Editor’s note: After the pandemic, the publishing market has shrunk, making marketing more diverse, complex, and challenging. Publishing houses must face the shrinking of traditional market channels, and emerging media is like a spark that can start a prairie fire, forcing publishing houses to make adjustments and changes. Liu Yazhong, the president of Fujian People's Publishing House, said, "Publishing institutions should create an environment that nurtures foresight, creativity, and responsibility." Over the past 72 years, Fujian People's Publishing House has made significant contributions to the publishing industry in Fujian, from closely cooperating with the central work of the party to having the spare capacity to sort out local cultural heritage and enrich people's spiritual lives. Recently, BookDao interviewed Liu Yazhong to introduce the development and future plans of the publishing house, as well as his responsibilities and reforms for publishing institutions.
At the beginning of the interview, Liu Yazhong set the tone for the publishing house's talent construction and publishing environment with the motto, "As a nation stands or falls on its talent, so a government depends on its ability, and a business thrives on its people." In recent years, Fujian People's Publishing House has boldly cultivated and used young cadres, changing the previous practice of focusing too much on seniority and emphasizing basic qualities and abilities. They are particularly concerned with the cultivation and use of compound talents, allowing young business backbones to continuously enrich the middle-level management positions and even the leadership positions of the publishing house. They also encourage young editors to actively participate in the planning and implementation process of selecting topics, advocating for their deep involvement in projects.
After decades of cultivation, Fujian People's Publishing House has gradually gathered a team of authors composed of experts from domestic authoritative research institutions and top scholars from first-class universities, ensuring high-quality topics and rich resources in the fields of thematic publishing and historical publishing. In recent years, the publishing house has focused on cultivating an academic publishing team with theoretical literacy, academic literacy, and innovative abilities by applying for a large number of national projects. They possess good academic literacy and professional sensitivity, and can keenly grasp the hotspots and academic frontiers of the academic community to plan topics and demonstrate their professional abilities throughout the publishing process. In the field of educational publishing, the publishing house focuses on education theory and practice, gathering a group of well-known authors and experts in educational theory research and frontline teachers to successfully create educational publishing brands such as "Top-notch Teaching Aids" series.
As a comprehensive publishing house in Fujian, which started early and possessed the conditions for the compilation and publication of ancient texts, Fujian People's Publishing House has published hundreds of ancient texts and related books in the past 30 years, which have had a significant impact on the academic community and society. Since the establishment of the "Bamin Library" editorial department in 2015, the publishing house has introduced talents year by year, and the editing team has continued to grow. The strength of the ancient text editors has gradually strengthened, and they now have the ability and level to undertake large-scale ancient text compilation projects of high quality. Fujian People's Publishing House has always adhered to the principle of "social benefits first." To ensure the quality and time of the main project construction of the "Bamin Library," it has not set economic benefit indicators for the ancient text editing room for many years, and encourages the ancient text editors to participate in the project deeply and carry out talent training. Nowadays, ancient text compilation and publication have also become one of the important book publishing sectors and development directions of Fujian People's Publishing House.
Liu Yazhong revealed that Fujian People's Publishing House has three main tasks in 2023. Firstly, under the overall goal of high-quality development, combined with the publishing scope and professional advantages, the publishing house will further optimize the topic structure, improve the quality of publications, and strengthen publishing brands. Secondly, it will further enhance market awareness and service awareness, actively expand market space, and make every effort to create theme, cultural and historical, and educational product lines. Thirdly, it will actively explore the development path of convergent publishing and accelerate publishing transformation. It is worth mentioning that Fujian People's Publishing House has been continuously exploring new paths of convergent publishing based on traditional publishing. In 2022, the publishing house has teamed up with Fujian Radio, Film and Television Group Satellite TV Center to create the "China Min Cuisine" multimedia publishing project, which has made significant explorations in the inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture as well as publishing integration development.
BookDao: At a symposium on the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Fujian People's Publishing House in late 2021, you proposed that publishing institutions should create an environment that fosters vision, creativity, and responsibility. How has Fujian People's Publishing House created such an environment in the past year and beyond?
Liu Yazhong: Rapidly evolving technological change has already transformed the way knowledge is disseminated and how people learn, breaking through fixed modes of thinking and disciplinary boundaries. In this larger context, publishers naturally face numerous challenges. I think that publishing houses need to focus on talent development, innovative topic selection capabilities, and convergent publishing, constantly exploring and creating a more favorable environment for entrepreneurship.
"As a nation stands or falls on its talent, so a government depends on its ability, and a business thrives on its people." Talent is the key to how publishing can adapt to the changes of the new technological era and achieve high-quality development. Fujian People's Publishing House is a traditional old publishing house that faces the common problem of aging leadership in the publishing industry, which is even more pronounced. In recent years, we have boldly cultivated and utilized young cadres, changed the approach of placing excessive emphasis on seniority, and instead focused more on basic qualities and abilities, especially paying attention to the cultivation and utilization of versatile talents. Many young business backbone personnel have been continuously promoted to middle management positions and even to the leadership of the company. According to the needs of our business development, we have added a group of editorial staff in recent years, most of whom have graduate degrees or above from "double first-class" universities, with more diverse disciplinary backgrounds and an increasing proportion of high academic qualifications. The construction of senior, middle, and junior talent teams has become more reasonable. At the same time, we also encourage young editors to actively participate in the planning and implementation process of topic selection, advocating for deep involvement in projects and integrating new employee training into practical project work in a normalized "passing on knowledge" way, strengthening the comprehensive abilities of editing, planning, writing, manuscript review and processing, new media application, publicity, and promotion, in practical application, striving to create a platform and environment for young editors to excel in entrepreneurship.
Publishing bears the heavy responsibility of cultural inheritance and innovation, and innovative topic selection capabilities are an important prerequisite for publishing houses to maintain their vitality. After several generations of hard work, our publishing house has formed three major advantageous sections: theme publishing, cultural and historical publishing, and educational publishing. We always bear in mind our publishing mission, consciously regard centering around the overall situation and serving the whole as our basic responsibility, find the integration and focus points of topic planning, and improve our publishing capabilities and level of service for the overall situation. We promote the inheritance of outstanding traditional Chinese culture by publishing more works with profound thoughts, exquisite artistry, and excellent production quality. We adhere to both tradition and innovation, expanding into new fields of educational publishing. We strengthen international exchanges and cooperation, telling good Chinese stories and spreading the good voice of China.
In recent years, our publishing house has been rooted in traditional publishing while continuously exploring new paths of convergent publishing. In 2022, we joined forces with the Fujian Radio and Television Group's satellite center to create the "China Min Cuisine" full-media publishing project, which premiered on Southeast TV and Strait TV, and was broadcast across the network, with over 50 million clicks on the entire network, over 25 million Weibo topics, and over 15 million short videos played on Douyin. It was selected as the "National Platform" of the Learning App, with over 350,000 clicks, achieving significant results in the inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture as well as the development of convergent publishing, and receiving the love and support of the audience. Recently, our publishing house is preparing to establish digital platforms for convergent publishing, such as the "Fujian-Taiwan Folk Genealogy Digital Museum," "Min Nan Dialect Online Dictionary Cloud Platform," "Historical Documents Database of the Maritime Silk Road," and "Kindergarten Education and Teaching Resource Library Platform," integrating our own content resource advantages into the era of new media transformation and development.
BookDao: Fujian People's Publishing House has made significant contributions to the publishing industry of New China in the past 72 years, from closely cooperating with the central work of the Party to having extra capacity to organize and enrich local cultural heritage, and to enriching the spiritual lives of the masses. In the new era, how does the publishing house adhere to the correct political direction, public opinion orientation, and value orientation, prioritize social benefits, and promote reform and innovation?
Liu Yazhong: As an important ideological and cultural position of the Party's publicity, Fujian People's Publishing House has always adhered to the correct political direction, public opinion orientation, and value orientation, prioritized social benefits, focused on the center, and served the overall situation. Especially, we have focused on important time nodes, made early deployments, and reserved major topics. We have continuously achieved results in innovative planning ideas, in-depth excavation of topic value, and establishment of author teams. We emphasize converting political language into academic language and popular language, and have published a series of theme readings that connect with the sky and the ground, interpreting the Chinese spirit, Chinese values, and Chinese strength. We strive to make the books both profound and easy to understand, and use forms that readers enjoy to tell good Chinese stories.
In terms of management mechanisms, we continuously adjust and improve the assessment and evaluation system according to changes in the situation, continuously reform and innovate, and use a sound system to ensure that social benefits are given priority. We encourage editors to establish a consciousness of prioritizing social benefits in the topic selection and planning stage, use the system to mobilize everyone's enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, effectively play the incentive role of business performance assessment, promote the healthy development of the publishing house, make it stronger, better, and bigger, and build a brand.
BookDao: The three main publishing sectors of your company are theme publishing, historical and cultural publishing, and educational publishing. What are the variety and sales proportions of these three sectors? From these three sectors, what work has Fujian People's Publishing House done to expand the publishing field, create publishing characteristics, and strengthen publishing innovation?
Liu Yazhong: Our theme publishing, historical and cultural publishing, and educational publishing are all important sectors, and while there are differences in the number of varieties and sales between the three sectors, they are parallel in terms of social and economic benefits, mutually promoting and complementing each other.
We have always regarded doing good work in thematic publishing as our mission and the top priority of brand building. Adhering to the Party's publishing position and shouldering the glorious mission of serving the overall situation, this is not only the consensus of the entire organization, but also the conscious action of everyone. Fujian is the birthplace and practice ground of Xi Jinping's thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era. In terms of thematic publishing, it is our responsibility and obligation to continuously explore and publish topics in this field. Xi Jinping's first personal monograph, "Getting Rid of Poverty," has been published in multiple languages, including Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Cyrillic Mongolian, with a total circulation of more than 2 million copies. In June 2022, our company published "New Wonders of Minshan and Minjiang: Xi Jinping's Footsteps in Fujian," vividly showing a series of forward-looking, pioneering, and strategic conceptual innovations and practical explorations made by Comrade Xi Jinping for the cause of Fujian's reform, opening-up, and modernization. After its publication, it was well received by readers, sparking a learning frenzy and producing extensive social impact. At the same time, as one of the "Footsteps" series, the book won the special award of the 16th National Spiritual Civilization Construction "Five-One Project" by the Central Publicity Department. In addition, our jointly published long-form reportage "Poetry in the Distance: The Chronicle of the 'Min-Ning Experience'" with Ningxia People's Publishing House, based on the valuable experience of Min-Ning poverty alleviation cooperation, showcased the fruitful achievements and great accomplishments of Min-Ning poverty alleviation cooperation under the background of poverty alleviation cooperation between the eastern and western regions. After its publication, it had a good social impact and won the "Excellent Works Award" of the 16th National Spiritual Civilization Construction "Five-One Project" and the honor of "China Good Book" in 2021.
Publishing resources primarily refer to content resources. Establishing an author team that is politically reliable, academically rigorous, and research-oriented can guarantee the quality and depth of publications from the source. The establishment of Fujian People's Publishing House's author team is thanks to the silent cultivation and inheritance and development of several generations of publishers. After decades of cultivation, we have gradually assembled an author team composed of experts from domestic authoritative research institutions and top scholars from first-class universities, ensuring the high quality and richness of our content resources. We have been able to achieve good results in thematic publishing, historical and cultural publishing, and educational publishing largely due to the strong support of this author team.
Culture can shape a person, and history can serve as a mirror for the present. Historical and cultural publishing is our long-standing publishing tradition and advantage. Academic monographs and documentary compilations on history and culture, as well as regional culture of Fujian and Taiwan, are our consistent publishing characteristics and our unique contribution to the publishing industry and academic circles in China. Over the years, we have focused on cultivating an academic publishing team with both theoretical and innovative abilities. Team members generally have high academic qualifications, with over half having postgraduate degrees, including graduates from first-class universities such as Peking University, Fudan University, Nanjing University, Wuhan University, Beijing Normal University, Sichuan University, Nankai University, and Xiamen University, forming a diverse professional and disciplinary background covering social sciences, history and culture, and other fields, with over one-third holding senior professional titles. They mostly possess excellent academic literacy and professional sensitivity, can keenly grasp the hotspots and academic frontiers of the academic community in planning topics, help authors solve problems in their manuscripts, and showcase their professional abilities in the entire publishing process. Talent cultivation is the fundamental guarantee for the continuous positive social impact produced by our three publishing sectors over several decades.
Educational publishing is our foundational sector, covering educational books from kindergarten, primary, secondary, to tertiary levels. Over the years, we have continuously made efforts in textbook development, educational auxiliary publication promotion, teacher training, and other areas, launching a large number of high-quality educational publications with correct guidance, Chinese characteristics, and meeting the needs of the times. We have actively explored new forms of educational publishing, inspiring and empowering countless students and contributing to the cultivation of moral character and talent. In recent years, we have also actively expanded our digital publishing business, providing digital textbooks, online courses, and educational games, among other products, to meet the diverse learning needs of students in the digital age.
BookDao: In recent years, local publishers in China have been creating their own sub-brands and expanding their range of humanities publications. The Fujian People's Publishing House has been involved in academic publishing and the compilation of local ancient books for a long time. What are some of the key products they have published recently? With regard to the publication of the "Bamin Library", what has the company invested the most effort in and what kind of support has been provided? What is the significance of compiling ancient books for the company?
Liu Yazhong: Over the past 70 years, our publishing house has published many academic works that reflect Chinese characteristics, style, and grandeur, such as "History of Chinese Immigration", "History of Chinese Agriculture", and "General Theory of Chinese Historiography". These works, which are both insightful and innovative, have won numerous awards, including the Chinese Book Award, the Chinese Government Publication Award, and the Excellent Publication Award of China. Upholding the philosophy of cultural inheritance, our publishing house has been committed to the compilation and publication of rare ancient books, ancient characters, and local documents in Fujian for over 20 years. Our achievements in the compilation of ancient character books, such as "Compilation of Warring States Characters" and "New Compilation of Oracle Bones (Revised Edition)", have gained high reputation both domestically and internationally.
In recent years, we have published a number of key publications, such as "The Complete Collection of Master Hongyi (Revised Edition)", "Chronological Annotations of the Collected Works of Zhu Xi (16 Volumes)", "The Collected Works of Lin Shu", "General History of the Relationship between Chinese Classics and History", "General History of Taiwan", "Fujian Folk Contract Documents (11 Volumes, 50 Books)", and "Compilation of Pre-Qin Seals, Inscriptions, Pottery, Coins, Jade, and Stone Characters". These publications have been selected as national key books and have been supported by national-level projects such as the National Publication Fund. Among them, "Compilation of Rare Minority Nationality Characters and Classics in China" won the Excellent Publication Award of China in the 7th session, and "General History of Taiwan" won the Excellent Publication Award of China in the 8th session.
The "Bamin Library" full-media publishing project is the 13th and 14th Five-Year Plan project for the economic and social development of Fujian Province, which is organized and implemented by the Strait Publishing and Distribution Group. This project involves the first large-scale and systematic investigation, compilation, and publication of historical documents and ancient books in Fujian Province. Our publishing house is responsible for more than 80% of the editing and publishing tasks. Since 2020, we have successively published 200 volumes of "Fujian Document Collection (Initial Compilation)" under the "Document Integration" series, 50 volumes of "Fujian Folk Contract Documents" under the "Special Topic Compilation" series, and "Rongtan Wenye" and "Min Shi Lu" under the "Selected Works Series". These publications have demonstrated our strength in implementing large-scale document publishing projects.
The publication of high-quality ancient books is one of the high-threshold categories in publishing, which requires high demands on editors. Since the establishment of the "Bamin Library" editorial department in 2015, our publishing house has been introducing talents year by year and continuously strengthening our editorial team for ancient books. We have the ability and level to undertake large-scale ancient book compilation projects with high quality.
The compilation and publication of high-quality ancient books is of great significance for inheriting Chinese civilization, promoting excellent Chinese culture, improving the cohesion and centripetal force of the Chinese nation, and building a socialist cultural cause with Chinese characteristics. As a comprehensive publishing house in Fujian that started early and has the conditions for compiling and publishing ancient books, the Fujian People's Publishing House has published hundreds of ancient books and related historical and literary books in the past 30 years. The compilation and publication of ancient books has become an important book publishing sector and development direction for our company.
BookDao: Three years have passed since the outbreak of the pandemic. What changes and characteristics do you see in the current publishing market? What adjustments and changes need to be made in the management, distribution, and marketing mechanisms of publishing houses?
Liu Yazhong: After three years of the pandemic, the publishing market has shrunk in size, and publishing marketing has become more diverse, complex, and challenging. Publishing houses need to face the shrinking of traditional market channels and make adjustments and changes in response to the new emerging media that are burgeoning. This includes the integration of resources to form a product cluster that is lightweight, individualized, and has deep digital technology added value; using mature live streaming e-commerce platforms such as Douyin as an entry point to promote the construction of new media matrices; and promoting related businesses around book copyright operations.
BookDao: What is the publishing plan of the Fujian People's Publishing House for 2023?
Liu Yazhong: Firstly, under the overall goal of high-quality development of publishing, we will further optimize the topic structure, improve the quality of publishing, and strengthen publishing branding based on our publishing scope and professional advantages. Secondly, we will enhance our market awareness and service consciousness, actively expand market space, and strive to create product lines in themes, culture and history, and education, aiming to achieve new breakthroughs in core product expansion and sales of bestsellers and perennial books. Thirdly, we will actively explore the path of convergent publishing development and accelerate publishing transformation. Based on our own publishing advantages, we will focus on achieving content specialization as our core competitiveness, using investment in key projects as a carrier and driving force, and forming a complementary and benign transformation between traditional business and new platforms.
Original article in Chinese: https://www.bookdao.com/article/433616/