Ancient times
Commercial publishing activities existed at all levels of my country’s ancient publishing system, and the most representative one was the book engraving system. Fang Ke is unique because of its keen market vision, flexible management methods and unique reader service awareness. Its large number of engraving books, wide geographical distribution, numerous practitioners and diverse business methods make it unique. Official engraving and private engraving are hard to come by. It can be said that only book engraving in bookshops made the publishing industry prosperous in ancient my country. A large amount of ancient publishing historical materials show that the sense of reader service runs through the entire business activities of commercial publishing; promoting book products, occupying the book market, and establishing one's own image all focus on readers. Analyzing the reader service consciousness of ancient publishers and examining the business activities of ancient publishers should be beneficial to correctly evaluate the historical role of ancient publishers and to do a good job in serving readers today. The reader service awareness of ancient publishers is reflected in the following aspects: Market awareness to meet readers' cultural needs. Understanding readers, starting from readers' cultural needs, deciding on book topics and publication varieties, is the business philosophy of publishers in the past. Book engraving in bookshops is usually considered to be "aimed at making profits", and the prerequisite for making profits is the support of readers' purchasing power. Therefore, the bookstore publishes a wide variety of books, including collections of classics and history, almanacs, medical books, books on yin and yang, children's books, and books for scientific examinations. Readers' needs are the publisher's choice of topics. While meeting the cultural needs of readers, it also achieves the ultimate goal of "shooting profits".
Modern
At the turn of the century in 2000, the famous scholar Mr. Hu Daojing once said: "Our country is a big country with a rapidly developing publishing industry, and it is also the first to invent printing. A big country is the country where woodblock printing originated, and it is also the birthplace of movable type printing. But one thing is strange, that is, the materials recording these creations and the vigorous publishing industry are not active, which seems very inappropriate. " , the research on editing history and publishing history lags behind, and is still in the stage of discipline construction. There are many classics in my country since ancient times. Catalogs, edition studies, book history, printing history, etc. developed earlier, and often contain important contents of editing history and publishing history. Ye Dehui's "Shu Lin Qing Hua" and so on are very valuable, but they are not yet complete. Edited treatise on the history of publishing. In the late 1920s, Ge Gongzhen's "History of Chinese Journalism" was published, which can be said to be "the foundational work for the study of Chinese journalism history." "A Brief History of China's Publishing Industry" (written by Yang Shouqing) was published in Shanghai in 1946. The author was obviously influenced by modern Western publishing ideas, and his creative intentions were close to the requirements of publishing history, but the content was incomplete. , is also relatively short in length, but as the first publication history of China in the modern sense, it is of historical significance. In the early days of the People's Publishing Industry in New China, publisher Zhang Jinglu served in the General Administration of Publication. He first attached importance to the research of publishing history, independently collected historical materials, and pioneered the eight-volume "Historical Materials on Publishing in Modern China" edited and annotated. It was published successively in the 1950s [3]. This book collects a lot of important published materials. Due to the historical conditions at that time, it focused on revolutionary and progressive materials. Moreover, due to the continuous collection and editing, the publication time was scattered, making it inconvenient for readers to find. However, Zhang was the first to create a trend, and his contribution to the study of editing history and publishing history is indispensable.
In the second half of the 20th century, the publishing industry in New China went through ups and downs and twists and turns, and was ravaged and destroyed by the "Cultural Revolution" for 10 years. Starting from the 1980s, our country entered the stage of socialist modernization. In the new era, the publishing industry is back on the road to rapid recovery, continuous growth and development. The publishing industry has gone through a long history of half a century, and there is a current of research on publishing theory (including editing history and publishing history). In June 1983, the "Decision on Strengthening Publishing Work" promulgated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council was an important program for guiding publishing work in the new era. It had important guiding significance and far-reaching influence. It was the first time in a central document that the strengthening of publishing work was proposed. For scientific research work on printing, printing and distribution, it is necessary to establish publishing and distribution research institutions, etc. From the perspective of research on editing history and publishing history, this has greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of knowledgeable people in the industry and some veteran publishing workers. They have started by summarizing publishing historical experience and writing publishing memories, and then entered into researching editing history and publishing history. The procession of history.
Almost around this time, Hu Qiaomu, one of the founders of the publishing industry in New China, wrote to the Ministry of Education in October 1984 to launch a trial editing major in universities [5]. He received letters from Peking University, Fudan University and Since Nankai University established the editing major, many universities across the country, including Wuhan University, Henan University, and Nanjing University, have successively set up editing and publishing majors and publishing research institutes, and have set up "Chinese Editing History" or "Chinese Publishing History" courses. These measures have achieved significant results in gathering experts, promoting research on editing history and publishing history, and cultivating talents. For example, there are already a number of master's and doctoral theses with published history, and some of them have been officially published.
At present, a research force among the elderly, middle-aged and young people on editing history and publishing history has been initially formed nationwide, and a number of outstanding research, teaching and creative talents have emerged. This research team is composed of people in the publishing industry, teachers from colleges and universities, graduate students, and experts and scholars from relevant scientific research departments who are enthusiastic about editing history and publishing history.
What is gratifying is that although this research team is not very large, its characteristics are formed on the basis of being like-minded, learning from each other's strengths, uniting and cooperating, and moving forward hand in hand. It can be said that this is a unique research team in publishing, education and academia. The basic strength of scholarly research. The main research topics and achievements in the last 20 years of the last century are inseparable from the academic diligence and hard work of this research team.
The 1980s was an active period for research on editing history and publishing history. In 1985, the China Publishing Science Institute and the Press and Publication Administration Party History Data Collection Leading Group were established in 1987. They have done a lot of work in organizing and promoting research on editorial history, publishing history, and the party’s publishing history. He has held two academic seminars on the history of modern publishing in China in Dayong, Hunan (1989) and Taiyuan, Shanxi (1991), covering the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom publishing, the official bookstore in the late Qing Dynasty, Christian publishing activities in China, publishing during the Republic of China, and revolution. Progressive press publishing in base areas, liberated areas and Kuomintang-controlled areas under the leadership of the Party also includes publishing of ethnic minorities, research on publishing figures, etc. These new results of publishing history research are exchanged and discussed, which will help promote the research on publishing history. Selected papers from both conferences were published. In 1991, the China Publishing Research Institute included "the fine traditional issues of editing, publishing, and distribution in modern my country" in its scientific research plan (it was included in the scientific research plan of the Press and Publication Administration), and established a research group. After more than a year, with the participation of the publishing industry and the editing and publishing education circles in universities, we focused on researching, summarizing and discussing the fine traditional issues of modern Chinese publishing at the 7th National Publishing Science Symposium. , further clarified the correct direction, significance and fundamental purpose of studying the fine traditions of publishing. Yuan Liang said in the article "Carrying forward the fine tradition of publishing and promoting the reform and opening up of publishing": "The fine tradition of my country's modern publishing work contains very rich connotations. From a time perspective, it has gone through hundreds of years, including the old democracy The two historical stages of the revolution and the new-democratic revolution; from a spatial perspective, it includes the publishing industry in Shanghai, Beijing and many other places, including a number of publishing units with high reputations at home and abroad, such as Commerce, China, Sanlian, Kaiming and other publishing houses ; From the perspective of the nature of the undertaking, it includes both progressive publishing undertakings and the revolutionary publishing undertaking directly led by the Communist Party of China; from the perspective of the members of the publishing industry, it includes not only tens of thousands of editors, publishers, and distributors Workers also include a large number of editors and publishers who have made outstanding contributions to my country's cultural undertakings, some of whom are also politicians, writers, theorists, scientists, educators, etc.; from the perspective of the role of publishing work , not only played a major role in disseminating and accumulating scientific and cultural knowledge and improving the cultural quality of the nation, but also played a major role in our country's revolution against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism. Let us study and summarize it today. Such a rich tradition of publishing is of great significance and the difficulty can be imagined.”
After the establishment of the Chinese Editors Society in 1992, it also paid great attention to the academic research of editing history and publishing history. Academic seminars on editing history and publishing history were held in Wuhan (1993), Nanjing (1999), and Wenzhou (2000). The number of scholars, experts and researchers participating in these three meetings was relatively small, and they were mainly for the exchange of research experiences. The Wenzhou meeting focused on reviewing the publishing process in the past century, and reviewed the installments of a century of publishing, the achievements of a century of publishing, and famous modern and contemporary The contributions of publishers and publishing organizations, as well as the enlightenment of a century of publishing on today's publishing industry and publishing research, etc., were discussed, and everyone expressed their opinions, exchanged and discussed [9]. Some experts at the meeting continued to call for strengthening research on publishing history. Fortunately, the compilation of a "General History of Chinese Publishing" with eight volumes and more than 4 million words, hosted by the China Publishing Research Institute, is in progress. This is a large-scale general history of publishing that was compiled through collective discussion and division of labor by the education community, the publishing community, and relevant scholars and experts. It is a heavy infrastructure project for the study of China's publishing history. The information that initiated the compilation of a general history of publishing has attracted the attention of publishing research circles in Japan, South Korea and other countries.
From the above description, it is not difficult to see that organized activities and led collective research and division of labor have played a great role in promoting research on the history of editing and publishing. It should be mentioned here that the work of compiling new local chronicles in various provinces and cities across the country began in the 1980s, including the compilation of "Publishing Chronicles". So far, the ones that have been published include: "Shanghai Publishing Chronicle", "Jiangsu Publishing Chronicle", "Jiangxi Province Publishing Chronicle", "Shaanxi Province Publishing Chronicle", "Anhui Province Publishing Chronicle", "Hebei Province Publishing Chronicle" , "Shanxi Publishing Chronicle", "Hubei Provincial Chronicle·News and Publishing", etc. The Beijing Publishing History Compilation Committee began to edit and publish "Beijing Publishing History" in 1993, publishing it in series. By the end of 2000, 16 volumes had been published. Tianjin, Hebei, Zhejiang and other provinces and cities have also published research works on the publishing history of their provinces and cities.
Four kinds of books named after "Chinese Publishing History" should also be mentioned: "Chinese Publishing History" written by Song Yuanfang and Li Baijian (1991 edition of China Book Publishing House), and "China Publishing History" edited by Ji Shaofu "A Brief History of Publishing" (1991 edition by Xuelin Publishing House), "History of Publishing in China" by Fang Houshu (1996 edition by Oriental Publishing House), and "History of Publishing in China" (Liaoning Education Press), the first textbook edited by Xiao Dongfa 1996 edition).
The four publishing histories mentioned above each have their own characteristics. Song and Li's works believe that "writing on the history of publishing in China should not only faithfully describe certain historical phenomena, but also summarize some of the regular things." Based on this creative idea, Song and Li's works strive to explore publishing The law of development is described in a macroscopic manner; it breaks away from the general writing method of book history and printing history, and makes a new arrangement and treatment of historical materials. "A Brief History of Publishing in China" edited by Ji Shaofu is a collective research work by Shanghai scholars. It focuses on important publishing historical facts and the activities of publishers. It is good at materials. There are more than 60 illustrations of books, figures, and figures in the book. As early as 1980, Fang Houshu serialized "A Brief History of Chinese Publishing" in "Publishing Work" (the predecessor of "China Publishing"). Later, he revised and updated the collection and published it with the title "History". In fact, it is also a fair and fair book. A research work on the general history of publishing (minimum limit to 1989), the appendices "China's Book Publishing from Statistical Figures" and "Research Books on China's Publishing History" are a major feature. A Japanese translation has been published. The textbook for editing majors in colleges and universities edited by Xiao Dongfa strives to integrate the history of editing and publishing. It has certain difficulties in both material selection and style, and is pioneering.
The 1990s was also a time of fruitful research on regional publishing history. In addition to a large number of local publishing historical materials, a number of revolutionary publishing history works have also been published, such as "The Publishing History of the Communist Party of China in Jiangxi" (Jiangxi People's Publishing House, 1994), Yan Fan's "History of Press and Publishing in the Central Revolutionary Base Area" "(Jiangxi University Press, 1991 edition), edited by Zhou Tianze, Zhou Yan, and Wang Ren, "A Brief History of Publishing in the Liberated Areas of Central China" (Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 1996 edition). His regional publishing history works include: "Publishing History of Northwest Region" (Shaanxi People's Publishing House, 1997 edition), "Publishing History of the Rear Area during the Chinese Anti-Japanese War" (Chongqing Publishing House, 1999 edition), Li Ruiliang's "Fujian Publishing History" (Fujian People's Publishing House) Publishing House, 1997 edition), Bai Yudai wrote "A Brief History of Gansu Publishing" (Gansu People's Publishing House, 1995 edition), Xu Xuelin wrote "Anhui Publishing History Narrative" (Anhui Fine Arts Publishing House, 1995 edition), etc.
What is gratifying is that since the reform and opening up, there have been frequent exchanges between the publishing circles on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and the exchange of relevant information and books and periodicals has increased. Xin Guangwei, who has studied Taiwan's publishing and copyright trade for many years, is determined to write a monograph on the history of Taiwan's publishing. With the help of many parties in Taiwan's publishing industry, he searched extensively for information and studied carefully. After three years of success, he finally wrote the 400,000-word "Taiwan" Publishing History" (Hebei Education Press, 1999 edition). The book provides a relatively systematic brief discussion of Taiwan's books, newspapers, audio-visual publishing, printing, distribution, and copyright in the past 200 years, especially since the restoration of Taiwan. It is also accompanied by photos of books, periodicals, people, and events. Its publication will undoubtedly fill the gap in monographs on Taiwan's publishing history and will definitely promote further research on the publishing history of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.
The research on library history and social history, represented by the Commercial Press and Zhonghua Book Company, has taken on a new look. Business and China are the "old stores" with the longest history in my country's modern publishing industry. They have the tradition of writing their own histories and have established research and editing groups. In 1987, the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the Commercial Press, Chen Yuan presided over the editing of "The Commercial Press and Me and the Commercial Press in the 90 Years" and "The Commercial Press' Major Events". This memorabilia is very innovative in terms of material and format, highlighting the close connection between publishing and culture. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of Zhonghua Book Company. The editorial department of Zhonghua Book Company compiled and printed "Memories of Zhonghua Book Company" (volumes 1 and 2). On the 80th anniversary of its founding, Zhonghua Book Company also published a collection of commemorative essays "The Past, Present and Future of Chinese Culture" (1992) and "Zhonghua Book Company's Collection of Letters and Handwriting of Modern Celebrities" (1992). In 1992, the Commercial Press published "The 95th Anniversary of the Commercial Press". To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Commercial Press, it also published "One Hundred Years of the Commercial Press (1897~1997)", which selected articles published by newspapers in Beijing and Shanghai. There are 118 commemorative articles, plus 132 unpublished manuscripts, about 500,000 words. In addition, Taiyuan and Shanghai also published influential social historical materials such as Kaiming Bookstore and Cultural Life Publishing House before liberation, such as "Chronicles of Kaiming Bookstore" (written by Wang Zhiyi, 1991 edition).
China is the hometown of printing. In the Tang Dynasty, the printing and publishing industry first developed and was closely related to commercial interests. In the process of disseminating classics and pursuing profits, publishers in the past dynasties of our country have gradually deepened their understanding of the function of trademarks, become more and more conscious and pay attention to the application of trademarks, and have created more ideas and inventions. For example, if the publications printed and sold are engraved with "Bian Family of Longchifang, Chengdu County, Chengdu Prefecture", "Li Family of Beijing", "Diaojia Taro of Shangdudong City", etc., they have all been typed, and they can be said to have trademarks. prototype.
During the Song and Song Dynasties, printing became more popular and the publishing industry became more commercialized. Publishers’ use and production of trademarks further developed in both content and form. It was an important part of ancient publishing. It is a starting point for the industry’s trademark awareness and operations to mature.
The Ming and Qing Dynasties were the heyday of my country's ancient publishing industry. During this period, private bookstores were dotted all over the place, business competition was extremely fierce, and phenomena such as copying, pirated engraving, counterfeiting, and plagiarism were very common in society. As a result, many publishers rely more heavily on trademarks to protect their rights from or be less likely to be infringed upon.
During this period, it was common for countless bookstores (shops) to display their brand names with their name. Some smart bookshop owners focused on their name, supplemented by various other measures, to promote their own brands and prevent others from imitating and infringing upon them. The more typical ones are: first, emphasizing the name of one's own brand, to convince buyers that a certain kind of good book belongs only to one brand, and there is no other one. The second is to create a special logo and use a distinctive graphic logo to deepen buyers' perception and impression of the brand name, thereby achieving the purpose of building a reputation among the public and deterring counterfeiting. The third is to engrave the portrait of the owner, use his personality and reputation as a guarantee, recommend the brand, and promise the quality of the book.
Since the reform and opening up, China's publishing industry has developed by leaps and bounds. There is no doubt that China's publishing industry will continue to develop rapidly in the next few years. However, the development of the publishing situation has also proved that China's original publishing market structure will be broken, and a new market-oriented publishing market structure is gradually taking shape.
Looking at the production structure of the domestic industry. China's modern publishing industry is a market-oriented publishing industry. Therefore, corresponding to the three major functions of book products, namely entertainment (cultural) function, knowledge function and information function, the mass book market, educational book market and professional book market have emerged. This is the basic structure of the modern book market. After these years of development, China's book market has relatively clearly shown the basic divisions of these three markets.
In the current economic downturn and consumption contraction caused by the global financial crisis, books are cheaper and easier to obtain than other entertainment products, and have stronger market affinity. The publishing industry should use the financial crisis as an opportunity to promote cheap entertainment. Publishers can take this opportunity to redefine their role as providing entertainment, knowledge at low prices. The book industry produces real products, books and knowledge. There is huge potential for future investment in the publishing industry.
As China’s reform and opening up further deepen, many problems have arisen in the publishing industry. Some reading materials do not meet the needs of society and the content is shoddy. Some publications wantonly spread bourgeois liberalization ideas and made serious political mistakes. Especially in recent years, pornographic books have been repeatedly banned, causing physical and mental harm to young people and arousing social concern. In order to ban books, newspapers and audio-visual products that promote obscenity, murder and violence, and feudal superstition, relevant parties have carried out a nationwide cleanup and implemented comprehensive management of publishing, printing and distribution units. This work has paid off and will continue for a long time to come. In terms of printing, although production capacity has been greatly improved, the printing cycle is long and cannot keep up with the needs of the objective situation. Paper production capacity is insufficient and prices fluctuate greatly, which needs to be improved and adjusted. Distribution work has been greatly improved, but distribution channels are still not smooth enough, and multi-channel competition has not yet formed. The quality of the publishing team needs to be further improved. All of these are important issues facing publishing work and need to be resolved step by step. Publishing now faces the task of rectifying order and deepening reform. In order to prosper the publishing industry, we must provide readers with more and better reading materials and strive to improve the quality of books and periodicals. We must vigorously publish healthy and excellent literary and artistic works, valuable academic works, and practical and useful reading materials. Publishing should create conditions for flourishing creation and active academics, and contribute to popularizing Marxist theoretical knowledge and improving the level of Marxist theory. The socialist publishing industry must protect citizens' right to exercise freedom of publication in accordance with the Constitution, and at the same time prevent the abuse of this right in accordance with the law. The state power agencies are formulating a "Publication Law". At the same time, in order to protect the author's copyright, a "Copyright Law" is also being formulated to promote the construction of socialist spiritual civilization.
Digital publishing
Digital publishing is the digital inheritance of human culture. It is based on high-tech technologies such as computer technology, communication technology, network technology, streaming media technology, storage technology, and display technology. Based on this, an emerging publishing industry has developed that integrates and transcends traditional publishing content. Digital publishing means that during the entire publishing process, all information is stored in the digital form of a unified binary code on optical disks, magnetic disks and other media. The processing and reception of information are carried out with the help of computers or terminal devices. It emphasizes the digitization of content, the digitization of production models and operating processes, the digitization of communication carriers, and the digitization of reading, consumption, and learning forms. Although digital publishing started late in our country, it has developed rapidly and has now formed new formats such as online books and online journals.
Mobile publishing belongs to the category of digital publishing and is an important benchmark for the shift from traditional digital publishing to smart digital publishing. It is also based on the popularization of traditional digital publishing through mobile networks and smart mobile devices, combining Internet technology, computer technology, Advanced science and technology such as streaming media and cloud storage are a publishing form that organizes, optimizes and processes original copyrighted content. The main way to present it to users is mobile apps (software applications).
It places more emphasis on the mobilization and digitization of content, the digitization of production models, operation management and operational processes, the digitization of communication carriers, and the digitization of reading, consumption, and learning forms. Mobile publishing has developed rapidly in recent years and is an important opportunity for the transformation and development of traditional publishing houses, traditional digital publishing, and traditional dictionary industries. Representative enterprises in transformation include Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Shanghai Cihai Information Technology Co., Ltd. They jointly developed the FLTRP·Modern English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary Mobile Dictionary and the Modern Korean-Chinese-Chinese-Korean Dictionary Mobile Dictionary.