2. Influencers

Being recommended by influencers comes an important factor in books sales. Physical books of network literature take more than half of the top 10 fiction bestsellers. Cyberspace writes as influencers are the clout themselves, for example, ZHI Chu, the writer of network literature of Everyone is Born to Be Loved, can receive 2 million likes in a short video. With various merchandising, such as bookmarks, Polaroid, cards, etc., his book receives hot rush from fans, who are even willing to pay a premium. Alike the fiction books, the bestsellers in top 3 of non-fiction category “The Complete Book of Food Therapy for 100 Diseases” and “Su Book (Plain Book): Perceiving the Wisdom of Success in the Legendary Book” are listed because they are promoted by social media influencers.

3. Heat of comic knowledge books

There is a heat of comic knowledge books due to the new “Double Reduction” policy, which booms family education and the demand for functional books reading in family. The fun comic knowledge book well balancing learning and fun is a solution to the pain points and take the all top 3 best sellers of children’s book category in September, which are “Comic Science for Elementary School Students (4 titles)”, “Comic Psychology for Elementary School Students (4 titles)”.”This is the Comic Math Children Love to Read (6 Titles)”. Besides of the Top 3, “ Math, Science and Chemistry Turn Out to Be So Interesting”, “I am a Star Student Series” are some of the bests. “The First Law Enlightenment Book for Children” achieves sales volume of 8 million cps. Not only the kids, because of the longer home time during the epidemic and the increased demand for personal improvement during global economic recession, easy-going knowledge books are welcomed by adults too, such as “The Beauty of Mathematics” and “Wang Liming’s Lectures on Evolution”, presenting difficult professional knowledge in a more accessible way. “The Beauty of Mathematics” has sold 900k copies. It will keep increasing these two years till it reaches saturation point.

4. China-themed

Publishers are attaching and will attach greater importance to the China-themed publishing with policy guiding and encouraging. The Incredible Pillar of Great Power is planned corresponding to the increase of China national scientific and technological achievements in primary and secondary schools’ examinations. It personifies the great innovations and super projects into 76 cartoon characters, setting identity and shaping into a super idol for children. What an ingenious idea! It is positioned as a Super-class product, and its publisher, China CITIC Press, provided strong resources in distribution and promotions. In the first 7 days after launching, it sold more than 80,000 copies and got a revenue of 2.56 million RMB (350K USD). The circulation reaches 180,000 copies in two weeks after launching.

5. Gold titles phenomenon

In the first three quarters of 2022, the book retail market declined by 13.41% year-on-year and has not yet recovered to the level of 2019. The Matthew effect is more obvious. Gold titles are the focus and target for publisher to make delicacy management on content and channels, when the gold age has passed. Like pareto principle, Gold Titles refer to the products rank top 1% in sales and contribute nearly 60% in revenue. There are 20,000 gold titles in market, nearly half are children’s books, followed by teaching reference books, 8,000 titles; literature, academic culture are more than 1,000 titles. 80% of Chinese publishing houses have gold titles, but most of them have less than 50.

6. Digital Collections/NFT trials

Since 2021, some Chinese publishers have been trying Digital Collections, a new publishing formats, similar to Non-Fungible Token (NFT), which have achieved a great response in a short period of time. Yangtze River New Century Publishing House, as the first NFT player in publishing field, launched 8,888 copies of NFT products “Twenty Years, the Story of Time”, were sold out in only 20 seconds. With a price of 19.9RMB per copy, the revenue was about 170,000 RMB (23,000 USD). People’s Literature Publishing House launched “Zhengzi Gongye: the dynamic prints of the Five Tiger Generals of Records of the Three Kingdoms” and achieved a total revenue of 995,000 RMB (137,000USD) only in 2 minutes. As the policy is not clear enough, Chinese publishers just take a small trial, but it shows publishers’ keen sense of positive exploring in the digital changes. Digitalization is keeping bringing fast and strong crash to Chinese publishing industry in the past ten years and is deeply changing the infrastructure. An open mind is essential, just like the trials in NFT. I believe this attitude will enable us to take a more proactive position in the present time to meet the possible upcoming Web 3.0 era.