中国作家协会主管

出版的前景与出版的理由

出版作为一个历史悠久的产业，长期能够得以存在，是因为它提供的专业化服务能够让作者写作的内容能够被公众阅读，以及更容易被广泛阅读。出版，借助技术手段，把人对自身、世界的认知结果公开呈现、传播，它是一种既有文化属性又有信息属性的社会化活动。出版业的核心能力是对文化及信息内容的处理能力，拥有专业出版技能的编辑和机构对蕴含着思想与知识的信息内容进行专业化的发现、加工、传播，自主或辅助作者让思想与知识的创新不断得以呈现。

出版开始成为产业是因为印刷术，印刷术是人类近代文明的先导，为知识的广泛传播、交流创造了条件。印刷术对世界文明进程和人类文化发展产生了重大影响。出版业的发展一直受制于传播载体。从甲骨金石、竹简木牍，到丝帛纸张，再到今天的显示屏、互联网，在人类思想文化传播进程中，抽象的思想与知识一直需要通过这些载体呈现、传播。而每一种新的传播介质的广泛应用，主要都是因为它比上一代载体更加经济和便捷。

今天，因为信息技术和互联网的进步，出版正在发生巨大变革。数字出版已经在全球范围广泛普及，阅读的载体早就不再局限于纸张，大批读者接受并习惯了使用电脑、电子阅读器、手机等屏幕阅读，电子书、网络出版分走了纸书相当大份额的市场。个人出版也在不少国家发展迅猛。

几年前，就有不少人预测纸质出版将要消亡，判定数字出版和个人出版就是出版业的未来！在未来，不再需要出版社了，每个人都可以是作家，自由地发表作品并从中受益，甚至有资深出版人明确指出纸书将终结在哪一年。时间的脚步一直没有停下，阅读需求持续旺盛，但传统出版业并没有出现预言中巨大的下行拐点，今天大家发现纸书市场的萎缩开始在逐步放缓，甚至还有了些许回暖。

在北京开卷信息技术公司发布的《2016年度国内外图书零售市场报告》中，2016年，中国图书零售市场总规模为701亿元，较2015年的624亿元同比增长12.30%，新书品种数约为21.03万，同比上年增长4.31%，连续五年保持稳定。少儿、文学、教辅三大细分类别是市场增长的主要推动力。文学同比增长率在16.1%。中国国家新闻出版广电总局发布的《2015年新闻出版产业分析报告》中，2015年纸书的销售相较于2014年，不但没有下降，反而有所增长。2015年全国共出版图书47.6万种，较2014年增长6.1%。图书出版实现营业收入822.6亿元，比上一年增长4.0%；利润总额125.3亿元，增长了7.0%； 2015年出版重印图书21.5万种，增加2.3万种，增长11.9%。重印图书46.2亿册（张），增加4.9亿册（张），增长11.8%，大幅超过新版图书。书籍单品种平均印数有所增加，当年累计印数超过百万册的书籍由2014年的66种增加到68种。这些数据都表明，传统出版业尽管增长缓慢，但并不缺乏活力。

不可否认，近年来科技的创新确实给缓慢发展了几百年的出版业带来了巨大的冲击。技术进步，特别是数字技术和网络技术快速发展、不断完善，加速了出版业的实质性转型。数字技术、网络技术已经深层次地渗透进出版业，对出版业产品、载体、渠道等产生明显冲击。以移动互联网等为代表的新一代信息技术正在使传统出版业产生更深层次的变革，在各个方面推动创新。可以说，数字网络技术正在深刻改变着出版业，改变出版的模式、方式以及载体的形式。

需求的变化也在影响着出版业的变化。今天的年轻人越来越习惯在屏幕上获取信息，纸质出版物在他们的阅读中占比越来越低。人们整体的阅读习惯正在发生趋势性改变，电子书、网络出版、自出版等新模式逐渐普及，获取极为便捷。

虽然数字出版等新的出版形式越来越成为出版的重要构成，但在一个比较长的时期内，中国阅读市场中纸质书应该还会继续是出版的主要形式。首先，是人们长期以来养成的阅读习惯难以彻底改变，尤其是中年以上阅读者，他们习惯了纸质阅读介质，阅读对他们来说，不仅仅是获取信息和知识的手段，还是他们生活方式的一部分，所以，只要有可能，纸质读物还会是他们长期选择的选项；其次，不少内容的呈现在目前阶段，还没有更适合的纸质介质替代物；第三，数字出版在中国因为商业模式尚未成熟、产业链条不完善、技术更迭过快等原因，没能出现预想中的高速增长，而且它所遇到的难题几乎无法跨越：数字出版的主要内容基本都来源于纸书。只要数字出版不能建立起一条完整的出版产业链，在内容生产端还依赖传统出版业，就远远谈不上颠覆传统出版业；第四，技术的发展在有利于数字出版的同时，也会助力传统纸质出版的发展。活字印刷术发明之前，出版要耗费大量人力物力财力刻版，技术的进步，让活字印刷快速取而代之，使得文化的传播爆发式增长。今天科技的进步，使得纸质出版必不可少的排版校对印刷装订等工艺更加便捷，对于熟练技术工人的需求大幅降低，加上高速印刷、机械装订使得规模生产极为便捷，生产成本直线下降；第五，按需印刷的普及让小印量纸质出版轻而易举。出版印刷行业的技术进步也正在让纸质图书生产成本更低。

近年来，因为互联网技术的快速发展，每个人都可以把自己写作的内容轻易上传发布。可以每次发布一个章节，也可以全文发布。阅读者可以对作品内容纠错，提出建议。作者与读者随时互动，作者甚至可以选择按照多数读者愿望继续创作。在中国，互联网原创文学网站一度盛极一时。无数草根作者发现自己能够彻底摆脱传统写作发表、出版的束缚，按照自己意愿写作，将作品随时上传到文学网站平台，实现比传统出版更广泛的传播，因而爆发出极大创作热情，仅阅文集团各平台每天更新的文学作品字数以亿计算。作者自己也能独立完成从内容创作到制作电子书，并在网络平台传播获利的全过程，打破了以往传统的内容出版需要借助专业编辑和机构实现的模式。同时，自出版形式也在很多国家快速发展。既然有那么多作者正在自己完成出版过程，作品得到广泛传播，且收入不菲。那么，个人化出版是否能彻底改变游戏规则？现有出版模式是否因此将被终结呢？

看样子没这么简单。

大部分作者写完一部书稿，一般会有几个需求：一，专业的校订和修正；二，传播给更多的读者；三，获取最多的经济收益。而这正是传统出版社一直给作者提供的专业服务。尽管专业服务有时并不有效，大量优质内容经出版机构做了各种努力还是没能如愿广泛传播，甚至无数好书被号称经验丰富的出版人忽视。全球畅销的JK·罗琳的《哈利波特》曾经被多家出版社拒绝出版，我工作的作家出版社出版的《好妈妈胜过好老师》累计销售接近700万册，而当年籍籍无名的作者尹建莉拿着书稿找来之前，也曾被好几家出版社退稿。但是从现在情况看，更多的作者还是选择将自己的作品交给出版机构来出版纸质图书甚至是电子书。出版机构的优势在于长期的资源和品牌积累、大量优秀专业编辑、对作品精细打磨的能力和对渠道市场的专注。图书，特别是文学图书，有着丰富经验的编辑给文本和传播过程带来的提升，往往是极有价值的。作家的作品想要进入大众阅读市场，光书籍的版式、开本、材料、定价、促销活动等等这些编辑出版发行细节技巧，都不是一般人能够全面掌握的。由专业的人做专业的事情显然更容易达成目标，同时使利益最大化。

专业的出版很难被个体化的出版行为替代，但现有的出版模式显然已经不能满足当下的需求。科技进步正在催生新的出版内容、产品、载体和出版模式，并为出版业创新商业模式奠定基础。技术的不断升级推动出版业转型升级，阅读交互技术、应用于阅读产品的多媒体技术等正在不断成熟，文字、语音、图像等要素之间的转换将大大提速。出版产品将广泛拓展到广播、电视、音像、电影等多种形态，多媒体、跨媒体、超媒体模式正在陆续出现。在新技术的支持下，能看、能听、能闻、能虚像演示、能参与的产品已经随处可见，大量图书将出现在可穿戴设备上，数字阅读大范围普及，图书的移动性、交互性等特征快速增强。以大数据、智能机器人技术等为基础的“智能写作”将大范围出现，并部分替代人类写作，成为出版重要的内容来源。写作新闻稿的机器人现在已经是不少媒体的标配，很快，智能机器人写作的文学作品也会吸引不少阅读者的眼球。同时，“智能出版”模式也将快速发展。未来的出版业将越来越依赖先进技术的支持，先进技术也将推动出版业更深层次的升级甚至革命。出版的众筹模式更加普及，自出版模式将走向成熟，在出版流程、分成模式等方面的优势将更加凸显。语音转换、文字翻译等技术的成熟，势必出现具有颠覆性的“全球出版模式”。销售渠道、营销模式也都正在发生实质性变化。传统出版与新兴出版的融合正在日益加速。当出版不再作为孤立的出版，而是作为内容产业源头，自身也就有了更多的可能性。

未来的诱惑，有我们已知的，更多来自于我们未知的。让我们一起去寻找那些至今还隐藏着的未知，看出版还能给世界带来什么。

Prospects and Reasons of Publishing

Liu Fang

As a long-standing industry which remains in existence for a long time, publication provides specialized services that allow authors to write content that can be easily read by the public more extensively. With the support of technology, it enables people to openly present and spread cognition of themselves and the world. So it is a social activity with both cultural and informative properties. The core competence of the publishing industry is the ability to deal with cultural and informative content. Editors and institutions with professional publishing skill specialize in discovering, processing, disseminating ideas and knowledge. They also autonomously deal with or assist authors in the innovation of ideas and knowledge.

Publication grew into an industry as a result of printing, which is the precursor of modern civilization and the widespread dissemination and communication of knowledge. Printing has had a significant impact on the development of world civilizations and human culture. The development of the publishing industry has been subject to the carrier of communication. In the development of human thought and culture from symbols on bones, stones, bamboo slips to words on silk and paper and then to what we can observe in the modern world such as the Internet, abstract ideas and knowledge must be presented and spread through these carriers. New media platform emerges mainly because it is more economical and convenient than previous methods.

Today, because of the progress of IT and the Internet, publishing is undergoing tremendous changes. Digital publishing has become widely popular throughout the world with the carrier no longer confined to paper. A large number of readers have accepted and been accustomed to the use of computers, e-readers, mobile phones and other screen reading. E-books and online publication have grabbed a big share of the market. Personal publishing is also developing rapidly in many countries.

A few years ago, there were many people who predicted that paper publishing would die out, and that digital publishing and personal publishing were the future of this industry. In the future, publishers would be no longer needed, because everyone could be a writer, free to publish their own work and benefit from it. A senior publisher even clearly pointed out when paper books would become abandoned. The pace of time has not ceased and the demand for reading has continued strong, however the huge inflection point did not appear in the traditional publishing industry as predicted. Today we have found that the sluggish paper book market has begun to recover gradually.

According to the Report on China’s Retailing Book Market at Home and Abroad 2016 released by OpenBook, in the year 2016, the total retail market of Chinese books was worth 70.1 billion yuan, up by 12.30% year on year, compared with 62.4 billion yuan in 2015. The number of varieties of new books was about 210,300 with an increase of 4.31% over the previous year. That implies growth for five consecutive years. Children’s literature and Teaching-aid books are the main driving force of market growth with literature growing at a rate of 16.1%. China’s State General Administration of Press and Publication, Radio and Television released the Press and Publication Industry Report 2015, which states that the sales of paper books in 2015 did not decline but increased when compared to 2014. A total of 476,000 books were published nationwide in 2015, up by 6.1% from 2014. Book publishing generated an operating income of 82.26 billion yuan, up by 4.0% over the previous year. The total profit reached 12.53 billion yuan, an increase of 7.0%. 215,000 kinds of books were published or reprinted in 2015, an increase of 23,000, or an increase of 11.9%. 4.62 billion copies of books were reprinted, an increase of 490 million copies, or an increase of 11.8%, significantly more than the new version of the books. The average number of copies of books increased and the number of books of more than one million copies has increased from 66 in 2014 to 68 in 2015. These statistics show that the traditional publishing industry is not lacking in vitality despite the slow growth.

Undeniably, in recent years, innovation in technology has indeed brought a huge impact to the publishing industry which has grown slowly for hundreds of years. Technological progress, especially the rapid development and constant improvement of digital technology and network technology has accelerated the substantive transformation of the publishing industry. Digital technology and network technology has deeply penetrated this industry, exerting a significant impact on products, carriers and channels, etc. The new generation of IT, represented by mobile Internet, is leading the traditional publishing industry into deeper transformation and innovation in all of its aspects. It can be said that digital network technology is profoundly changing the industry, including its publishing model, means and the form of its carrier.

Changes in demand also affect the industry. Today’s young people are getting used to receiving information via the screen and paper publications are attracting a smaller and smaller group of readers. People’s overall reading habits are changing, with e-books, network publishing, self-publishing and other new models becoming gradually more popular and more accessible.

Although new forms of publication such as digital publishing have become an important part of this sector, paper books in Chinese reading markets should continue to be the main forms of publication over a relatively long period of time. First of all, it is difficult for people to completely change their reading habits which have developed over a long time, especially for middle-aged readers who are used to paper reading media. Reading for them is not just access to information and knowledge, but a way of life. For as long as it is possible, paper books will still be their long-term choice. Secondly, there are no other suitable alternatives to paper media for a lot of content presented at the current stage. Third, digital publishing in China has not grown as expected due to the business model not being perfect and technology changing too fast, as well as the industrial chain not being complete, and the problems it encounters are almost impossible to overcome: the majority of digital publishing content comes from paper books. As long as digital publishing fails to establish a complete industry chain and relies on the traditional publishing industry for content production, it is far from overturning the latter. Fourth, the development of technology which is in favor of digital publishing will help the progress of the traditional industry at the same time. Before the invention of word printing, engraving and publication consumed a significant amount of human and material resources. However, technical progress has enabled word printing to rapidly replace traditional methods, allowing an explosive growth in the spread of culture. The progress of today’s technology makes typesetting, proof printing and binding processes, essential to paper publishing more convenient and significantly reducing the demand for skilled workers. High-speed printing and mechanical binding conveniently increases the scale of production and reduces costs dramatically. Fifth, the popularity of on-demand printing facilitates small scale printing and paper publishing. The technological advances in the publishing industry are also lowering the cost of producing paper books.

In recent years, thanks to the rapid development of Internet technology, everyone can write and easily post his or her own work online. You can publish a chapter each time, or you can also publish the full text. Readers can correct the contents of the work and can even make recommendations. Authors and readers can interact at any time, and authors can even follow the aspirations of most readers in their creation. In China, the website of original literature was once very popular. Numerous grassroots writers found themselves able to completely abandon the shackles of traditional writing publication. Writing according to their own wishes, they can upload their work at any time to literary websites reaching a larger audience than traditional publishing. In this way, they have generated a lot of creative enthusiasm. On the platforms of China Reading Limited, there are literary works with hundreds of millions of words updated every day. Authors themselves can independently complete the process from content creation, the production of e-books, to profit-gaining from the reach of the network. They have broken the model of traditional publishing which necessitates professional editing and institutional implementation. At the same time, self-publishing is also rapidly developing in many countries. Since so many authors are completing their own publishing process, works are widely disseminated and generate a large number of financial returns. So, is it possible to completely change the rules of the game? Will the existing publishing model end?

It seems difficult.

Most authors generally have several needs after writing a manuscript: First, professional correction and amendment; Second, reaching more readers; Third, achieving maximum financial returns. These are the professional services the traditional publishing house has provided to authors. Such services are not always effective, for a large number of high-quality content has failed to reach large numbers even with the efforts of publishing houses. Moreover, countless good books are often ignored by the so-called experienced publishers. The world’s best-selling JK Rowling’s Harry Potter had been refused to publish by a number of publishers. The Writers Publishing House which I am working for published the A Good Mother is Better than a Teacher with a total sale of nearly 7 million copies. But the author Yin Jianli who was totally unknown by then had been rejected by several publishers before she presented her manuscripts to us. It seems that now more authors still choose to send their work to the publishing house to publish paper books and even e-books. The advantages of this are long-term resources and branding, a large number of outstanding professional editors, the ability to fine grind works and a focus on the channel market. Books, especially literary books, can have their value added and the text and dissemination improved if they are at the hand of editors with rich experience. For a writer’s work to enter the market, skills related to typesetting, format, materials, pricing, promotional activities, etc. are needed and are hard to grasp comprehensively for an ordinary person. Professional people are more suitable for helping a writer achieve their goal while maximizing the benefits.

Professional publishing is difficult to be replaced with individualized publishing, but the existing publishing model clearly fails to meet current needs. Scientific and technological progress is giving birth to new publishing content, products, carriers and publishing models, and laying the foundation for innovative business models for the industry. The continuous upgrading of technology promotes the transformation and upgrading of the industry. Reading interactive technology and multimedia products used in reading products are becoming mature, speeding up the conversion between texts, voice, image and other elements greatly. Publishing products will be widely expanded to radio, television, audio and video, film and other forms. Multimedia, cross-media, hypermedia models are emerging. With the support of new technology, products that enable us to see, hear, smell, present virtual images, and participate in themselves are prevalent. A large number of books will appear in wearable equipment. Digital reading will become more and more popular, with stronger book mobility and interaction. The Smart Writing based on large data and intelligent robot technology will emerge in large scale and partially replace human writing as an important source of content for publishing. Robots writing press releases is now a standard component for a lot of media platforms and works written by intelligent robots will soon attract a lot of readers’ attention in the near future. At the same time, the Smart Publishing model will also enjoy rapid development. The future of the industry will rely more on the support of advanced technology, which will also promote the industry to a new level or even create a revolution. Crowd funding publishing is becoming more popular, and self-publishing model is getting mature with advantages more prominent in the publishing process and dividend sharing. The maturity of voice conversion, text translation and other technologies will give rise to a subversive Global Publishing Model. Substantial changes take place in sales channels and marketing models. The convergence of traditional and emerging publishing is accelerating. When it is no longer isolated, but serves as the source of the content industry, publishing will have more possibilities.

Some temptations of the future are known but more often they come from the world we don’t know. Let us work together to find the unknown and see what the publishing industry can bring to the world.