Investigation time: May 20th11.
Survey object: bookstore employees
Investigation Problems: Problems in Children's Books
I also searched the internet for relevant information.
In recent years, the children's book market has developed rapidly, and the retail market share has continued to grow year after year, and it has remained above 10%, exceeding the average growth rate of the whole book market, becoming one of the main categories that drive the growth of the whole book market in China, and also making China enter the ranks of the world's children's book publishing countries. However, under the vibrant surface, there are also many intertwined problems and contradictions, which have become a lagging factor affecting the sustained and long-term development of children's book publishing.
I. Existing problems
1. The sales of children's books and the growth of the code industry benefit more from bestsellers, and there are only a handful of bestsellers.
Over the years, the bestseller effect has been very significant in the whole book industry, and it has also been fully reflected in the field of children's books. Brand-name clubs and a few authors' brands have increasingly become the key factors leading the rise and fall of children's books. For example, in recent years, the average annual sales share of children's literature books is 1/3 or more of the whole children's books, but this sales performance is largely due to a few brands such as "Harry Potter series", "Naughty Ghost Horse T series" and "Pipiru series" published by several major clubs. In the second comic book, its sales volume is largely created by brands such as Adventure Little Tiger Series, Rainbow Cat Lan Tu Series, Little Carp Adventure Series, Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf Series.
At present, most of the more than 500 publishing houses in China are involved in the publishing of children's books, but the prosperity of this market does not mean that all publishing houses operating children's books are thriving. At present, the publishing houses that rely on children's best-selling books to get rich returns have improved their popularity, opened up channels, promoted the sales of other varieties, increased their market share, significantly enhanced their strength, improved the layout of topics, achieved steady and sustained growth, and formed a virtuous circle. For example, Anhui Children's Society, relying on the sales myth of "Rainbow Cat Lan Tu Series", rose rapidly in market share 104, jumped to the 36th place in the national book retail market and the 5th place in the children's book retail market, becoming the largest publishing house in 2007. However, the sales of children's books by more publishers are very dull. Even professional children's clubs lack profit growth points mainly relying on the market, and the book structure is simple and unreasonable. They still rely on shrinking textbooks and some policy reading materials, and even cooperate with private booksellers to survive temporarily.
2. Phoenix publishing, simple imitation of books, resulting in similar varieties, homogeneous books, low-level repeated publishing.
In bookstores, the contents, binding and even titles of most children's books are similar. There are many versions of children's books in each category and even each theme, especially those with good market response, almost all of which have dozens or even hundreds of different versions.
Following the trend of publishing is also manifested in the repetition of publishing methods. One publishing house has succeeded in managing a certain kind of books, while others simply copy its business model in order to achieve the same effect. For example, comic books have been quite active in recent years, and many publishers have followed their interactive operation mode of film and television books, hoping to promote our development in this respect. However, at present, there are only a handful of film and television books that create sales myths, and after several years of continuous warming, comic books in 2008 fell sharply, and success cannot be simply copied. For another example, children's literature has become an important category of children's books in recent years, so it has become a * * * knowledge to vigorously develop original children's literature works in China. However, in practice, all kinds of associations rely more on their own strength and favorable conditions to snatch and pursue a few popular children's literature writers, rather than explore and cultivate the new and subsequent strength of children's literature creation on the basis of it, so as to let more original excellent works enter children's reading field of vision.
3. The book content and editing quality have declined, and the children's book market is mixed.
Over the years, there are more and more varieties of children's books, the updating speed is faster and faster, the production cycle is shorter and shorter, the content quality and editing content are less and less, and the quality is difficult to guarantee.
For example, the current teaching aid market is chaotic and the quality is uneven; For example, many books on children's songs and nursery rhymes are neither poetic nor childlike; In the children's editions of some Chinese and foreign literary masterpieces, the stories, characters and literary language of the original works are all shriveled and pale in the adapted editions; However, under the situation that the fantasy literature works created in China are influenced by similar foreign literature and film and television works, Cao Wenxuan, a famous children's literature writer, clearly pointed out that the imagination in many such "fantasy" works is mostly "boring, mediocre, clumsy or even bad" and "lacking spiritual connotation and aesthetic value".
On the quality of editing and proofreading, the present situation of children's books is also worrying. Since 2004, the General Administration of Press and Publication has conducted special quality inspections on children's books and supplementary books every year. A certain number of books are randomly selected as unqualified books every year, and the error rate even exceeds the standard. But there are all kinds of intertwined mistakes in children's books, which is also our intuitive feeling in bookstores.
Children's books are becoming more and more urbanized, but there are few varieties for rural children.
Nowadays, the binding of children's books is becoming more and more exquisite, many sets of series are launched, and hardcover books and gift books are constantly emerging, which naturally increases the cost and pricing of children's books, while rural children and their parents who are hard up are discouraged, and their readers are increasingly concentrated in urban children.
As for the content, it has created a good market effect at present. The book categories created by various publishing houses, such as children's literature books with fantasy, adventure and campus humor, comics and animation books showing the spirit of martial arts, and picture books with hissing temperature, mainly reflect the reading interest of urban dramas; And all kinds of varieties that accuse early intellectual development are aimed at urban children. There are few books that directly serve the reading needs of rural children and reflect their living conditions and mental outlook, and most of them are varieties with good content and rough appearance. In urban bookstores, children's books are updated quickly, and the number of children in rural areas is much higher than that in cities. However, even if there is a serious backlog of children's books returned by the publishing house, there is no chance to meet.
Second, the reason analysis
1. Editors lack professional literacy.
It is generally believed that children's books belong to "pediatrics" and the threshold is low, so professional clubs, non-professional clubs and even private booksellers have followed suit. As for the choice of editors, as long as they are young and lively, they look competent. Therefore, the professional quality and ability of children's book editors are not too hard, such as familiar judgment of children's book publishing market, topic planning and operation ability, text standardization and processing ability. At the same time, the knowledge of children's education, children's psychology, children's culture and other related professional fields is very limited. Even many children's book editors lack basic cultural literacy, narrow knowledge structure, insufficient theoretical literacy, lack of reading interest and weak language and writing skills. The editor's own lack of kung fu affects his vision, ideas, ideas and cultural judgments, the planning and development of topics, the choice of authors, and the overall ability to control manuscripts, thus affecting the quality, taste and vitality of books.
2. Editors and even the whole publishing house take economic benefits as the starting point, pay attention to immediate interests and ignore long-term interests.
In recent years, under the background of cultural system reform, publishing houses have also begun to transform from the original institutions to enterprises. Therefore, from the whole publishing house to the individual editors, quantitative economic indicators are used for annual assessment, and "sales volume is king" has become the last word. At the same time, the children's book market is fiercely competitive, showing professional children's book clubs, non-professional children's book clubs, private booksellers, overseas capital and other forces vying for cakes. The stronger the strong, the weaker the weak. Among them, private booksellers have a heavier impact on publishing houses. They plan and make their own topics with a sharper sense of market smell, and have strong distribution power and channels. They have seized a great deal of market share through sales methods that are far more flexible than publishing houses. This is naturally a severe challenge for publishers who have long relied on policy books and lack market competitiveness under the planned economy system. Therefore, the editors caught in the middle have to take "short, flat and fast" as the center, proceed from the wind direction of the market, do everything well, with low cost and little risk, but they have no time and energy to carefully screen the topics, carefully arrange the contents in thousands of periodicals, and cannot take into account the reading needs of children readers in a wider range.
3. The editor's reader-oriented consciousness is not strong, and humanistic care is lacking.
Humanistic care, from the perspective of children's books, is to show love and respect for gifted children in books, to understand them, to guide their spiritual world to develop freely, happily and healthily from the perspective of children's acceptance, psychology and needs, and from the height of spiritual construction. That is to say, it is necessary to take readers as the standard, and to correctly guide and actively cultivate them.
Although children's book editors have always stressed that we should start from children's reading needs, in fact, we are more concerned about market demand. Here, the concept has changed from reader-oriented to market-oriented Market demand and reader demand are not exactly the same. In the era of rapid development of mass media, market demand is formed under the influence of readers' own needs, mass media and interpersonal communication, which reflects reading fashion and is directly reflected by bestsellers. Of course, many bestsellers have excellent qualities, which are beneficial spiritual food for children's growth, but there are still some bestsellers that are not very beneficial and even not conducive to children's growth. If we simply cater to the market demand and decide the direction of book publishing, then when such market demand and reading fashion represented by bestsellers affect children's reading horizons and reading interests, children's aesthetics and reading judgments in their formation will be dispelled, and their spiritual world will be incomplete and flawed. At present, some children's books fully publicize the elements that are in line with children's reading psychology, such as entertainment and interest, but the elements such as thought, meaning and value are increasingly blurred or even disappeared. For example, some foreign books that play up psychological stimulation such as horror, adventure and games are very popular in China. These are just cultural fast foods that are not more beneficial to children's spiritual construction, and even some Japanese cartoons involving pornography and violence are completely cultural garbage that pollutes the spirit.
Third, the solution
1. Strengthen the accumulation of professional literacy and cultural literacy.
It is a prejudice and misunderstanding to think that children's books belong to "pediatrics" with low threshold and low requirements for editing children's books. As editors, we all need to strive to achieve the basic professional quality and ability of practitioners in this position. In addition, children's books span a lot in variety structure. All knowledge fields and basic categories of adult education, such as language, literature, art, history, philosophy, natural science, etc. , all start basic education from childhood, which is the possible scope of children's books. Therefore, children's book editors need a broader knowledge structure and literacy, similar to the "encyclopedia" type of "naturalist." Therefore, children's book editors need to maintain a strong and extensive interest in learning and have a broad knowledge horizon, otherwise they will not be competent for their work.
2. Strengthen the original consciousness and find the way of innovation.
Innovation is easier said than done, but it is really the only way for children's books and even the whole exhibition. Therefore, we first need to focus on the macro-whole, grasp the achievements, existing problems and development trends in the field of children's publishing, analyze the advantages and disadvantages of southern women and even their publishing houses, find one or two main F directions, and work hard for them, so as to make a breakthrough and form their own characteristics and competitiveness.
The innovation consciousness is embodied in the innovation of content and form, as well as the innovation of overall operation and marketing methods. The innovation of content is the innovation of topic selection, which requires us to constantly capture the hot spots and focus of children's attention, pay attention to the development trends and achievements in various fields of society closely related to their lives, and combine the blank and blind spots of children's publishing to form an innovative topic selection. Form innovation, that is, the innovation of book writing, arrangement, binding design and painting form. It is not easy to innovate in both content and form, but it is possible to make the finishing touch by grasping the essentials and working hard.
The innovation of overall operation and marketing mode is the conscious consciousness that the four halls of modern enterprises must have if they want to survive in the market competition. The market is complex and changeable, which requires us to choose and even create the most suitable operation and marketing methods in combination with each book's own situation and external environment characteristics.
3. Adhere to humanistic care, and do something different.
Children's reading speed affects the healthy growth of the ghost world, so children's books carry the functions of educating, cultivating and shaping people, which is its constant social responsibility and mission and the ultimate pursuit of children's book editors. Only by paying attention to humanities can we love children, be familiar with children, respect children, and take children's needs as the standard. Only in this way can the books produced not make children feel estranged, and can we constantly innovate, improve the layout of topics, and strive for perfection in all aspects of book publishing, instead of being eager for quick success, narrow-minded and shoddy; Talents are not simple, but also meet the market demand and reading fashion, but can establish our publishing concept from a cultural perspective, that is,+the cultural literacy of children's books; Only in this way can our eyes not focus more and more on urban children, and we can also give rural children the same attention and care.
There are more than 300 million children in China, and this huge and inexhaustible group of readers has a huge reading demand. At the same time, with the deepening of quality education, families, schools and even the whole society pay more and more attention to children's growth. The combination of the two makes children's book publishing full of vitality and rapid development. Constantly solving various contradictions and problems existing in children's publishing and constantly adapting to the new needs of social development will make this publishing field have greater achievements and broader development prospects.