This year’s Double 11, will you buy books?
"Double 11" has reached its 13th year.
In 2009, Alibaba gave a new meaning of "Single's Day". At that time, few merchants foresee their consumption potential. Only 27 brands participated in the first Double 11. The promotion method was simple and crude, 50% off for all the audience. To this day, people have become accustomed to the existence of Double 11. Merchants’ discount gameplay has become increasingly complex and diverse. The total transaction volume is also increasing year by year at a speed visible to the naked eye, creating a new "business miracle" every year like routine business.
13 years ago on November 11, the total transaction volume of Taobao platform was 50 million yuan. Since last year, the promotion time has been increased to more than 10 days, and this number has reached 498.2 billion yuan.
In the annual online carnival, the book category has never been the protagonist. Although "online book shopping" has almost the same history as the e-commerce industry, the representative book shopping channel Dangdang.com was founded in 1999. At that time, Jack Ma had just resigned from his public office to seek entrepreneurial opportunities, and Taobao will be born several years later.
star map data shows that among the 22 e-commerce platforms monitored in 2020, the top three categories with the highest sales are household appliances, mobile phone numbers and men's and women's clothing, and the best-selling items include eye cream, snacks, milk powder, etc. Even very few comprehensive data reports will include book sales in the analysis.
But at the same time, the book industry is also taking advantage of the trend of the e-commerce festival to achieve a significant increase in sales. Taking 2020 as an example, the transaction volume of the four categories of JD.com imported original, Youth Literature , foreign language learning, and law all increased by more than 100% year-on-year. Dangdang Books' booking amount increased by as much as 219% year-on-year. 3.14 million books were sold in one minute on the day of Double 11.
In a conversation with Dumou , many publishing industry practitioners were optimistic about the industry prospects and the public's reading habits. The book industry is like an inherent garden away from the hustle and bustle. Although it has never flourished to attract the attention of the outside world, it has also grown well.
sells books, and also relies on Double 11
For planning editors and book editors, November 11 is just an ordinary day of the year, there will be no increased workload, and there will be no need to adjust the work rhythm, but in the publishing department of a publishing house or publishing company, the situation is very different.
"The business volume will grow explosively." Li Dong, director of the distribution of a publishing house in , told Du Mou that the concentrated sales period of books in one year is only 4 times: 4.23 World Book Day, 618, Double 11 and Double 12, and Double 11 has a high status in it. The issuance department is a link connecting printing factories and e-commerce channels. Whenever Double 11 comes, stocks need to be prepared in advance.
2020, Dangdang Double 11 Battle Report
This means that it is busy not only on the 11th, but the printing cycle usually takes about 10 days. It takes another 5 to 7 days to diversion from the publishing house's warehouse to various channels, and all preparations must be completed in advance. Starting from 2020, the e-commerce festival will be warmed up from the end of October, and the corresponding work of each publishing house needs to be further advanced.
Many publishing companies shipped at a price of about 60% off, that is, the "purchase price" of channel dealers. Physical bookstores are usually sold at full price. When e-commerce platforms encounter shopping festivals like Double 11, they may give readers lower discounts, and the price difference must be borne by the publisher. But thanks to the rising sales, the publisher's profits will not decrease.
In the publishing house where Li Dong works, the book sales during Double 11 will reach at least twice the usual amount. If it is a best-selling item, it can reach 3-4 times. In addition to increasing sales, has another significance in allowing publishers to quickly clear inventory. Some books with a long-term publication have passed the hot sales period. New sales models such as large promotional efforts and live explanations can make old books popular again.
Students and parents of students have always been the main group of book consumption. Taking the TOP3 category list of JD Books' Double 11 paper book transactions in 2020 as an example, children's books, primary and secondary school teaching aids, and novels firmly occupy the top three. "All children's books under the age of 6 are children's books, and all teaching aids aged 6 to 12 are the largest in these two markets," Li Dong analyzed. "Double 11 may have a greater impact on literary books, because there is no need for reading in normal times, and the high discount will attract many people to buy them."
publishing houses are all state-owned. They need to take into account both humanistic and social value in book topic selection. They can publish some niche books with a print volume of no more than 10,000 copies. Publishing companies will consider the profitability of books more.
Xiaozhui is in charge of marketing in a publishing company. She revealed to Du Mou that the best-selling books in company are practical categories such as maternal and infant, psychology, and life, which also reflects that people pay more attention to themselves after the epidemic. The overall market preferences of life around. In the "Best-Selling Products" category of the company's Dangdang official store, the two books with the largest number of readers' after-sales comments are "Jingjing: How to Become a Very Awesome Person" and "Give You a Team, How Can You Do?"
marketing editor is also an important link in the publishing chain, which connects the content and distribution of books. Xiaozhu's department mainly cooperates with the needs of the sales department, "There is The promotion plan for which book needs to be promoted is prepared." Marketing editors basically do not directly contact sales channels, but they also have to complete a lot of communication and docking with people. During Double 11, they will increase publicity efforts, "Find more media promotion, and platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, , Douyin, must be covered..."
During Double 11, book sales were not eye-catching in all categories, and the practitioners asked by Du Mou were rated by All of this holds a consensus: books don’t have to worry about selling, it’s just a matter of selling more and less. book market itself is a focus market rather than a mass market. Just grasp your audience and serve these focus media well.
Wenshu, a planning editor of a publisher, believes that the real meaning of e-commerce festivals like Double 11 is to bring publishers back to the basic thinking of books as commodities. "In the past, publishing was given too many ideological meanings, and forgetting that this was essentially a commercial behavior. "
Wenshu said that he was more interested in literature and philosophy, and knew that "the books he made would not exceed 30,000 to 50,000 books, and I can't make best-selling products with more than 100,000 copies." However, he was quite optimistic about the public's reading habits and believed that reading was a gradual process. "Readers who read " Hundred Years of Solitude " were not qualified to laugh at readers who read online novels." Some people were willing to stay in the stage of "spiritual comfort". When some people wanted to "spiritual improvement", classics could wait there and not disappear, which was the value of the "classic defender".
physical books will not die, but physical bookstores are not going well than
Since the popularity of digital reading, the dissatisfaction of the physical book industry has never stopped. During last year's Double 11, the performance of emerging reading forms such as e-books and audio books was also more eye-catching than physical books. For example, JD.com's digital reading transaction volume increased by 386% year-on-year, and the sales of "Dangdang Cloud" mobile digital reading product under Dangdang increased by 126% year-on-year.
"But the industry is still very lively, and there is no sky-decline. "Li Dong said, "It has been digitalized earlier. In the early years, Kindle has become popular with many ink screen readers, and after so many years, there has been no new hits. China's physical books will definitely not die. "
At the marketing level, publishers will also update their own publicity strategies. Xiaozhuo gave a successful marketing case, a practical book about improving vision through massage methods "From 0.1 to 1.0", the department found some Douyin accounts to sell goods. After the video is refined, the purchase link will be attached. "Everyone will have an impulse after watching the video, and there are very few purchase steps. I don’t think about searching for e-books first, but I think I want to place an order. "
In Xiaozhui's opinion, the impact of digital reading on physical books is "a bit like celebrities washing their fans". Although the impact is huge, on the one hand, it will force publishers to pay more attention to product quality and product packaging. On the other hand, "people who prefer e-reading may not buy books." The consumers left in the market are readers who truly love physical books.
The only thing that really falls in the wave of online sales and digital reading seems to be physical bookstores.
During the Double 11 in 2020, more than 40 independent bookstores in Taiwan jointly launched the "Double 11 closure protest" to resist too low e-commerce discounts. One of the initiators, Hong Balloon Bookstore, called it "a bloody discount war for books."The promotional intensity of Taiwan’s book e-commerce is only "limited 66% off", which seems to be 10 years behind the combination of discounts, discounts and coupons in mainland China. In an article on
"book list", it was mentioned that "the mainland bookstore has already passed the time window to chant and reverse its destiny." In the conversation with Du Mou, several practitioners also expressed their calmness about the current living conditions of the bookstore. Li Dong admitted that he had only two understandings of physical bookstores: one is a school side store that purely serves students, which mainly sells textbooks and teaching aids. Children do not need to order online, and the other is to provide coffee, catering, and leisure space. They rely on books to provide cultural tone, but do not make money by selling books. As for traditional comprehensive bookstores, they no longer exist.
The existence mode of physical bookstores has changed, and will tend to be more "humanistic space" in the future. readers may also witness the collapse of many bookstores, and survival and transformation are the top priorities that must be considered.
"Bookstores are no longer the main place for book trading, but are historical trends that no one can change," Wenshu said. "Whether selling coffee and black tea or selling life aesthetics are respectable self-rescue behaviors. On this basis, continue to consider the creation of humanistic space, that is, the cultural hero of this era."
Naixue Bookstore
People in the publishing industry rarely claim to be "cultural heroes". The reasons for their entry include "interesting" and "rich", and staying is mostly just because of love. "Making books requires sentiment", more than one practitioner said this.
Xiao Zhui has revised a book written by a former Beijing criminal policeman for more than ten times, and she has no complaints when working overtime every day. Before entering the industry, she loved criminal investigation mystery novels. When she saw that the sales of books increased due to publicity, it was the most satisfying moment in her work.
Wenshu entered the publishing industry because he "has books he wants to make". Those niche books "when others wait for them to do, they may not be published for a long time." Among the planned books, his favorite is "The Owl in the House" by avant-garde artist Zhang Xian. This drama "perfectly avoids all the key points of contemporary bestsellers", but he still judges that some readers will like it.
"A colleague joked that the editor is not a cultural industry, it is clearly a service industry, but if the service objects are chosen by themselves and liked by themselves, the service industry will be very happy."
text | Liao Yizhou
edit | Zhao Pu
