Brand is literally the name of a commodity in Chinese, and the English word brand corresponding to the word "brand" means "trademark, brand, brand". But in commodity marketing, the meaning of brand concept is richer than literal meaning. Philip kotler, a professor of marketing at Kellogg Business School of Northwestern University, believes that a brand is a name, a noun, a mark, a symbol or a design, or a combination of them. Its purpose is to identify the products or services of a seller or a group of sellers and distinguish them from those of competitors. Simply put, a brand is a sign added to a commodity or service, which distinguishes this commodity or service from similar commodities or services.
Brand represents the spirit of the enterprise and its commitment to consumers, and is an intangible asset of the enterprise; For consumers, it is consumers' trust in the enterprise; For competitors, it is a competitive means for enterprises.
In the production and sale of modern common goods, the importance of brand goes without saying. A reputable brand will be favored by consumers and bring good economic benefits to manufacturers and distributors.
The establishment of a brand, of course, needs to rely on advertising to expand its influence, but the essence of a brand is superior quality and good reputation. Without the support of the latter, no matter how extravagant the advertisement is, it is impossible to establish a good brand. On the contrary, it is suspected of deceiving consumers and will eventually lose consumers. 1996 Qin Chi won the first prize with 66.66 million yuan in CCTV advertising bidding, and Qin Chi wine became famous all over the world. 1997, Qin Chi won the first prize again with 321211800 million yuan, but the huge advertising expenditure and the glory of winning the bid did not bring Qin Chi rolling money, but a cup of bitter wine. The expenditure of huge funds made Qin Chi short of money when adjusting industrial structure and accelerating development, and the production line was not enough, so it purchased Sichuan wine blending. Unexpectedly, Qin Chi's reputation was discredited, a large number of products were overstocked, and advertising fees could not be settled. At last, "Wang Biao" quietly withdrew.
Books are also commodities. From this perspective, books should also have brands. The question is what constitutes a book brand? What marks are put on books to distinguish one kind of books from another of the same kind?
The first consideration is the title and author. If we put aside the differences in editions, we can say that the works of the same name by the same author, whether handwritten or printed, and published by any publishing house, have the same content. Title and author can't distinguish similar books published by different publishers, so title and author are not the elements of book brand.
Secondly, editors, annotators and translators need to be considered. The same material is handled by different editors, and the results may be very different. The editor's interest, knowledge and knowledge are all reflected in his works. The situation of annotators is similar to that of editors. The same book, explained by different commentators, may have completely different meanings. The translator is the communicator of two languages, and the translated works reflect the translator's understanding of the original text, the translator's attitude towards translation and the translator's language style. The same work, handled by different editors, annotators and translators, will inevitably lead to differences. Therefore, editors, annotators and translators are the elements of a book brand.
The third factor to consider is the publisher. Publishing houses have their own principles and tastes in the choice of books, and will form their own style in the long-term development process. The name of the publishing house represents a spirit, a certain editing power and a certain binding, printing and binding style.
The fourth book series or series is considered. A series of books has certain principles of topic selection and design style, which determines the selected books and makes a series different from other similar series; The design style follows the principle of topic selection, which also makes a series of books different from other series in appearance. The title of the series represents these things, and it is also a special mark added to a book.
From the above simple investigation, we can see that there are three main factors that constitute a book brand: 1. Editor, annotator and translator; 2. Publishers; 3. series.
Before the reform and opening up, the book publishing industry in China was a monopoly industry with meticulous division of labor and strict control. The types of books that publishers can publish and the number of books published each year are strictly controlled by government departments. Under the control of the plan, the elements that make up the book brand can't play a role. With the reform and opening up, the government's control over the publishing industry has gradually relaxed, and there has been a certain degree of competition among publishers. Due to its historical advantages, the original state-level publishing houses have gradually formed their own book brands. Since the reorganization and adjustment of publishing enterprises in the early days of liberation, People's Publishing House is responsible for publishing political books and works of revolutionary teachers and leaders, Commercial Press is responsible for publishing foreign academic masterpieces, foreign dictionaries and teaching materials, Zhonghua Book Company is responsible for publishing China ancient books, and People's Literature Publishing House is responsible for publishing Chinese classical literary masterpieces, China modern literary works and foreign literary translations. Because of their strong editing power and rigorous style, these publishing houses published all kinds of books with high quality and good brands, which became the first choice for readers to buy books in the early days of reform and opening up. Shanghai Translation Publishing House, founded in 1978, has gradually established its own brand with its famous foreign literature series and 20th century foreign literature series, and the Sanlian Bookstore, which was established independently in 1986, with its historical reputation and newly launched modern western academic library, academic frontier and cultural life translation series.
However, since the late 1980s, some state-level publishing houses have not made good use of their own advantages and actively developed new products. For a long time, they even just reprinted old books, didn't cherish existing brands, and even abandoned their own brands. The Series of Foreign Literary Masterpieces and the Series of Twentieth Century Foreign Literature published by People's Literature Publishing House and Shanghai Translation Publishing House came to an end. The Chinese Version of World Academic Masterpieces published by the Commercial Press is just an old book with a new skin and few new varieties. Worst of all, Zhonghua Book Company not only failed to make use of its own advantages, but actively collated and published China ancient books. In the absence of serious research on the book market, I spent a lot of money to blindly launch teaching AIDS and travel books, and published 24 expensive vernacular history books, which led to a large backlog of books and put myself in trouble.
However, some small publishing houses newly established in the middle and late 1980s, with keen vision and courage, gradually established their own brands and developed in the cracks of national big publishing houses. There are two publishing houses worth mentioning, one is Lijiang Publishing House in Guangxi, and the other is Yilin Publishing House in Jiangsu.
Lijiang Publishing House, founded in the mid-1980s, first stood out from books with the help of "foreign literary masterpieces". This set of essays deliberately avoids duplication with the Series of Foreign Literary Masterpieces published by People's Literature Publishing House and Shanghai Translation Publishing House, and selects some foreign literary masterpieces that are omitted from the Series of Foreign Literary Masterpieces. The selection of translators is also very strict, and many of them are experts in foreign literature. This series of literary masterpieces is quite popular because of its short space, small printing format and low price. Then, the book "Learning from Nobel Prize in Literature" was published, which systematically introduced the literature of various countries in the 20th century. It can be said that it is this large-scale series that has established Lijiang Publishing House's position in the publishing industry in China.
The original title of "20th century foreign literature series" is quite conservative. Although its orientation is foreign literature in the 20th century, some classics that truly represent foreign literature in the 20th century are excluded, such as Ulysses by James Joyce and Memories of Time Past by Proust. Yilin Publishing House, founded in 1988, lost no time in responding to the readers' urgent desire to understand the western literature in the 20th century. 1989 released Proust's major work "Remembering Things Past" Volume 1, and 19 1 published the last volume "Time of Reproduction" in. In order to launch this masterpiece as soon as possible, the publishing house selected more than a dozen translators to cooperate in translation. Although this is not a good idea, publishers are still strict in choosing translators. Most of these translators are French teachers in colleges and universities, and their translated works have been published before. More importantly, these translators are very serious about the translation of this famous book. Editor-in-chief Han Hulin is a scholar who studies the translation of French literature, which is also the guarantee of translation quality.
After the successful introduction of Proust's representative works, 1994, Yilin Publishing House published James Joyce's Ulysses (three volumes) translated by Xiao Gan and Wen Jieruo. These two famous translators not only translated this puzzling masterpiece into Chinese, but also added many notes to facilitate readers' understanding.
The translation and publication of these two masterpieces have brought a good reputation to Yilin Publishing House. Subsequently, the "World Literary Masterpieces" series was launched. Up to now, this series has published nearly 200 kinds, which is the best of its kind in China. Yilin is no longer a young man in the publishing industry. Nearly 500 kinds of books are published every year, and most of them are constantly reprinted. The total number of books published each year exceeds 1 billion yuan.
In order to establish a good image in readers' minds, publishing houses must persistently provide readers with good books and new books. It is not easy to create a book brand, but it may be more difficult to maintain it and carry it forward. Unfortunately, the two series, Foreign Literature Masterpieces Series and Twentieth Century Foreign Literature Series, edited and published by People's Literature Publishing House and Shanghai Translation Publishing House, were not spared. What is even more regrettable is that these two publishing houses are very slow to respond to the book market, refusing to reprint books that many readers urgently need and have long been out of print, and even being robbed of copyright by other publishing houses. For example, most Greek tragedies and comedies translated by Luo Niansheng are published by People's Literature Publishing House, and the three-volume version of euripides Tragedy translated by Luo Niansheng and Zhou (the author) is also published by People's Literature Publishing House. Of these rare translations published in the 1950s and 1960s, only six were reprinted in 1979, and most of them were not reprinted. The euripides Tragedy 13 translated by Zhou Zuoren was purchased by China Foreign Translation Publishing Company, and was still published as one of the Kuyuzhai Translation Series under the name of euripides Tragedy in 2003. After Luo Niansheng's death, the publishing rights of his translated works were purchased by Shanghai People's Publishing House, and The Complete Works of Luo Niansheng was published in 2004. The Collected Works of Tolstoy 12, which was independently translated by Cao Ying, was originally a famous brand product of Shanghai Translation Publishing House, but 1997 was published by foreign languages press and Shanghai Far East Publishing House, and in 2004 it was published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House under the name of The Complete Works of Tolstoy. These two publishing houses do not cherish their own brands, refuse to republish their own excellent works, and let their copyright be lost, but they are keen on publishing worthless British and American bestsellers, which is simply stupid.
People of insight in the book industry have expressed their opinions one after another, expounding such distinct viewpoints as "brand strategy is the sustainable development strategy of publishing houses" and "book branding is the inevitable choice of China book industry in the 2 1 century". Established publishing houses such as Zhonghua Book Company and Commercial Press are in a strong position in the fierce market competition, not only because they have a long history of enterprise development, but also because they are supported by many irreplaceable brand books.
Generally, successful enterprises have gone through several stages: product management, capital management and brand management, and brand management can be said to be the highest realm of successful enterprise development. According to relevant data, the famous brands produced in the world today account for less than 3% of the whole product, but their market share is as high as over 40% and their sales exceed 50%. It can be seen that whoever owns brand products will have consumers and win the market. Computer books published by Tsinghua University Publishing House, academic books published by Peking University Publishing House, postgraduate entrance examination and social science books published by China Renmin University, etc. , has become a brand accepted by readers. The reason for its success lies in the fact that these publishing houses accurately designed their own market positioning according to their own professional experience, advantages and characteristics, scale, financial strength and editing level. , and make full use of their own advantages to selectively create leading brand books, establish an unchanging brand image, have a wide and stable target audience, and finally win a very high market share. This shows that publishing enterprises should take building brand books as an inevitable choice to deal with market competition.
We all have the same feeling in our daily life: in the face of a wide variety of similar goods, we prefer to choose those brand products with high popularity and credibility, even if they are expensive, because they can make consumers more satisfied and assured. This is what we often call the brand effect, and so is the book. Readers' recognition of brand books directly forms the book purchase mode. For example, to buy classics, go to Zhonghua Book Company, Tools, Commercial Press, People's Literature Publishing House, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing House, and farmers' friends go to Jindun Publishing House to buy practical agricultural science and technology books. It can be seen that in the process of building brand books, the publishing house has also successfully pushed itself to the position of brand publishing house. Having such a brand image can also promote the sales of other books in our society and gain the greatest benefit from book publishing. Unfortunately, there are few brands in China publishing industry at present. Now it is time to publicize brand awareness and call for the birth of publishing brands. Let's embrace the brand with open arms.
(Author: Shanxi Education Press)