Editor’s Note: She Jiangtao's illustrious career at Phoenix Publishing and Media Group spanned 35 years, during which he served as the General Manager of Phoenix Publishing and Media Co., Ltd. for four years and as the Deputy General Manager for eight years (including a stint as Chief Editor). As his retirement approaches in just a few months, he openly reflects on the topic. Throughout his career, he has strived to put his ideas into action, using clear logic, concise language, and a compact structure to share his experiences and thoughts. His influential works include the first and second editions of "Towards the Future of Publishing." As he bids farewell to the industry, he shares his reflections, regrets, and hopes for its future in this exclusive interview.

She Jiangtao，General Manager of Phoenix Publishing and Media

“Though fate may limit our choices, what truly matters is excelling at what we have been given.” She Jiangtao, a music lover, draws parallels between music and publishing to articulate his views. With a remarkable talent for enlivening the otherwise mundane topic, he offers a clear and concise summary of his decades-long publishing career, dividing it into three distinct stages.

BookDao: You are a music enthusiast who often uses musical analogies to articulate your ideas about publishing, making the professional discourse more vivid and lively. This year marks the final year of your decades-long publishing career. How do you evaluate your past work as a publisher?

She Jiangtao: My career can be divided into three stages. From 1988 to 2006, I worked at Jiangsu People's Publishing House, engaging in frontline publishing work. I ended my first stage as the Deputy President and Deputy Chief Editor. From 2006 to 2011, I successively served as the Director of Publishing Department at Phoenix Publishing and Media Group and the President of Jiangsu Phoenix Science and Technology Publishing Co., Ltd. Since 2011, I have been responsible for the publishing management and comprehensive business management at Phoenix Media.

In the first stage, my work was like playing a solo, chamber music, or a chamber symphony. In the second stage, my work was more like conducting a medium-sized orchestra with multiple parts. In the third stage, as the Chief Editor and especially as the General Manager of Phoenix Media, it was like conducting a large orchestra, requiring structured and systematic handling of the relationship between various parts, the speed and strength of the musical progress.

Especially in the third stage, I had to give up some things that I liked. Comprehensive management work is not easy, it requires a lot of energy, not only mental work but also physical work. I have a strong preference for the first stage, focusing on grassroots publishing. But as the General Manager of a listed company, I had to face the development of the entire company and abandon my personal preferences, shaping a larger perspective and vision. I often think that the end of a career may mean a new beginning, where I can return to doing things I love, such as book planning and new media marketing. I do look forward to bidding farewell to the position of General Manager, as it has consumed too much of my energy, much of which is unrelated to publishing.

BookDao: Over the course of your lengthy career, what were some key events or turning points that had a significant impact on your professional development and beliefs?

She Jiangtao: There were five key events that shaped and enhanced my understanding and beliefs about publishing.

The first event was my experience working as a frontline editor at a publishing house. Since joining the publishing house in 1988, I worked on the "Overseas Chinese Studies Series" with senior editors. This project, which lasted for 35 years and published over 200 books, was highly successful both in terms of its social and economic impact. This experience had two major implications for me: first, it allowed me to start working on social science books as a beginner, and second, it made me realize the importance of "perseverance" in publishing. Despite several debates over whether to continue the project, we persisted and eventually created a well-known publishing brand. Additionally, this project helped the group nurture several generations of outstanding social science editors. A similar project was the "Phoenix Library," which I worked on for 12 years. As an innovative platform for Chinese academic thought and theory in the context of modernization, as well as a platform for global cultural exchange, it published more than ten series and over 400 books, playing a crucial role in the academic publishing of Phoenix Group and will continue to do so.

The second event was when I began working in educational publishing in 1997, particularly in textbook publishing. The importance of educational publishing means that it is not merely about making money. Editors need to constantly research and understand the fundamental requirements of national education, the curriculum's core competencies, and the basic requirements of textbook development, while also conducting research and development on basic products, course expansion, and subject extension. Today, educational publishing needs to focus on the new norms, ideas, methods, and demands of education, with a five-in-one approach to subject, curriculum, textbooks, teaching aids, and education services, as well as a four-in-one approach to curriculum education, examination education, quality education, and innovative education, and with a focus on new media marketing, online sales, and upgrading and integrating products in the editing center, forming a large-scale educational publishing framework.

The third event was my advocacy for vertical, professional, and market-oriented publishing as the Director of Publishing Department and President of the publishing house at Phoenix Group. At the time, most publishing houses remained in the 1.0 stage, with single good books and series, but the overall structure was quite complex and diverse, resulting in excessive costs. I proposed the concept of industrialized design for publishing, which required the creation of a publishing house based on values, worldviews, and methodologies. I have been promoting this concept at Phoenix Media for nearly ten years, and it has now become a collective unconsciousness.

The fourth event was when I became responsible for Phoenix Group's publishing work. I considered how to do publishing work from a holistic perspective and system thinking, taking into account the seven major publishing categories: theme publishing, professional publishing, trade publishing, export publishing, newspaper and periodical publishing, educational publishing, and convergent publishing. I also spent a lot of time clarifying the publishing ideas and methods for each publishing category. Publishing without a clear idea and method, and solely focusing on profit or loss, was not something I was willing to do, as it would be detrimental to both myself and my team.

The fifth event was the significant changes in the publishing environment brought about by convergent publishing in recent years. The publishing industry has always been concerned about the impact of convergent publishing (previously known as digital publishing) on traditional publishing. However, we should not view convergent publishing and print publishing as a painful substitution relationship. Instead, it is an overflow, reorganization, and construction of the publishing house's content, a behavior that naturally evolves and is later rationally designed and promoted. I describe convergent publishing as a long spectrum that runs through the three stages of publishing (industrial design, new ecology, and future publishing). Different publishing houses, publishing categories, and publishing stages can find growth points for convergent publishing.

BookDao: You have played different roles in your career. What was the biggest inspiration you gained from each role?

She Jiangtao: First of all, many things were not my active choices, but rather a situation I happened to enter at a particular point in time. I could not choose my fate, but I never complained about any position I held. What each person can do is to work hard on what is at hand, maintain professional ethics, uphold the original intention of publishing, and use appropriate methods. In the end, there will be good returns. It was not my ideas that gave me each platform, but rather each platform forced me to think about many issues. When I left the publishing industry, perhaps I would not think about it again.

Secondly, the essence of publishing is to shape and improve people, so we must adhere to our bottom line and maintain the correct values. I have repeatedly emphasized the bottom line and values of publishing in many articles and internally at Phoenix Media. To work in the three stages of publishing, especially in convergent publishing, we need systemic thinking, problem awareness, and a bottom-line mindset. We need to integrate our ideas, goals, actions, and projects and have the values, worldviews, and systematic methods of publishing. Without the chaos and busyness that is not guided by the above three principles, it would be the biggest damage to individuals and the collective.

BookDao: In your book "Towards the Future of Publishing" and your articles on your Wechat Official Account (social media), you repeatedly mention the bottom line of publishing. What aspects of publishing work does it reflect?

She Jiangtao: There are at least two bottom lines in publishing. One is guidance. Guidance includes political guidance, cultural guidance, and social guidance. Political guidance is easy to understand, but it's not easy to grasp without continuous learning. Cultural guidance should pay attention to the tendency of "popular but not vulgar". Popularity means easy to understand, but it cannot be vulgar or obscene. We must uphold the bottom line of culture. Whether something is vulgar or not does not depend on one person's recognition but on collective common sense, collective unconsciousness, and public morality. Social guidance requires us to be aware of the timing and grasp the scale. In a certain time and space, we need to know what can be said and what cannot be said. Publishing is a collective action, and the three guidance principles require collective rational exploration and confirmation. In China, the essence of publishing is to shape and improve people, and the requirements for practitioners are very high. In my mind, publishing is as sacred as education.

The other bottom line is quality. The quality bottom line requires authors and publishers to have a reverence for language, professional knowledge, and general knowledge. I often talk to our editors about the importance of writing and language skills. Strengthening language skills, upholding the quality bottom line of publishing, is a basic respect for the Chinese language, especially in the era of video content dominance. At the same time, we should not easily enter the publishing field that we are not familiar with. This is a basic respect for professionalism and knowledge.

BookDao: If an editor or a publisher can seriously adhere to these two bottom lines, they will eventually form their own publishing values. How is the publishing value reflected in your publishing discourse?

She Jiangtao: I summarize the publishing values into these words: small industry, real skills, and big cause.

In the past two years, the scale of paper publishing in China has been around 200 billion yuan, which is very small compared to the overall size of the economy. Publishers must recognize the value positioning of their own industry, not compare themselves with other industries, and not aim to become bigger. We are a small industry. The cost of publishing media determines that it cannot be a big industry. High media costs will affect cultural heritage and civilization dissemination. The development of knowledge services in the future may allow publishing to have a larger scale, but it will not violate the basic function of publishing: to disseminate culture and civilization as low-cost and effectively as possible.

Publishing provides systematic, comprehensive, and profound ideas, theories, academia, knowledge, and imagination. It cultivates people's scientific spirit, humanistic spirit, aesthetic spirit, core literacy - healthy personality, structured knowledge, judgment and thinking ability, sensory and intuitive ability, imagination and creativity. It realizes the concept of comprehensive development of Marxist human beings, embodies the fundamental purpose of moral education, and plays a role similar to education in nurturing and enlightening people for the country's foundation and individuals' wisdom. Like education, publishing is an important indicator of a country's comprehensive strength, especially its cultural strength. It is almost unimaginable for a powerful country to not have a strong education and publishing industry. This leads to the high requirements of publishers for practitioners. Publishing requires an excellent team that is politically, professionally, linguistically, and innovatively competent, and even a team of cultural elites. This is also the original intention of Phoenix Media to effectively conduct various team training, cultivation, and communication in practice and professionalism in recent years.

BookDao: With the increasing speed of industry and product iteration brought by technological progress, the publishing industry seems to be carried forward by these ever-changing products from content to channels. How do you understand the impact and stimulation of new technologies, products, and channels on the publishing industry?

She Jiangtao: Publishing is the oldest cultural industry in the world and has been affected the most. Broadcasting, film, television, and music industries have diverted a large number of users from publishing. Currently, digital publishing from within and, especially, external knowledge services are more disruptive.

In the music industry, people thought that LP (vinyl records) was replaced by CD (compressed records), and then CD was replaced by internet music. Now people need to conveniently enjoy high-quality music, and internet music provides many methods, such as cloud storage, fast transmission, and high fidelity. However, achieving these functions is costly. Therefore, high-quality LPs and CDs have made a comeback. Of course, analogical thinking is terrible, just self-comforting, and cannot be extended to say that paper publishing will also follow the same path.

Returning to publishing, when this ancient industry is affected by external impacts, the greater impact comes from within. Many publishers say that the book industry is not easy to do. In fact, in the era of redundant commodities and slow consumption, no industry is easy to do. Moreover, if a publisher takes out its publication list, how many books can be classified as good books (quality of language, structure, and connotation)? Even good books will be affected by the publishing structure, new media marketing, and sales grid. External and internal impacts only demand higher requirements for the publishing industry. We need to produce better products, not more products. Those books that cannot sell well are either poorly written, or marketed poorly, or services are not precise, or sales are not possible. Such cases are everywhere.

I have always believed that the overall prospects of the Chinese publishing industry are bright. There is still huge potential in publishing in technology, social sciences, education, and arts. The supply of content to meet demand and the creation of demand for content are far from enough. Some aspects are still in a very primitive stage. Publishers still have many opportunities, but the key is our own ability. In addition, with a large population base, even if we only serve a vertical field and do a good job in publishing for a group, we can survive and do well. However, from the perspective of the development of local publishing houses, a group of publishing houses and professionals will be eliminated. If we still use old methods and old thinking to do publishing work, even conservative people like me cannot accept it.

BookDao: Reading is no longer the only channel for readers to acquire knowledge and information, but it has gradually become a part of people's daily lives and a way of life. In such a reading scenario, how should publishing do a good job in marketing and sales services?

She Jiangtao: This is a technical issue and also a fundamental task. I fully understand the importance of marketing work, and I have participated in some marketing work myself. Different books adopt different methods. For example, for two books that I wrote myself, I communicated with the publisher not to sell them on third-party e-commerce platforms but only to sell them at a discount on the publisher's Youzan mall channel. I have my own Wechat Official Account and have gathered a certain amount of community-fans. I constantly post purchase links under my wechat social account articles, and they will purchase through the links on the platform, forming a closed loop. The benefits of doing this are accurate new book promotion, accurate reader purchase, and more controllable discounts. This model was also used for a music book I published with Shanghai Music Publishing House.

This model has changed from traditional B2C to B2F2C, connecting publishers and consumers through communities-fans. The future publishing model is firstly platformization, where everything is completed on the platform, including some ground activities that serve the final transaction of the platform. The second is the integration of production and sales, which is my ideal model. Traditional publishing sales and marketing are separated, and we do not directly reach readers. Now, Phoenix Media's Yilin Press and Science and Technology Press are doing this work, by building communities-fans (an upgraded version of community-users), targeted marketing, directly reaching end-users, selling quickly, receiving payments quickly, locking discounts, and avoiding vicious price comparisons and price reductions. I have always said internally that we need to produce the best books and deliver suitable books to suitable readers through the most accurate community-fans service and appropriate channels. This is a new idea for publishing services in the context of transforming reading scenarios.

BookDao: Earlier, you mentioned a concept called industrial design. How should we understand the industrialization concept you proposed?

She Jiangtao: When I proposed industrial design, many people couldn't quite understand it. Industrial design is different from industrial product design; it is about designing factories and processes. Although publishing is different from industrial manufacturing, publishing houses are still cultural factories, otherwise, industrial design cannot be discussed in publishing.

The first thing in industrial design is to have a publishing value system. I have already talked about the issue of values above. Industrial design must ultimately be market-oriented, but first, people with the value system of small industry, real skills, and big cause must participate in this work together. If the value system of industrial design cannot be unified, the factory cannot be run well.

The second is to have a publishing worldview. In the industrial design stage, the publishing industry's worldview can be summarized as vertical, professional, and market-oriented. I told my colleagues in the group that the human resources, capabilities, and energies of a publishing house are limited and must be focused. We must concentrate our advantageous resources and attention and use scarce resources to serve our publishing areas of expertise. Therefore, verticalization must be adhered to, which is the foundation of specialization. Specialization is the key to the worldview. Publishing houses must be very clear about the "professional positioning, professional goals, publishing concepts, and segmented markets" of their unit for a period of time, while making the entire organization aware, and keeping the professional positioning and goals in a state of innovation and constant improvement. Then it is market-oriented, which is the endpoint of the worldview. Marketization in the Internet era is precise service, finding where communities-fans and users-fans are and where the traffic is, otherwise, the value of publishing cannot be realized.

The third is to have a systematic method. Institutionalized systemic methodology is the core content of industrial design implementation. Our editors have many thinking and ideas, but these ideas are scattered and rarely concentrated at a higher level. Only with a systematic methodology is it called complete industrial design. The leaders of the publishing house should not put too much energy into specific topics, but should think about how to do the industrial design of the unit well. Especially through practice and in-depth basic research, the rules that conform to the publishing concept and the methods that conform to the publishing law should be institutionalized, in order to achieve the publishing value system and worldview. If the leaders of the management cannot form a common value system, worldview, and systemic methodology, the employees below will be like headless flies, very hard. Winning profits and sustainable profits are the natural results of the application of value system, worldview, and methodology; without a value system, worldview, and methodology, the indicators are meaningless, and profits will not be long-lasting.

BookDao: You mentioned earlier that the value system of publishing is a small industry, and now this small industry is facing many difficulties and doubts, and many publishing institutions are facing problems with their survival. How do you view the current challenges in the industry?

She Jiangtao: This is a very complex issue, and the shape of each publishing house is different, with many variables affecting publishing, making it difficult for everyone to come up with an objective and comprehensive view. Many people attribute the current state of publishing more to external factors, but I prefer to attribute it to internal factors. It's like playing chess, which requires a chess-like way of thinking, not relying on luck like playing cards. We need to start more from within and find our own reasons.

People around me are all talking about anxiety, including industry anxiety. When faced with problems and difficulties, I always think about how to respond: what can be solved in the short term, what cannot be solved in the long term, and which methods and paths should be chosen. But first, we must fundamentally recognize that we should always be guided by a systemic concept, problem-oriented, and bottom-line thinking, and use the integration of ideas, goals, measures, and key projects as a starting point, and the synergy of professional teams inside and outside each level as the foundation. We have formed a relatively mature set of values, worldview, and methodology, formed a relatively good development new ecology, formed a good three-level team, and formed a future key breakthrough point. I believe that we will achieve higher-quality development in the future.

BookDao: Looking back on your career of over 30 years, are you satisfied with it? Are there any jobs that make you feel regretful?

She Jiangtao: If I talk about my publishing work in reverse order of time, the first regret is convergent publishing. There is still much controversy about the understanding and development goals of convergent publishing, including within our company. Directly abandoning paper books for digital publishing is difficult to achieve in most groups and publishing houses. Choosing to upgrade paper book publishing, completing the overlay of industrial design and publishing new ecology, and actively exploring future publishing forms is a pragmatic move in the current stage of the publishing industry. Whether it is new media marketing, various e-commerce, or some convergent publishing content products and digital publishing content products, they seem to have achieved some results on the surface, but they have not achieved the systemization and structuring of paper books. Our paper book publishing business has taken decades to build its structure and system, and convergent publishing still has a long way to go. Patience is needed from top to bottom.

The problem with convergent publishing now is not a lack of money, but how to do it, and how to persuade others to do it with you. After all, this is an exploratory work with certain, even considerable risks. My age determines that I can only be a conservative manager, and it is difficult for me to see significant development in convergent publishing, especially in the development of convergent publishing content and digital publishing content in my career. That will take at least a decade. I hope that the leadership team and execution team of convergent publishing will be younger and given at least 10 years in their careers, otherwise it cannot be done.

The second regret is that the pattern of educational publishing has not opened up and does not match the requirements of the country for education. Phoenix Media's textbook publishing is in a leading position in China, but it is very difficult to truly meet the country's requirements for education, narrowing the distance from the previous mentioned values of character education, knowledge-based education, and intelligence-based education. Specifically, we have not achieved the integration of curriculum, subjects, textbooks, teaching aids, and educational services. We emphasize textbooks and teaching aids, but we do not do well in educational services, subject extensions, and curriculum expansion. The stubbornness of educational publishing is that if you leave textbooks and teaching aids, you cannot do educational publishing. It is an extension of exam-oriented education in the publishing industry.

The third regret is that the publishing training for employees is not systematic enough. This is the most important thing that I think we need to pay attention to. Publishing is an industry that requires inheritance. We have done some employee training, but it is still partial and fragmented. We still lack standardized, systematic, and professional training for each age group of employees. How should grassroots editors do, how should editors-in-chief do, how should the president do, and how should senior publishing management personnel do? What are the basic worldviews and methodologies that need to be mastered in different stages and categories of publishing? If possible, Phoenix Media should have its own publishing college to train our employees through concrete practice. The publishing education in schools now still has a certain distance from publishing practice.

BookDao: Everyone has an initial aspiration and ideal for the profession and industry they engage in. What is your ideal publishing like?

She Jiangtao: My ideal publishing is the overlay of three stages: industrial design, publishing new ecology, and future publishing, with a spectrum of convergent publishing running through it, supported by third-level mature teams.

In the first stage, we focus on structure and plateau, with the goal of realizing the core worldview of publishing: verticalization (publishing positioning), specialization (professional positioning, professional goals, publishing philosophy, segmented market), and marketization, while forming a systematic approach. This is the stage of industrial design. The worldview and quality of this stage are fundamental and lay the foundation for the worldviews and quality of the next two stages.

In the second stage, publishing houses need to mature their publishing philosophy and systematic approach, with individual products achieving "guidance, quality, originality, and excellence," creating a fully covered boutique production system, and overall forming structural thinking, achieving "publishing positioning, publishing scale, structural efficiency, convergent publishing, and systematic approach." Grasping publishing positioning, publishing scale, structural efficiency, publishing form, and systematic approach, establishing a sound book boutique production system, with a highly unified focus on key projects and professional positioning, and establishing a convergent publishing boutique production system that combines integration and differentiation. In terms of content, the second stage is not a completely new stage, with some overlapping links with the first stage. This stage integrates industrial design and content production and innovative management methods, with the three "transformations" of the industrial design worldview and the five "transformations" of content production and innovative management methods - content diversification, marketing matrix, sales grid, productization and standardization of content services, for a total of eight transformations that together constitute the new ecology of publishing.

The third stage of future publishing first involves the platformization of publishing houses, with both print and digital products essentially being produced, marketed, and sold on platforms. In this stage, content is constantly shared with the appropriate community or user-fan base on the platform, rather than new content being continuously produced and randomly consumed. Secondly, production and sales are integrated and form a closed loop, going decentralized and greatly increasing profits. These two future trends will first be reflected in B2C or B2G products extended from B2C.

These three stages need to be overlaid, not simply iterated. Within these three stages, there is also convergent publishing running through them. convergent publishing is a long spectrum with eight key points: fully utilizing print books made by digital means, new media marketing (focusing on the production and conversion of marketing content), publishing house-owned online stores, restructuring of editorial teams; group basic service platforms (content resource libraries, user systems, and commercial use), group-owned and self-owned large e-commerce (constant upgrading of community and user construction is key), group content platforms and overall marketing platforms (integration of digital content is key, forming a closed loop with self-owned e-commerce is key), convergent publishing content products and digital publishing content products. The three stages of publishing, including the eight "transformations" of the second stage and the two "transformations" of the third stage, are all permeated by the spectrum of convergent publishing, permeated by reading, knowledge production, and services. From the change in content production to the change in dissemination methods, every point on convergent publishing is a challenge to upgrade and transform publishing capabilities.

BookDao: If you were to rate your publishing career on a scale of 100, with 100 being the highest, what score would you give yourself? What qualities do you think an excellent publisher should possess?

She Jiangtao: I am actually hesitant to rate myself because you never know what will happen in the future. If I were to give myself a score of 70 now, I hope to maintain a score of 60 or above when my publishing career ends. I cannot say that I am an outstanding publisher, I am just a hardworking publishing worker.

The concept of a publisher is diverse and defined differently at each level. From my own management position and perspective, the most important thing is systematic thinking. An excellent publishing manager should be able to unify everyone's thinking, clarify direction, focus on the structure and facts of the entire publishing industry, and pay attention to systematic methods.

BookDao: You mentioned the importance of inheritance earlier. If you have any expectations and ideas for current publishing practitioners, what would you like to say to them?

She Jiangtao: Firstly, it is important to have a structured cultural heritage. Publishing is the most profound, comprehensive, and systematic way of disseminating ideas and inheriting civilization. Publishing practitioners should not only have read a few books, but should also have a cultural heritage. At the same time, it needs to be systematized and structured so that it can be transferred, reorganized, and grow continuously, and constantly explore new things from their own accumulation. In my past work, I deeply felt that publishing has many categories and a vast knowledge system, and it is difficult to manage without a rich and structured foundation.

Secondly, one should really love this industry. Every publishing worker should first ask themselves if they really like this job and industry. If publishing is a lifelong career, it must be a career that requires real efforts. Without a genuine passion, it is difficult to excel.

Thirdly, one should always grasp the three overlapping stages of publishing and the spectrum of convergent publishing through practical experience and thinking, and form the habit of practicing, thinking, and problem-solving with values, worldview, and methodology. The future of publishing is precision publishing, where users (authors, author groups, resource libraries, and their circles) create and produce content, and publishing houses process, market, and sell it, further enlarging the user circle and delivering services more accurately. The future of publishing is either CBC (various users create content - amplified through publishers - consumed by more users) or CBFC (various users create content - amplified through publishers - further amplified through various fan groups - consumed by more users). The prospects are limitless and require the participation of the best people.