Ignition Dimension (ID: chaintruth) original
Produced by Burning Finance
Author | Hou Yanting
Edit | Rao Xiafei
"Maybe they haven't seen each other in a long time. Long, long. Maybe the last time they hugged each other like that, both were still young. In the past few days, Lin Yin has finished reading the new book "Clara and the Sun" by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, and this sentence in the text makes her unforgettable for a long time.
Lin Yin, born in 2000, studied at a university in Shandong. At the beginning of September in the Douban group "buy books like a mountain, reading like a silk" saw the netizens recommend the "more reading month" information, Lin Yin on the pinduoduo bought 10 books in one go, "'More reading month' There are many books I want to read are discounted, spelling down, "Clara and the Sun" is only 9.9 yuan, "Native China" is only 6.1 yuan, are genuine. She told Burning Finance and Economics that she will read more than a dozen books every year, and humanities and popular science books will be involved.
It's not just Lin Yin who likes to read. Nowadays, the atmosphere of "reading for all" is becoming increasingly strong, and for today's young people, reading has become more and more of a habit. Recently, the "2021 New Youth Reading Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by Beijing Normal University shows that the trend of rejuvenation of book consumers is obvious. In the paper book reading data, the proportion of new young people reached 43.6%, which means that paper book consumers have not aged with the advent of the mobile Internet era, and the post-00s also love to read paper books.
Some scholars have found that the reading tendency and behavior of young people, and their reading ability will directly determine the level of creativity and affect the future of the country and the nation. The more young individuals like to read political, economic, social, scientific, technological, cutting-edge topics, poetry and prose, and content related to disciplines, the greater the chance of having a higher level of creativity in the long run.
"For people who like to read, it is not realistic to go to the library to borrow, because the frequency of new book updates is slow, and this discount activity carried out by Pinduoduo really helps everyone's enthusiasm for reading." Post-90s Jiangcheng said that during the "Duoduo Reading Month" activity, due to the limited purchase of 10 books per person, he borrowed two accounts of relatives and friends, and bought a total of 30 books, "I am very fortunate and very happy, I bought books that have been in the shopping cart for a long time, including many classic masterpieces of CITIC Publishing House, and the discounts are not low." ”
Book e-commerce competition is fierce, and Pinduoduo this year with the april and August two quarters of the knowledge inclusive action "More Reading Month", united with the People's Literature Publishing House, the Commercial Press and other more than 60 domestic authoritative publishing houses, each quarter invested 50 million yuan in reading funds, subsidies covering more than 3 million affordable genuine books, so that more young people can buy the high-quality books they want to read. "Affordable and good books, read by all" is exactly the concept that "More Reading Month" wants to promote.
The person in charge of pinduoduo's "Duoduo Reading Month" project said, "In the era of national reading, as a new e-commerce platform, Pinduoduo hopes to do more things, including subsidizing affordable and genuine classic books of publishing houses, supporting creators' high-quality content production and writer brand building." ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="18" > young people love to read</h1>
"I spend at least three hours a day reading, and in addition to watching movies, my hobby is reading." Yuan Ya, who was born in 1994 and is now an art teacher in Beijing, told Burning Finance and Economics that she will now carefully read 5 books every month, and reading books points out the direction of her life, which can take many detours, "For example, I recently watched "Madame Bovary", and I was greatly inspired, these things are things that you have to hit a wall many times in your work and life to be able to understand. ”
Yuan Ya likes to read paper books, if it is inconvenient to carry when going out, she will also use WeChat reading, Douban reading, and read some e-books.
Like Yuan Ya, as a post-00s haihai, reading is also her habit of life. Haihai studied graduate school in Japan, recently took online classes in China, majoring in Chinese political and social studies, born in 2000, she can read 40 social science books a year, "As long as I am not very busy, I will read every day." When you are interested in a topic, you will read more books on that topic, such as political philosophy. Recently, I am interested in the northeast, and I will read some related books, such as "Historical Memory Production". When it comes to how to buy books, she said that the ratio of bookstores to online shopping is 1:2.
More and more young people like Yuan Ya and Haihai are leaving their mobile phones to read and share, which is increasingly becoming their new way of socializing. The Report corroborates this trend. According to the data of the "Report", in 2020, the growth rate of book consumers increased by 3.8 times compared with 2019, mainly the new youth group after 95, and the proportion of new youth groups increased from 16.4% in 2018 to 18.1% in the first half of 2021. The average national reads about 4.7 paper books, and the average reading of paper books after 95 is 5.3.
Source / New Youth Reading Report 2021
In terms of the number of purchases, among the people who buy more than 8 books per year, the proportion of new youth groups is also the highest, reaching 43.4%. According to Tmall book data, the consumption potential of new youth books continues to rise, and the post-00s generation has shown a high consumption potential, and the consumption scale has grown rapidly. In the first half of 2021 alone, the growth rate of Tmall's post-00 consumption scale reached 65%.
The "2020 China Book Market Report" jointly released by JD Books & iResearch also pointed out that through the user portraits of JD Books, it can be seen that the younger book users are becoming more and more obvious. The proportion of post-95 users and the unit price of pieces have increased relatively significantly: the proportion of users under the age of 25 has increased from 16.4% in 2018 to 17.6% in 2020, and the unit price of post-95 users has increased by 10% in 2020 compared with 2018. The post-95s generation, which was previously regarded as a consumption potential, has grown into a new force in book consumption.
It is worth mentioning that according to Jingdong Book big data, the growth rate of the number of female users exceeded the growth rate of the number of male users in 2019 and 2020, and was significantly higher by 13 percentage points in 2020; compared with 2018, the increase in the number of female new users in 2020 was more than the increase in the number of male new users by 15%.
The urban-rural divide of knowledge reading is also narrowing in the face of "affordable books". According to official data, in the second quarter of the "Duoduo Reading Month" orders from all over the country, Guangdong, Shandong, Jiangsu and other populous provinces ranked among the top in the country. Orders from first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen accounted for the highest proportion, and consumer orders from townships and rural areas also accounted for 20% of the total.
Fifi went to school at the second middle school in the county, and the school learning atmosphere is not first-class, but she still developed a good reading habit, "We take a vacation every two weeks, I usually set an alarm clock after school on Fridays, 45 minutes each time, a total of two times, for reading, and I will make reading notes on Saturdays and Sundays." ”
Fifi likes to read foreign literature, such as "Grandma's Apology Letter", "A Man Named Ovie Decided to Die", etc. "Before that, there was a period of academic performance in the trough period, and the family did not understand, but after reading the book "Island Bookstore", I felt quite healed, and even had a feeling of redemption. She also found that reading is indeed a good habit, which is also of great help to her Chinese and historical achievements.
Luo Luo is also a post-00s, going to university in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, and often buys books in Pinduoduo, "I have a limited budget, Pinduoduo is cheap to buy books, payment methods are also convenient, the tools for writing papers, and some humanities and social science books, I will buy on it." He said that he can read about 5 books a month, "reading is a stable companionship, reading will make life smoother, you can also learn new things." Sometimes reading a complete literary novel, instead of spending this time brushing your phone, will feel high quality and satisfaction. ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="70" > young people to read more</h1>
On Pinduoduo, in addition to buying "Clara and the Sun" and "Native China", college student Lin Yin also purchased best-selling books such as "Arriving Before Midnight", "Knowing My Name", and "Lecture Notes on Western Modern Thought".
According to the reading list of the second season of "Reading More Book Month", "Native China", "Poor Charlie's Treasure Book", "Fifteen Years of Wanli", "Life Sea Sea", "Clara and the Sun" and so on have become the most popular books in this event. In addition, "Guns, Germs and Steel", "Outsider", "Global General History", "The Beauty of Mathematics", and "Lecture Notes on Modern Western Thought" rank at the top of the best-selling lists of social science and management, literature, history, encyclopedia, and art and philosophy.
Lin Yin also found that "the book I wanted to read just happened to be sold and discounted on Pinduoduo, and I felt very surprised, and I didn't spend much money to buy it, such as "Know My Name" is also 9.9 yuan. ”
"I like to read books, but what kind of books to read, what books are worth reading, sometimes it is more blind." 」 Many times, in order to reduce blind purchase of books, Lin Yin likes to go online to see the list of books recommended by others, and then go online to buy according to the book list. After Buying Books in Pinduoduo, Lin Yin found that Pinduoduo would recommend books that suited him according to his preferences. "I tried to buy a few times according to the recommended book list, and found that they were all my favorite books, which was very convenient."
Coco, born in 2001, is a female college student in Beijing, she told Burning Finance and Economics that she read to the point of intoxication, she can read dozens of books a month, every day except for class, the rest of the time is reading. "On National Day, I began to read big history, that is, books on a series of processes from the explosion of the universe to the birth of the earth and the evolution of living things, which greatly satisfied my curiosity. Previously, I had read books on political governance and wanted to understand how the government works. Next, I am going to read about economics, such as the process of company, the operation of the market, the method of starting a business, etc. ”
Coco frankly said that as a student, buying a book at a regular price feels very expensive, and if the book you like is discounted, the burden of buying it will still be much smaller. "I like to spell books on Pinduoduo now, and some literature and history books, when I pinduo subsidies, are really fragrant."
In fact, how to make it easier for young people to access their own high-quality books is a problem that the "More Reading Month" project team has paid attention to since its establishment in March. To this end, the project team has formed a special group of nearly 100 people from the departments of technology, operation, products, customer service, strategy department, platform governance department and tens of billions of subsidy channels. In the selection of high-quality books, a duoduo book selection group formed by more than ten senior editors has been set up, and 1000+ high-quality bibliographic SKUs have been selected from authoritative awards at home and abroad such as the Nobel Prize for Literature, mao dun literature award, Hugo award, and tens of thousands of classic books on the literary best-selling list.
Figure / Pinduoduo
"Reading Month" also launched the "Creators of All Voices Project" for writers, named after the classic phrase "The Noise of the Island" in Shakespeare's famous "The Tempest". The person in charge of the "Duoduo Reading Month" project pointed out, "In the initial product design, our idea is that we hope to do a public welfare project, tilt the platform traffic, establish a professional operation group, and provide a public welfare platform for writers to directly connect with readers, so that more creators can be seen by readers." ”
As one of the first resident writers, travel writer Liu Zichao's masterpiece "The Lost Satellite: A Journey Deep into Central Asia" achieved the result of selling 1,000 copies in 5 hours in the first season of "Duoduo Reading Month", becoming the top three best-selling books in the travel category on the station. In the second season of "Duoduo Reading Month", Liu Zichao's new book "Arrival Before Midnight" has sold nearly 3,000 copies in the reading month activity for nearly half a month, entering the top ten literary bestsellers in Pinduoduo, and also the first place in the new book bestseller list of relevant authoritative literature lists.
Obviously, the above data shows that the choice of "More Reading Month" in classic and high-quality books conforms to the diversified reading needs of young people. The report also pointed out that from an intergenerational point of view, the post-90s young people have a significantly higher awareness of the importance of reading than other age groups.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="73" > a new trend in book e-commerce</h1>
The controversy over book e-commerce has become flat. As early as 2004, Amazon acquired excellence network founded by Lei Jun, but it withdrew in July 2019 and no longer sold paper books. In 2010, Dangdang.com, founded by Li Guoqing and his wife, was delisted in 2016, but Liu Qiangdong's Jingdong Books overtook Dangdang's market share in 2017.
Nowadays, it seems that book e-commerce is an "old business", and it is not easy to open a "new story".
However, at a time when physical bookstores are looking for a new way out, paper books have not lost their market. In April 2021, the results of the 18th National Reading Survey released by the China Press and Publication Research Institute showed that from the perspective of the reading form of adult national tendencies, in 2020, 43.4% of adult citizens tended to "take a paper book to read", an increase of 6.7 percentage points from 36.7% in 2019.
According to Jingdong's 2021 book reading report, consumers buy more than four books per capita, and the amount of books purchased is more than 300 yuan, of which 14.6% of readers buy more than 20 books a year.
In the second season of Pinduoduo's "Duoduo Reading Month", 30% of consumers bought more than 5 books, and more readers targeted "carnival" in the book pool. Some publishers have found that there is no shortage of new readers who continue to buy the entire series of books after purchasing a book out of the circle, forming an "inclusive consumption".
It's not that many people don't want to buy paper books, but the genuine price is not cheap. Jiangcheng is in Suihua City, Heilongjiang, he bought books in Pinduoduo, because of the price, "Now books are not cheap, I bought 30 books for six or seven hundred yuan, about one-third of the province than before, and they are all genuine." ”
Jiangcheng bought books in Pinduoduo source / Douban group
Even in first-tier cities, if you read a lot of paper books, this cost is not small. Lawyer Zhang, who lives in Shenzhen, recently bought more than 40 books on Pinduoduo, "Due to the promulgation of the Civil Code last year, the Supreme People's Court has some of the latest judicial interpretation revisions, as a legal worker, I must update my knowledge, and the purchase of these people's publishing house books, the regular price is more than 100 yuan, and many on Pinduoduo are less than 50% off." As a post-80s generation, he said that he still prefers paper books, and he has to read two or three books a month.
The person in charge of the "Duoduo Reading Month" project found that "the proportion of consumers from third- and fourth-tier cities who buy social science philosophy and art categories is rising." "Sir", "Six Notes of Floating Life", "Ancient Rivers", "Fifteen Years of Wanli", "Life Sea" and other popular books are in the sinking market demand. ”
According to the "2020 More Reading Report", more than 400 million readers "spelled" knowledge through Pinduoduo last year, and the book order volume and transaction volume from rural areas increased by more than 180% year-on-year, of which the book order volume and book transaction volume growth rate of rural primary and secondary schools with delivery address also exceeded 152%. Readers in first- and second-tier cities are also eager to read, and rural areas have become an incremental market for book consumption.
In the book subsidy of Pinduoduo, the amount of subsidy for a single book is between a few yuan and tens of yuan, which greatly stimulates the enthusiasm of consumers to buy books.
"Due to the reader's enthusiasm for the 'More Reading Month', the inventory of some of the single books participating in the activity is insufficient, and the publishing house coordinates with the bookseller to solve the inventory problem by printing or adjusting the inventory." The person in charge of the "More Reading Month" project pointed out that the C2M model of the book category was piloted in the "More Reading Month". In the second season of "More Reading Month", "Clara and the Sun", "Sir", "Wangu River", "Selfish Gene" and other books that have a slightly long tail in the usual book market have been enthusiastically snapped up by readers during the reading month, and urgently reprinted, changing the SKU to "pre-sale" to meet the needs of consumers.
Resources:
"2021 New Youth Reading Report: New Youth Becomes a New Force in Book Consumption", source, Research Group of Professor Yu Guoming, School of Journalism and Communication, Beijing Normal University
"2020 China Book Market Report", source, JD Books & iResearch
"2021 Semi-annual Report on Book Consumption", source, CBNData X Tmall, CBN Commercial Data Center
*Caption image from pexels.
*In the text, Lin Yin, Jiang Cheng, Yuan Ya, Hai Hai, Fei Fei, Luo Luo, cocoa pseudonyms.
*Disclaimer: In no event shall the information herein or the opinions expressed herein constitute investment advice to any person.