Having become a significant player in publishing with some 220,000 titles hitting the market annually, China still has a long way to go before establishing itself as a major international player in the industry, according to Wu Shulin, vice director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, who was speaking at the China Publishing Development High-level Forum on Sunday.

 

Every year China publishes around 220,000 titles, of which 130,000 are new, and the total number in print now stands at 400,000, said Wu. He stressed that publishing in China had reached a significant scale but lacked an overall competitive strength and was a long way behind advanced publishing countries of the world.

 

One of the important factors in evaluating a country's publishing sector is whether it has published a large number of books reflecting social progress and scientific achievements, which usually assist in the development of society, Wu observed. However, at present most of such books published in China are not the creation of Chinese but have been purchased from foreign publishers at a high price.  

 

According to Wang Hanhua, president of Joyo.com (a well-known e-commerce website in China), the US only publishes 70,000 new titles each year. The much higher number in this regard does not mean that China was already strong in publishing. The industry places heavy significance on quality rather than quantity, he said. Relevant statistics show that the total stock of unsold books in China has now reached 50 billion copies. 

 

Another headache for Chinese publishers is difficulty in getting payment from bookstores. Without these payments the publishers are unable to pay authors. The debt triangle between publishers, bookstores and authors has become a "bottle neck" in the industry and appears to hold back further development.  

 

There are views that Chinese book prices are too low -- just one-seventh to a quarter of those charged in advanced countries. However, there are also concerns that if prices go up readers may refuse to buy.

 

According to the "Readers Survey in the Internet Era 2006" jointly released by the Founders Electronics Group and the China PC Journal, 60 percent of readers get access to books through the Internet, Wang said.

 

Facing changes in reading habits due to wide use of the Internet, publishers have been adjusting their marketing strategies. By May 2006 around 400 publishers had started e-publishing. Fudan University Press has published over 3,000 e-book titles and is actively studying the multiple applications of the system. The Beijing Publishing Group had 750 e-book titles in 2005 and can publish printed and e-editions simultaneously. 

 

(China.org.cn by Xu Lin, June 20, 2006)