Is it time to say goodbye to eBooks? This trend, which was highly anticipated more than a decade ago, is now facing some new challenges -
In early spring, the Beijing Book Order Fair, known as the "vane of the publishing industry", blew a new wind: the e-book booth disappeared, and the middle of the exhibition hall was a live broadcast room;
On June 6 this year, Amazon will stop the operation of Kindle e-books in China;
Recently, an article titled "Farewell, e-books" attracted attention, saying that "in the past two or three years, the domestic e-book business has had a hard time" and "the development of e-books for more than ten years has proved that they simply cannot subvert the publishing industry".
Many experts and industry insiders believe that the current development of e-books has entered a bottleneck period. In just over a decade, the wave of digitalization has been wave after wave, and this year, the emergence of AIGC (artificial intelligence generated content) technology has attracted widespread attention. From the digitization of batch text to the generation of content by artificial intelligence, knowledge dissemination and content production have undergone tremendous changes.
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed "implementing the national cultural digitalization strategy", and the recently issued "Overall Layout Plan for the Construction of Digital China" proposed "creating a confident and prosperous digital culture". Taking a perspective on the "early" cultural digitization phenomenon of e-books will bring enlightenment to the future construction of digital culture and digital publishing.
Get on the fast train: The "spring" of e-books is short-lived
"When I was in high school, everyone in my class had a Kindle [e-book reader], and everyone held the Kindle to read, but now I haven't seen anyone use it for a long time." Zhang Chuan, a junior at a university in Wuhan, said that the Kindle he listed on the second-hand trading website has not been successfully sold.
The e-book platform represented by Amazon Kindle has cut its business and withdrawn from the market in China, which has caused a great shock in the e-book industry. The article "Farewell, e-books" pointed out that several major e-book platforms "have a bad time", and have made relevant business and personnel cuts in 2022.
E-books were once seen as a "paper book alternative" and had a golden period of development.
With the advent of the mobile Internet era, 2009 is known as the "first year of e-books". At that time, e-readers and mobile reading were in the ascendant, and enterprises such as Hanvon Technology and Founder Group were engaged in the e-reader industry, and the market was becoming increasingly hot; The three major telecom operators led by China Mobile have begun to lay out mobile reading bases and open the era of mobile reading. Under the public's expectation or concern, e-books are moving towards the goal of "replacing paper books".
Around 2012, smartphones gradually became the first terminal on the Internet, and the "spring" of the rapid development of e-books officially began - business explosion and soaring revenue. Data show that in 2012, China Mobile mobile reading base business revenue reached 25.1 billion yuan, the number of customers exceeded 5 million, the average daily page views reached 8 million; mobile reading has become the main source of digital publishing income for some traditional publishing units, "2014-2015 China Digital Publishing Industry Annual Report" shows that since 2012, the average annual growth rate of e-book revenue has reached 20.5%, showing a rapid growth trend.
However, the "spring" of e-books was short-lived.
After 2014, the development of e-books showed a weak trend, and the growth rate of industrial revenue slowed down. According to the "2021-2022 Annual Report of China's Digital Publishing Industry" released not long ago, the overall scale of China's digital publishing industry in 2021 will reach 12762.64 billion yuan, of which online games will account for 2965.66 billion yuan, and e-books will only account for <>.<> billion yuan, the latter is only a fraction of the former.
The reporter learned from CITIC Publishing Group that CITIC began its digital transformation in 2013, e-books are only a small part of its digital reading business, and the digital products currently laid out by CITIC involve text, audio, video and other multimedia forms, including audiobooks, podcasts, online courses, etc.
Is there really not much time left for eBooks?
Reaping the fruit: just how big is the "digital field" of e-books
"I am an ordinary part-time worker, I will open e-books to read after work, and I can read them when I take out my mobile phone at leisure, which reduces the anxiety of inconvenient carrying some paper books."
"No matter how you read, the experience and function of reading is the most important."
——These are two reader messages taken by the reporter in the Guangming Daily client. Undoubtedly, after more than ten years of technology, media and industry development, e-book reading has penetrated into the lives of more people.
Wang Biao, director of the Digital Publishing Institute of the China Academy of Press and Publication, believes that from the perspective of reading, China's e-books have gradually entered the stage of in-depth reading. By the end of 2021, there were about 3446,86,180 digital reading works on the shelves in China, including about 54,2021,12 e-books. In addition, the number of e-books read per capita reached <> in <>.
The reporter learned from "WeChat Reading" that "WeChat Reading" was launched in August 2015, currently has the largest domestic publishing e-book library, as of December 8, has cooperated with more than 2022 domestic publishing institutions, a total of 12,600 e-books are published on the shelf, the total number of historical registered users has also exceeded 25 million, and the monthly active users have exceeded 3 million.
"At present, the development of China's e-book industry chain is gradually maturing." Wang Biao said that traditional publishing units mostly act as copyright providers of e-books, granting the copyright of e-books to third-party productions and distributing them on third-party reading platforms. Some publishers have also built their own e-book platforms. In addition, enterprises such as Palmyue and Migu have made comprehensive efforts in content, platform, terminal and other links to carry out the full-chain layout of e-books.
There are always multiple ways to interpret data. The scale of the e-book industry mentioned above in 2021 is only 66.2012 billion yuan, although it is a fraction of the online game industry, but in 31, the revenue of the e-book industry was only <>.<> billion yuan. In the context of development, in the past ten years, the scale of the e-book industry has been in continuous growth, but the growth rate is far behind that of online games, animation, digital music and other industries.
In the "digital field" of e-books, many fruits have been cultivated. The crux of the question is, how big is this "field" and how many opportunities are there?
Zhao Yushan, deputy dean of the Institute of Publishing Science of Beijing Normal University, analyzed that the bottleneck in the development of e-books is caused by many reasons. First of all, e-books are only "electronic copies of paper books", often lagging behind the paper version of the listing, and copyright protection issues such as e-book piracy and infringement have not been effectively resolved. Secondly, although e-books have the advantages of easy carrying, massive storage, and convenient reading, they are not enough to subvert paper books, and with the maturity of communication technology, their own advantages will gradually be replaced by other reading methods. In addition, in the Internet age, the public has become accustomed to enjoying free information at their fingertips, and guiding readers to spend money on "electronic versions" can indeed be a thankless task. "The traditional concept is that readers are proud of sitting in the book city, and a screen in hand is only a representative of fast food culture," Zhao Yushan said, adding that changing this inherent cultural perception is not something that can be achieved in the short term.
The lack of appeal to creators is also an important factor. One author said, "The income of e-books to authors is minimal, and the royalties of a paper book may get hundreds of thousands of yuan, while the income of e-books on several platforms adds up to only a few thousand yuan."
Out of the Confusion: Back to the Essence of Content Embrace Technological Innovation
E-books, audiobooks, podcasts, short videos, live streams... In just a dozen years, media forms and content dissemination methods have become more and more diverse, but people's time is limited.
"Now people around me are basically brushing short videos, and there are relatively few people reading e-books." Zhang Chuan sighed. According to authoritative reports, as of June 2022, the size of China's netizens was 6.10 billion, and the user scale of short videos increased the most, reaching 51 million.
"This is an inevitable trend in the development of knowledge dissemination to a new stage." Zhao Yushan believes that technological change and the development of social media have made the way of knowledge consumption more and more diversified, in the past people mainly relied on reading books and newspapers to learn knowledge and understand information, now through short videos, online courses, audio programs, WeChat public accounts and other ways and ways to obtain information, greatly diverting the time and energy of reading books (including e-books).
Where do e-books go? In fact, with the rapid development of technology, some of the current confusion will eventually become "unproblematic problems".
At the beginning of 2023, an artificial intelligence robot has aroused heated discussions, which can not only realize human-computer dialogue, but also assist people to do questions, write articles, write code, and AIGC technology has also become a "wind outlet" for Internet companies at home and abroad.
"The content industry can focus more on creative innovation." Wang Biao believes that in the future, AIGC technology may gradually replace some procedural, repetitive, informative and simple inductive work in the content field, which can effectively improve production efficiency, service level and user experience. At the same time, the content industry should improve its ability to distinguish intelligently generated content, and study and judge to avoid risks in ideology and copyright.
Going back to the original question, do we still need to struggle with the future of e-books (and even short and long videos, audiobooks, etc.)? Perhaps, the answer has long been written in the unchanging needs of human beings to read and learn, and the answer will also be written in technological innovation again and again. (Guangming Daily reporter Chen Xue, correspondent Deng Bailu)