On May 24th, Bertelsmann Direct Group, a subsidiary of German media group Bertelsmann, and Liaoning Publishing Group jointly established Liaoning Bertelsmann Book Publishing Co., Ltd. The establishment of this joint venture company finally enabled Bertelsmann, who has been active in China book market for ten years, to enter the wholesale field of book publishing market, which is also an important step for Liaoning Publishing Group, a pilot of domestic publishing house reform, to enter the market.
Foreign capital enters the field of book wholesale.
Pan Yan, general manager of the newly established Liaoning Bertelsmann Book Distribution Co., Ltd., said that the joint venture company will devote itself to the book wholesale business. The main partners in the future include Xinhua Bookstore in various provinces and cities and well-known private bookstores in China.
Different from the existing domestic enterprises engaged in book wholesale, Liaoning Bertelsmann Book Distribution Co., Ltd. will advocate a new distribution culture and provide a large number of value-added services in the field of book circulation for downstream retailers and upstream publishers. "Bertelsmann's years of operation in China have made us know more about the market, and Liaoning Publishing Group has rich experience in cooperation with international media groups." Pan Yan said, "There is no shortage of good books in China. The key is how to market them. For the upstream publishing house, the first is the richness of content. Behind the newly established joint venture company is Bertelsmann Group of Germany, which has rich experience in book publishing. It can make suggestions for the publishing house's topic selection planning. Secondly, it is also possible to develop upstream and downstream marketing channels through bundled sales. "
Wu Hequan, president of Bertelsmann's Asian enterprise development, said that after the country liberalized the book wholesale business last year, Bertelsmann and Liaoning Publishing Group began joint venture negotiations. On June 5438- 10, 2004, the General Administration of Press and Publication approved the joint venture plan between the two parties. After a series of approvals from the Ministry of Commerce and other relevant departments, the joint venture company was finally formally established in May 2005. In the board of directors of the joint venture company, the Chinese side holds three seats and the foreign side holds two seats. Harmony is one of foreign directors.
According to China's commitment to join the WTO, Regulations on Publication Management, Measures for the Administration of Foreign-invested Distribution Enterprises of Books, Newspapers and Periodicals and Regulations on the Administration of Publication Market, foreign investors are allowed to invest in the distribution market of books, newspapers and periodicals in China. By June 5438+February 2004 1 1, the wholesale market of books, newspapers and periodicals was fully open to foreign investment. It is against this background that Liaoning Bertelsmann Book Distribution Co., Ltd. got the first book wholesale license of the joint venture company.
Bertelsmann's choice of joint venture rather than independent book publishing company is related to Bertelsmann's consistent marketing strategy in China. Harmony explained that Bertelsmann could not and would not explore the market alone, because Bertelsmann still lacked the ability to fully understand the book distribution market in China. "Our experience around the world tells us that in order to succeed, we must establish cooperative relations with the best local companies and carefully evaluate the local book wholesale and retail market. Liaoning Publishing Group has experience in cooperating with international media groups, and they have shown good cooperation partners throughout the negotiation and newspaper approval process. Bertelsmann doesn't think he can do everything well. Our strategy is a local strategy, and we will not try to carry out any business ourselves. " Regarding the current shareholding ratio, Harmony said Bertelsmann was very satisfied, and there is no plan to change it at present. But he also said that the market is always changing, and the future depends on the development of the market.
Go out and come in.
One of the important reasons Bertelsmann chose Liaoning Publishing Group as a partner among many domestic publishing houses is that Liaoning Publishing Group is the first pilot reorganization of publishing houses in China.
On March 29th, 2003, Liaoning Publishing Group was established, which marked the birth of the first publishing group in China that separated government from enterprise.
The system reform has made Liaoning Publishing Group full of vitality, and the group has made great progress in the aspects of diversification of property rights, internal operation mechanism, adjustment of personnel structure, establishment of high-tech support system and establishment of modern book logistics center. According to the latest data, the book republishing rate of Liaoning Publishing Group is 10.2% higher than that before the establishment of the group, which is nearly 10 percentage point higher than the national average. The quality, variety and scale of books that won the National Book Award and the Provincial Excellent Book Award all reached the best level in history, increasing by 55% and 36% respectively compared with that before the establishment of the Group, and the total assets increased by 665,438+0.1%. Net assets increased by 91%; Sales increased by 30%; Sales revenue increased by 39.5%; Profits increased by 32.8%.
By 2004, following Liaoning Publishing Group, China has established 12 large publishing groups, and the publishing industry has initially completed the group reorganization.
Zhang Shengyou, director of the Management Committee of China Writers Publishing Group, believes that the purpose of establishing a publishing group is not simply to enlarge the scale, but to improve the overall efficiency of publishing and give full play to the scale advantage of publishing through resource reorganization, brand extension and in-depth development.
For Liaoning Publishing Group, the cooperation with Bertelsmann has another meaning. Yu, deputy general manager of the group, said that by effectively absorbing foreign capital and establishing a brand-new distribution company, it will not only help to better explore the domestic distribution market, but also quickly improve the visibility of Liaoning Publishing Group in the international market and enhance the competitiveness of core industries together with Bertelsmann. This is an important step for Liaoning Publishing Group to realize its "going out" strategy.
Yu also believes that for Liaoning Publishing Group, which is seeking listing, the cooperation with Bertelsmann will be beneficial to its own listing process.
As a well-known media group, Bertelsmann Group has successively formed three retail channels, namely catalog mail order, online bookstore (BOL) and member chain stores all over the country, through joint venture with Shanghai China Science and Technology Book Company, integration of online business and cooperation with Beijing 2 1 Century Brilliant Book Chain Company. At present, Bertelsmann has 6.5438+0.5 million book club members, 39 chain bookstores and more than 30 bookstores in China, which are under preparation and will open this year. The establishment of the joint venture company has expanded Bertelsmann's business to the wholesale field, which indicates that they have fully entered the publication distribution market in China. In the words of Mr. Wu Hequan, President of Bertelsmann's Asian Enterprise Development Department, they "firmly believe that China is a market with great potential, so they have always regarded it as an important part of the Group's global strategy and look forward to its greater development and better performance."
China's publishing industry's expectation of "going out" was combined with the gradual "coming in" of international multinational media groups, and a new Bertelsmann book publishing company was established in Liaoning. People in the industry hope that this complementary goal and interest orientation can bring real "win-win" to more Chinese and foreign enterprises.
Book Distribution Market in the Three Kingdoms Period
Before China's entry into WTO, China's book distribution industry was dominated by Xinhua Bookstore Group. With a history of 65 years, Xinhua Bookstore is the largest state-owned book publisher in China. Under the protection of the policy, it has always occupied more than 70% of the market. In addition to relying on large-scale logistics centers to carry out wholesale business, Xinhua Bookstore Group mainly carries out retail business through bookstores all over the country.
However, in the face of the gradual opening of the book market, the privileged position of Xinhua Bookstore is weakening, while in contrast, the power of foreign capital and private capital is increasing.
Before Bertelsmann, Fan Hua Science and Technology and People's Daily established Dahua Media Company, and Tom Group agreed to establish a joint venture with Beijing Sanlian Bookstore and was allowed to launch publication distribution business.
While opening to foreign investment, China's book distribution market is the first to open to private capital in China. The private bookstores represented by the thought have risen rapidly, and Luo 2 1 Century Splendid, which cooperates with Bertelsmann, is one of them. Xi Shu adopts the business model of joining bookstores, while 2 1 Century Books is laying its own bookstore chain management network throughout the country.
Industry experts pointed out that Xinhua Bookstore Group has the largest number of bookstores, but its management is loose. The Xinhua Bookstore system in different places is fragmented, so it costs a lot to maintain so many bookstores. Private bookstore groups like Xi Shu are flexible in operation, but their financial strength cannot compete with Xinhua Bookstore, and their management experience is not as rich as that of foreign-funded groups like Bertelsmann. Foreign-funded groups represented by Bertelsmann have the dual advantages of capital and operation, but they are still restricted by policies in China. In addition, the establishment of distribution channels requires time and a lot of capital investment, and the return on investment is long, so they prefer to explore the China market by cooperating with local companies.
Zhao Xiaoming, president of International Chinese Culture Publishing House, said: "The book market in Chinese mainland has great potential. In 200 1 year, Chinese mainland's per capita spending on books was 32.38+0 yuan's 30066.00600000005. In the United States,199, the per capita spending on books was 93 dollars, while in France it was 122 dollars. In contrast, we can see that the mainland book market has great potential.
The first national sample survey on the added value of news publishing industry shows that in 2004, the added value of the whole industry reached193.97 billion yuan, accounting for 1.7% of the national GDP and 5% of the added value of the tertiary industry.
Since 1980s, the average annual growth rate of China's publishing output value has remained at 10% ~ 20% for a long time, and sometimes even as high as 30% ~ 50%, which is extremely rare in the contemporary world publishing industry. By the middle and late 1990s, the annual growth rate of China's publishing industry had dropped to 8% ~ 10%, basically keeping pace with the national economic growth. But even so, this is the high growth of the world publishing industry.
According to statistics, in 2003, China published190,000 kinds of books, including 1 10000 kinds of new books. In the same period, 654.38+0.2 billion books were published in Britain. There are1750,000 books published in the United States.
However, China, as the country with the largest population, has ranked first in the world for many years, but its output value is only 4.6/kloc-0.60 billion yuan, far behind the annual output value of American books of 30 billion dollars and Britain. That is to say, as far as books are concerned, China has a large population, a small market and the first variety, but the output value is very low.
For a multinational media group like Bertelsmann, it is really hard for China with such potential to give up. Harmony said, "China market is a market with high education level and very good growth, which is very important to Bertelsmann's global development strategy." As for China's book publishing market, although there is no timetable for opening to foreign investment, Bertelsmann is still waiting patiently. "We will maintain cooperation with the government of China and learn more about the management rules in this respect. Once this market is open to the outside world, Bertelsmann will definitely become a partner of the China government. " Harmony theory.