What we want to do is to let more valuable and good books be seen by readers, and no longer be included in the 89% with no chance of exposure.
author | Tan Shanshan
title picture | pexels
In the past 2023, there were many books out of the circle, and the popularity of each book was different.
In January 2023, "The Art of War" suddenly topped the best-selling book list, triggering the first wave of popular reading craze of the year - if you have watched the hit drama "Kurst", you will know why. : This is the "secret book" of development that the character Gao Qiqiang in the film keeps on his desk and reads it over and over again until it becomes a bit worn.
Xu Jizhou, the director of "Kurst", revealed in an interview that he originally planned for Gao Qiqiang to read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" because he remembered that many people were reading this book around 2000. But the old version of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" was never found, so he replaced it with "The Art of War".
(Picture/"The Mistake by the River")
The next book that became popular due to film and television dramas is Yu Hua's "The Mistake by the River". "The Mistake by the River" was published in 1988. Zhang Yimou had intended to adapt it into a movie, but Yu Hua recommended his new work "To Live" to him. After that, the film and television rights of "The Mistake on the River" changed hands several times and was finally released in 2023.
Next is "Flowers". Foodie Lu Yuenong discovered that after the TV series "Flowers" was broadcast, a new trend emerged in Shanghai's catering industry: when guests arrive early, the waiter will give them a copy of "Flowers" for the guests to read while waiting. According to statistics, after the TV series was broadcast, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House printed more than 200,000 copies of "Flowers", and the sales volume of "Flowers (annotated version)" reached nearly 300,000 copies.
(Photo/"Flowers")
Chi Zijian's "Right Bank of the Ergun River" became popular because of Dong Yuhui's recommendation. Chi Zijian said that the cumulative print volume of "Right Bank of the Ergun River" before Dong Yuhui's recommendation was 600,000 copies, and the sales volume in 2023 will reach 5 million copies, which is "really unexpected." The "2023 Book Retail Market Annual Report" released by
Beijing Open Book shows that 180,000 new book varieties will be sold in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%. The increase in the number of new books means that readers’ screening costs also rise. Therefore, readers often follow popular movies, TV series, and hot topics to get in touch with books, or follow leading anchors like Dong Yuhui to choose books.
"Cultural energy" is in short supply.
Either create hot spots or create hot spots. Otherwise, many books may not even have a chance to be exposed.
This observation comes from the "Book Influence Data Report for the First Half of 2023" released by Baidao.com. The report stated: “Books with at least one recommended source accounted for only 10.9% of new books in the first half of 2023, and a large number of books did not even have a chance to appear.” In other words, 89% of new books failed to enter readers’ horizons. The "Eight Principles" became the "Nineteen Principles".
In order to increase the exposure of books, marketing editors of publishing organizations have hundreds of tricks. For example, can we contact singer Li Jian so that Leonard Cohen's new book can be "appropriately" exposed to him? At this time, the head live broadcast room has become an important channel for book promotion - like Mo Yan, he has his own live broadcast room. In November 2023, he held a "cloud press conference" for his new work "Crocodile" through live broadcast , invited actor Yu Hewei as a guest, attracting more than 5.5 million viewers in total; Dong Yuhui successively "brought goods" for "People's Literature" and "Harvest" in the "Walking with Hui" live broadcast room, and met with Nobel Prize winner Gurna Talk (and sell books by the way).
Mo Yan and Yu Hewei started a conversation in the live broadcast room of @Mo Yan on Douyin.
"Dong Yuhui has brought two major literary giants, "People's Literature" and "Harvest", has literature reached a status quo where it cannot survive?" Some netizens asked. The "Editorial Chat Room" of Interface Culture launched a discussion for this purpose: "Dong Yuhui's live broadcast room saves literary publishing?" The discussion believed that pure literature should be sold to the public and the Nobel Prize-winning works of literature could be summarized in golden sentences. Dong Yuhui The live broadcast combines multiple elements such as teaching, nostalgia, and intimacy.
editor Lin Ziren has a point of view: "We may not have established a cultural atmosphere that values spiritual life and believes that spiritual life and daily life go hand in hand. Reading literature has not become a living habit of the general public." Her thoughts. , from the book "The Anti-Intellectual Age: American Culture in Lies."
"Anti-Intellectualism in American Life"
[US] Written by Richard Hofstadter, translated by Chen Xinyan
Houlang丨Jiuzhou Publishing House, 2021-8
The author of the book, Susan Jacobi, proposed "middle-class culture" "This is a value that is willing to invest time and energy in self-education and make oneself better - perhaps it can be understood through the buzzword "cultural physical strength". Midstream culture is first and foremost a culture of reading, originating from the popularity of cheap paperback books in the 1920s. In 1926, the "Monthly Reading Club" was established in the United States. Many of the books it promoted, such as Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" and Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," have now become American literary classics.
Jacoby believes that with the rise of television in the 1960s, reading culture began to fade. In contrast, China entered the television era in the 1990s, and the Internet exploded after 2000. Chinese people were distracted by television and the Internet before they had time to develop reading habits. Therefore, Lin Ziren has doubts about whether live streaming can encourage people to read literature books.
Today's young people often feel that their "cultural energy" is in short supply. Just like the male protagonist of the Japanese movie "Bouquet of Love", he gradually changed from a book lover to a "person who can't read": "Look at me I can’t relax, I can’t watch anymore, so I can only play elimination games like “Puzzle and Dragons”.
(Picture/“Bouquet of Love”)
Reading in the AI era
So, if you are addicted to short videos, you will. Won’t it weaken our ability to read long, as some commentators fear?
scholar Mao Jian disagrees with this. She calls the current era of reading "multi-tasking". As a cultural capsule, short videos do not necessarily lead to distraction.
"Besides, long and short already need to be redefined. Reading in the AI era, and the reading tasks organized by GPT for us, are all huge. Even reading the whole book is just a drop in the ocean in the AI era. From a research perspective, we can no longer use the traditional perspective to view short videos. Compared with long videos and long readings, many people think that short videos are shallow readings, but in fact, short videos are short videos. It doesn’t necessarily mean shallow reading. Some classic lines in "The Legend of Zhen Huan" have been understood and created dozens of meanings by countless users in short videos. "Zhen Xue Level 10" is also in short videos. Did it happen?" Mao Jian wrote.
The test paper of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" circulated on the Internet.
Writer Zhi'an talks about his reading experience over the years on the short video platform and currently has 188,000 fans. Among the videos he pinned to the top, the one about "Top Ten Works of Keigo Higashino" has been liked 27,000 times, and the one about Dostoyevsky has been liked 24,000 times. When interviewed by
, Zhi'an said: "There is a view that short videos fragment our time, making it difficult to read for a long time. I don't think this is the logic. A person who really loves reading will not People who don’t read will stop reading because of watching short videos. If they don’t read, it’s because they don’t want to read in the first place. But it would be great if people who don’t read can get some knowledge from short videos. Is it a good thing? "
Writer Zhi'an often shares his reading experience on the short video platform. (Picture/Screenshot of station b)
Text, sound, and short video are different presentation forms of content. Some researchers pointed out that whether we read text, listen to sounds, or watch short videos today, or even obtain knowledge and information through brain-computer interfaces and other forms in the future, the essence and significance of reading are reflected.
Entering the era of electronic reading, readers also have new demands for the presentation of paper books. For example, platform e-commerce and short video e-commerce have replaced physical bookstores and become the main channels for selling books. Readers mostly browse the cover on their mobile phone screen to decide whether to place an order. Whether the cover design is impactful and whether the title of the book is big enough will affect the eyesight.
Take Oracle's "The Hundred Years' War" as an example. Some readers reported that the title of the first volume was unclear. The title of the book is not eye-catching enough. This was originally the design of the bookbinding designer. The purpose is to make people come closer to take a closer look at the book when they encounter it in the bookstore, so that their eyes can stay on the cover for a longer time. However, since the book buying scene has changed, the cover design should also be adjusted accordingly. The designer followed suit and enlarged the title of the book when making the cover of the second volume and made it stand out from the background image.
Who will choose books for us?
A Nielsen survey report shows that sales in the British book market will drop by 4% year-on-year in 2022, but more young people are buying books than before, and book purchases by people aged 14-25 have increased by 1%, promoting romance novels, fantasy novels, Sales of categories such as young adult novels and graphic novels.
46% of the respondents believe that how a book is described is an important factor in deciding whether to buy a book. Only 14% of the respondents will make a judgment based on the awards a book has received. The report also shows that recommendations from the media, bookstores and influencers have the greatest influence on the book purchasing decisions of female respondents aged 18-25, while other groups rely more on recommendations from friends and family.
From seeing a book to buying it, people's motivation for buying books is affected by many factors. (Photo/Visual China)
Speaking of the new functions of bookstores, writer Zhang Feng, who opened a small bookstore, has a deep understanding of this. In an article introducing independent bookstores in Chengdu, he quoted architect Wang Hai's description of an ideal bookstore: "I don't sell books, and I can even give them to you for free; what I want to sell is other things."
“Something else” could be coffee, tea, a vibe, a dream. In Zhang Feng's view, "opening a small bookstore" itself has real value - "It no longer sells the grand and spectacular beauty, but provides a place for lonely people to build a bookstore in the city." New relationships between people. "
These small bookstore operators don't like to be called "boss", but prefer the title of "manager". They carefully select books that reflect their own ideas and values, and even rudely "blow away" readers they don't like. How to tell if a bookstore is your "dream store"? That is, every time you go there, you will find books that you didn't notice before but want to buy as soon as you see them, because the organizer has already screened them for you.
(Photo/"Bookstore")
In the same way, the media also plays a "manager" role. is an era where writing and reading are infinitely open. If all expressions are classified as writing and some browsing is regarded as reading, then we will be reading and writing "25 hours a day" all the time. brings together countless voices and spreads them to more people, and the media is the key node.
This year, the Blade Book Awards organized by "New Weekly" is coming to its third edition. With book awards, salons, and screenings, they will jointly perform a new blade culture season, using sharpness to break dullness, and let more valuable books and authors Seen by readers, we reach eternity in the light together. At the same time, we have also included the thoughts and thoughts of many writers and readers inside and outside the award. Among them are scholars, writers, and singers. We are eager to climb up the stairs along the text and look at a broader life.
Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk said that the world now seems to be divided into countless bubbles. Everyone lives in their own bubble. People no longer have common stories and fables. This makes She was anxious and panicked. So, let's step out of the bubble, bump heads like ants, and make sure we're not alone.
(Picture/"My Brilliant Girlfriend" Season 3)
After the Tower of Babel, communication is the thread that connects human beings.In an era when manuscripts were lost, conversations were the most sincere letters.
