and Export (Group) Co., Ltd. and Jieli Publishing House was held in Beijing. Representatives of 11 publishing institutions from 6 ASEAN countries, 2 publishing houses from South Asia and 19 children's publishing houses from China attended the forum and discussed the theme of "Changes and Cooperation Strategies in the Children's Book Markets in China and ASEAN in the Post-EPIDEMIC Era".
Group photo at the scene
Promoting cultural exchanges among children and adolescents is one of the key tasks in the cultural field of the China-ASEAN Center. Over the years, the Center has held the China-ASEAN Children's Book Fair and the China-ASEAN Youth Football Friendly Match, supported ASEAN countries to participate in the International Book Fair held in China, and created the "China-ASEAN Children's Cultural Exchange Window" webpage to provide more platforms and channels for children and teenagers of both sides to strengthen exchanges and interactions.
Zhang Mingzhou, president of the International Children's Book Federation (IBBY), believes that in the field of children's publishing, exchanges and cooperation with outstanding international organizations are becoming more and more important. IBBY has 80 national chapters on all continents. Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam have national chapters in Southeast Asian countries, and all children's publishing institutions and reading promotion agencies in ASEAN countries are welcome to participate in IBBY's activities, and IBBY's national chapters have been established.
Huang Jian, president of Jieli Publishing House, said that the field of children's publishing should also pay attention to overseas dissemination: "We have 1057 kinds of books exported to 33 countries and regions, of which 468 kinds are exported to ASEAN South Asian countries, accounting for 44.28% of the total output varieties, and 26 original books have won international awards. For example, "Cloudy Myna" won the Bratislava International Illustration Biennial Award, the Golden Apple Award, and "The Moose of Evenk" was selected as an honorary work of the IBBY International Children's Service Alliance and won the Aesop Honorary Award of the United States. ”
Original Chinese fairy tale books are available in a variety of languages
International cooperation also requires innovative publishing cooperation models. The so-called innovative cooperation model should be based on the local book market to plan and select topics, and promote the publication of more book projects that meet the needs of the local market. "For example, the Egyptian branch of relay is to actively investigate the market needs of the Arabic region, and then plan to publish the Arabic version of the book, which has published 53 books, and will soon launch 47 new books." At present, there is still a lot of room for improvement in publishing exchanges between China and ASEAN South Asian countries. Huang Jian proposed.
Yang Zhenxian, General Manager of Kelitty Publishing House Malaysia, introduced the roller coaster pattern of malaysia's children's book market in the post-epidemic era. He said that on March 18, 2020, Malaysia entered a state of total lockdown and the book sales campaign they were preparing was cancelled at the last minute. But as early as 2014, they opened an online bookstore, but because Malaysians have no online shopping habits at all, the online bookstore in less than a year has closed down due to serious losses. Unexpectedly, in 2020, the situation has undergone a rollercoaster of dramatic changes, although the first quarter of online bookstore sales are only single digits, but in the second quarter, online book sales grew at a rocket-like rate. Sales in April 2020 soared by 1,900% and in May 2020, sales increased by another 982%. Now, from 1 order per month in March 2020 to 5,000 orders per month in June 2021, sales have increased by 350,000%. Yang Zhenxian introduced.
Nori Mira Timotius, General Manager of BIP Publishing House in Indonesia, proposed six major challenges brought by the epidemic and specific ways to break through the dilemma. Challenge one is that offline office has become home office, which makes it impossible for senior employees and new employees to "pass on help"; challenge two is that the epidemic has accelerated the turnover rate of employees in the publishing industry, and many senior editors have left; challenge three is that in the face of changes brought about by the epidemic, editors need to re-study the market and even learn online marketing strategies, which makes employees physically and mentally exhausted; challenge four is that traditional bookstores are closed in large numbers, which has a huge impact on sales; challenge five is that the epidemic control has led to a lag in book distribution; challenge six is, The uncertainty of the printing cycle has increased greatly, and the estimation of the printing period is difficult to predict.
Faced with a series of changes and difficulties, the Indonesian BIP publishing house has gradually shifted its offline activities to online. For example: regular online training, medium and long-term publishing plans have become short-term plans; supervise employees to inject vaccines to improve employees' mentality; close physical stores that can't make ends meet, develop online channels in an all-round way, organize online book fairs, markets, book seminars and other activities to narrow the distance between publishing houses and users; open the online "order-pay-delivery" direct sales model, as well as sell electronic versions of books, and open a print-on-demand model.
Bai Bing, editor-in-chief of Relay Publishing House, introduced the China-ASEAN Children's Book Cooperation Plan at the end of the event: In October 2019, Relay Society and 9 ASEAN Children's Publishing Houses signed the Charter of the Relay-ASEAN Children's Book Alliance, and the alliance was officially established. In July 2021, the alliance welcomed three new members: Vietnam Technology education agency Co., Ltd., Kelitti Publishing House Malaysia and Zhonghua Book Company (Singapore) Limited.
"Now there are a total of 12 members, in April 2021, we recommended a number of Chinese original fairy tale books to the members and observers of the alliance, and the member publishing houses of the alliance selected many high-quality books to be published in ASEAN and South Asia according to the market demand of their countries, publishing characteristic readers' reading habits, and we helped the alliance to obtain authorization as an observer, and at the same time, we also gave certain support to the member publishing houses and observer publishers of the alliance." Introduction of white ice.
Editor-in-charge: Cheng Yu
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang