When readers become fans: How social science history tomes became popular?
China News Weekly reporter / Ni Wei
Published in the 1053rd issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on July 25, 2022
At 8 pm on July 7th, Pan Xuewen from Chuxiong, Yunnan stayed in the live broadcast room of the Social Sciences Literature Publishing House, waiting for the limited edition book "Twenty-Four Solar Terms and Culture of Ritual Music" to be released this week.
In the live broadcast room with more than 20,000 people, only seven or eight hundred copies were released, and they were sold out in two seconds.
He poked the screen wildly and grabbed a copy.
There are not many opportunities like this. The Social Science Literature Publishing House releases four to five special-bound books every month, and he can only grab one or two at most.
The three sides of the special edition of "Twenty-Four Solar Terms and the Culture of Ritual Music" are painted with orange-yellow patterns on the front of the book, and the ancient ritual and music activities extracted from ancient paintings are painted, which perfectly matches the content of the book.
In March of this year, Pan Xuewen accidentally bought a special book in the live broadcast room and entered this pit. So far, he has bought more than 30 copies.
Special-bound books cost a lot and are basically not discounted.
"It turns out that the monthly budget for buying books is fixed at 500 yuan, and I have been running for more than 1,000 yuan in the past few months." He told "China News Weekly", "Some of the ones I liked didn't get them, so I had to buy them at a premium." There are also a lot of book sellers gathered there. On the night of the live broadcast or the next day, some people sell them at a higher price on second-hand websites.
In the past two years, major publishing houses have launched special-bound books one after another. On the basis of ordinary hardcover books, the books are turned into works of art with the addition of inkjet printing, printing, laser engraving and other techniques.
The first special book that Pan Xuewen bought was in the Oracle bone inscriptions series.
Oracle is one of the leaders of this round of special-bound books. They released their first special-bound book in April 2020, and then the wind blew into the publishing world.
Oracle is a humanities and social science book brand established in 2013. It is affiliated to the Social Science Literature Publishing House and focuses on translating and introducing foreign academic-level public books.
In the past ten years, this blank area in the book field has been "rolled up", and a series of brands have gradually appeared.
Before testing the water for special-bound books, oracle bone inscriptions were famous for their rich and colorful binding designs, which influenced the overall design style of the domestic world history book field.
It is precisely because of the selection of historical topics for the public and the highly styled design that Oracle, as well as historical series such as the Hall of History, Suo Ning, and the Cape of Good Hope, have not only become popular in the reading circles, but have also become the first choice of some bibliophiles.
Dozens or hundreds of these books are accumulated locally, and they are neatly stacked on the bookshelves to "build walls".
Buying books can also be addicting.
Many people admit that they are just reading books, but buying books is like a mountain, and they can't help but "chopping their hands".
How did these tomes of social sciences and history, which originally seemed to be high and low-key, moved readers and collectors at the same time?
How did you design the special cover book you grabbed?
In 2020, live book selling has just started. In order to create some topics for the live broadcast room of the publishing house, the Social Sciences Literature Publishing House is thinking about making some special books.
Dong Ran, director of the publishing house's design center, summed up with his colleagues that it was difficult to write an essay on the cover, and there were only three pages left to use.
They used the gilding technique to make oracle bone inscriptions' first special-covered book, "Searching for Extraordinary Codexes", with three sides painted in golden colors.
On the day of the live broadcast of the Reading Day, 400 copies of "The Search for Extraordinary Transcripts" were sold out within a minute.
Inkjet printing on the edge of a book is the most widely used special decoration process, and this process has been used on post-it notes.
I don't know when, this kind of book got the name of "special binding book", that is, "special binding".
Starting from Phnom Penh, spray painting, printing, laser, engraving, gold card and other forms have appeared one after another. Traditional burr, cloth and other crafts have also been incorporated, and they are all done in the snail shell at the mouth of the book.
A special book that Dong Ran likes very much is "The Knights Templar" printed by Chrysostom.
He has a collection of molds specially made for printing, which are as heavy as scales. The cost of the molds is several thousand yuan. The cost of each special edition of "The Knights Templar" is about 30 yuan higher than the ordinary edition.
He also likes the special edition of "Paris Biography" and "Seine Dark Shadow Edition" by Yilin Publishing House. On the basis of the inkjet painting on the top of the book, he also carved a concave and convex along the Seine River, and the design is exquisite but not abrupt.
The craftsmanship is universal, and the design is the more distinguishing factor.
Dong Ran said that a good special design must be in line with the content of the book and ingenious, and can deeply echo the spiritual connotation of the book.
For example, "The Great Turn" with the Renaissance as the background, the two special editions of Ganheikou and Yayinkou were named "Monsterless Edition" and "Enlightenment Edition" respectively, summarizing the theme of that era; "Fear and Freedom" ” splits into two different styles of “Fear Edition” and “Free Edition”.
Dong Fengyun, founder of the Oracle brand, told China News Weekly that Oracle's special-bound books can not only meet the collection needs of some readers, but also have a more realistic purpose. The traffic in the live broadcast room makes more readers pay attention to the book itself.
"Later I found out that many people really like it, so I'll do it for a long time." Now the Social Science Literature Publishing House will launch a special book every week, and it will be open for purchase in the live broadcast room on Thursday night, and the supply exceeds the demand.
For publishers, another purpose of making special-bound books is to explore whether there are more forms of books.
"To put it bluntly, there are only so many parts in a book, you can't make it round, right?" Zhang Peng, editor-in-chief of Houlang's "History Hall" series, told China News Weekly, "The form of a book is essentially a few Different trade-offs between elements.”
Special-bound books are a long-established handicraft in foreign countries. Each page of the real special-bound books is handmade, using lambskin, hand-made illustrations, etc., each one is unique, and the special-bound books on the current Chinese market. The essence is still an industrial product.
"I think the current special-bound book is a transitional state," said Duan Qigang, founder of the publishing brand So En.
In fact, the earliest special edition books in China can be traced back to the famous collection series of Shanghai Translation Publishing House in 2013. The whole set of famous books has been painted with Phnom Penh, but the special edition trend did not become a trend until 2020.
Nowadays, special editions for key titles seem to be the default option of various publishers, and readers will be urged if the action is slow.
In addition to history, the most concentrated themes are Western literary masterpieces. A reader sent a message to the publishing house, requesting that a special edition of the popular Dostoevsky anthology be published as soon as possible.
Readers who are keen on special-bound books are a small but relatively stable group.
Special-bound books are generally limited to several hundred to several thousand copies, and Oracle's best-selling special-bound books have a printing volume of two or three thousand copies.
Oracle has set up more than a dozen special-bound book exchange groups, gathering thousands of readers to exchange new special-bound books from various publishing houses.
Some Oracle boutique special-bound books will set aside about 1,000 copies for sale in the group, and the link will be released in seconds.
Special-bound books show the potential of collectibles, and there are many people who resell them at a tenfold increase in used book trading online.
"During the initial period, the potential of collectibles was very obvious, and the increase was not a star and a half." Dong Ran said that after the product line was enriched, the price increase has ebb, "but with the passage of time, these products may all rise now. price, because time is an axis of collection.”
The radical design in the form of the book is the consistent style of Oracle, and it is also an important reason for its initial breakthrough.
It can be said that it is a continuation of this style to try the water special book first.
When Oracle was founded ten years ago, in order to distinguish it from the cover of social science and history, which is mainly based on the plain style on the market, Song Tao, the binding designer of Oracle, went the opposite way and tried a high-saturation style to shape the brand image of Oracle. .
At that time, brick-and-mortar bookstores were still a very important sales channel, and bright and eye-catching covers could attract more attention in bookstores.
And the richer the color, the less afraid of the deviation in the printing process, thereby reducing printing and time costs.
"Actually, there are more color casts, but it's not important, because the colors are rich enough to withstand losses." Song Tao told China News Weekly.
Gorgeous style covers have also encountered controversy.
Oracle published a philosophy book "The Right to Freedom" in the early days. The cover was bright and bright yellow. Many readers felt unacceptable for the first time. Why is a philosophy book so fancy?
But the market eventually proved that the likes outnumbered the dislikes, and the style continued.
In the past decade, world history books have been dominated by this intense design style and spilled over to other themes.
In traditional book design, simplicity is almost synonymous with seriousness, but now serious books can also be extremely complex.
It is the highly recognizable cover that makes the solemn and beautiful historical tome the first choice for "building walls".
Ten years of reclaiming the reading wasteland
There are already 170 oracle bone inscriptions on the wall of Ling Xiao's house.
He lives in Hangzhou and works in environmental engineering. He has a collection of nearly 2,000 books, among which Oracle is the largest series and his favorite series.
He also collected 30 or 40 copies of the History Hall and the So-En series, and more than 20 copies of the ideal country translation series, all of which have been hoarded in the past ten years. Several times every year, there are several e-commerce promotions, and he starts with a batch of about 40% off. new book.
In the 610,000-member Douban "buying books is like a mountain, reading is like a thread" group (referred to as the "mountain group"), the topic of "scratching wool" by buying tickets and grabbing books has been going on for a long time.
"I like to read history and stories, but I'm not interested in things that are too theoretical. Oracle's books have a strong storytelling." Ling Xiao said to "China News Weekly", "And the cover is very beautiful, and the appearance is also very important. factor."
According to rough statistics, several major social science history brands have published hundreds of popular books, which can be said to be a remarkable achievement in the publishing industry in the past decade.
At the end of the last century, when Dong Fengyun went to university, the most popular authors in the field of social sciences were Max Weber, Foucault, Hayek and other theoretical masters.
At that time, Huang Renyu's "The Fifteen Years of Wanli" had been published in the mainland. Dong Fengyun was shocked after reading it. A rigorous historical work could be written with such a literary quality.
In fact, narrative historiography, which writes history beautifully, is a tradition in Western academic circles. Later, the works of Sinologists such as Shi Jingqian and Kong Feili were gradually introduced, and Chinese readers saw more. Huang Renyu was the earliest one.
At the beginning of the 21st century, when Dong Fengyun was studying abroad, he saw more good-looking historical works abroad, including the "Mediterranean Epic Trilogy".
After returning to China, he joined the Social Sciences Literature Publishing House as an editor, and began to think about introducing such books into China, thus establishing the Oracle brand.
Oracle published its first book "The Rise of the Roman Empire" in 2013, and "Mediterranean Epic Trilogy" was also introduced, and the sales were quite good.
His positioning for Oracle is very clear - standing on the balance between academics and popularization.
Such books are almost blank in the Chinese market, but the potential readers are always there and expanding.
Since the expansion of university enrollment at the end of the last century, the population base with higher education has greatly increased, and there are higher requirements for the quality of books.
In the field of historical reading, they are no longer satisfied with general readings.
"Some very academic history books are selling very well, such as some books by Mao Haijian. If they are more popular, but there are books with a certain depth and material support, the audience will definitely be wider." Duan Qigang, founder of Sooen Say.
After several periods of reform and opening up, accession to the WTO, and the Beijing Olympics, China's demand for in-depth observation of the world and understanding of the world has risen.
When Oracle launched "1453: The Battle of Constantinople", it coincided with the tourism boom in Turkey, and some readers took this book to travel to Turkey.
Oracle has driven a trend, and translations of humanities, social sciences and history for the general public have been recognized by the market, and other brands have also appeared one after another.
History Hall, a subsidiary of Houlang Publishing Company, was established in 2015. It also focuses on world history and has published nearly 120 best-selling books such as "Cotton Empire", "The Armada" and "The Art of Being Ruled". In 2018, Oracle's brother brand "So En" was established - a large number of German historical works were translated and introduced. Zhejiang People's Publishing House launched the "Cape of Good Hope" book series in the same year...
"It is a good thing that the market we want has appeared and the reading community has been formed." Dong Fengyun said.
Although "The Fifteen Years of Wanli" has sold 6 million copies in the Chinese mainland market, this field is still a small market, and the sales volume of more than 100,000 copies is considered a top seller.
Among the more than 260 books published by Oracle, seven or eight have sold between 100,000 and 200,000 copies. The best-selling book is "Autumn in the Kingdom of Heaven", which sold about 170,000 copies. Works of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
The highest-selling "Cotton Empire" in history is also in the same gear.
That's a solid record in history books, but not so much in the publishing market as a whole.
With the help of online stores, self-media and readership, publishers can now portray readers more clearly.
Dong Fengyun said that Oracle's readers are mainly distributed in cities with high economic level, including academia, law, finance, civil servants, media and other industries.
In the past, if these readers of the general intellectual class did not have much interest in academic works, the main reading resources were only literature, while some popular historical readings were full of fiction and jokes, lacking credibility and academic value.
And Oracle has opened up a field in the blank wasteland between pure academics and literature, and pushed popular historical readings with professional standards to the readers.
In the past ten years, Oracle and other brands have not only tapped a group of readers, but also influenced a group of authors.
The introduction and popularity of such history books coincided with the fact that non-fiction and micro historiography became common in the past decade, which promoted the rise of popular history writing in China.
In particular, a group of young scholars, while doing traditional academic research, consciously wrote stories for the public.
Last year, the "Wenjing History Writing Award" was created to encourage writing in the field of history, and there are many such historical works among the first few works selected.
In the end, "Three Capitals", which won one of the first prizes, tells an uncommon history of Mongolia's extermination of gold with literary brushstrokes, without losing academic rigor.
The author of this book, Zhou Sicheng, was born in 1984 as an associate professor of the History Department of Tsinghua University.
"In my opinion, real historians will not reject writing for the general public. What they lack may be some skills. Younger academics may do this more consciously." Zhang Peng, editor-in-chief of History Hall To China News Weekly, there has always been a shortage of people who have written history well, but the academic system for decades has restricted scholars from doing such creations.
"Our ultimate goal is to hope that local authors can write things of this level. This is the most meaningful thing."
Will reader complaints change book design?
Not long ago, Song Tao just completed the cover design of the second volume of the new Oracle book "Hundred Years' War".
The editor specially reminded him in the cover plan: many readers reported that the title of the cover of the first volume could not be read clearly.
On the cover of that edition, the slender white title pressed against an oil painting was indeed inconspicuous.
In the second volume, Song Tao enlarged the title of the book and made it stand out from the background.
It is not the first time he has heard opinions about book titles, which are related to changes in the environment: online shopping has replaced bookstores as the main book sales channel, and readers are browsing new books on the small screen of their mobile phones. The title of the book is clear, and the font size is getting more and more inflated.
At that time, Song Tao designed the fonts to be less conspicuous, just to pursue a vague feeling, so that when people encounter this book in a bookstore, their eyes can stay on the cover for a longer time.
From a design point of view, book writers and book buyers sometimes have certain deviations from the standard of good books.
Bookmakers often start from a practical point of view, while many book buyers value appreciation and collection value.
Especially in the era of e-reading, whether a paper book has collectible value is becoming more and more important in consumer psychology.
A case in point is the endless controversy over lightweight paper.
Lightweight paper is lightweight and can be easily held to read when printing large tomes, and the soft paper is easy to spread.
However, this kind of paper is prone to yellowing, and even mildew spots can occur in humid environments, and some of them can also smell.
Therefore, in some communities such as Douban "Shandown Group", light paper has been boycotted all the year round.
Before buying a book, many people will ask whether it is printed on light paper, so as not to "step on the thunder". Once the publishing house uses light paper, it will be tainted as "cheating money".
However, Duan Qigang, the founder of the Suo En brand, said that light paper is also divided into categories, and some are not necessarily cheap, even more expensive than others.
Publishing houses use lightweight paper mainly for reading friendliness and environmental concerns, as most lightweight papers are made from recycled paper.
The design of the Thorn series has also changed due to reader feedback.
At first, Thorne's format was wider than the average book, approximately square.
Duan Qigang said that this aspect is to improve brand recognition, and the more ample space on both sides is also convenient for annotation.
But some readers reported that the odd format didn't sit well on the bookshelf and looked jagged.
The editorial department absorbed the suggestion and changed it back to the regular format.
In addition, since hardcovers with hard covers are more conducive to collection and display, it has triggered one-sided support from bibliophiles, so that paperbacks are harder to see nowadays.
Thorne initially insisted on "finely designed paperbacks", but eventually had to compromise on hardcovers.
"This may also be a manifestation of the immature market development. It stands to reason that there is a larger market for paperback books, but the price differentiation in the market has not been opened." Duan Qigang said.
There are not many readers who are willing to be "critical" on book binding design, but their voices should not be underestimated due to their keenness to speak on social media and e-commerce platforms.
"If the voice is really loud, it will affect the publishing behavior, but we basically still do things according to our own aesthetics." Zhang Peng, editor-in-chief of History Hall, said, "In the final analysis, it is still to promote good books to more people, we Will see what kind of books more readers are willing to accept.”
Dong Ran, director of the Design Center of the Social Science Literature Publishing House, believes that it is a good thing that some readers are more concerned about book design and paper, and have put forward more requirements for designers.
"This shows that readers are still caring about the book. People think that you have done a bad job, or even scold you. We must have a positive understanding."
With the change of interaction methods, publishers and readers have evolved from a one-way relationship to a two-way interaction, and some readers not only influence but even participate in book production.
Before each new book is published, Oracle will select two people from the core readers to send sample books, and jointly pick out the mistakes of the book.
The Marketing Editor maintains a daily readership of more than 20, a core readership that lasts for many years, and each member is handpicked.
Oracle's designers saw on the Internet that readers had designed their own patterns and painted the books. They also took the initiative to contact the readers who were doing interior design to participate in the design of special-bound books.
Pan Xuewen was a little tired after robbing the special edition books for four months. There are more and more special edition books on the market, and there are at least a dozen of them every month.
The initial freshness gradually faded, and now he only grabs special books that he is interested in.
This is an inevitable process.
Dong Ran hopes that in addition to the special binding, one day there will be new breakthroughs in books.
"It's actually quite difficult to have a bigger breakthrough in the form of the book." He was still pondering, but he didn't know if that day would come.
"China News Weekly" Issue 27, 2022
Statement: The publication of "China News Weekly" manuscripts is authorized in writing