Guo Degang sold more than 80,000 books in two hours during his first live streaming show. Guo Degang still started selling goods. On the evening of April 16, Liu Qiangdong’s AI digital human premiered in JD.com’s purchasing and marketing live broadcast room, attracting more than

Guo Degang’s first live streaming show

sold more than 80,000 books in two hours

Guo Degang still started to sell goods.

At about 7:30 that night, Guo Degang officially started broadcasting on Douyin. This was his second personal live broadcast and the first live broadcast to promote goods.

It is reported that Guo Degang joined Douyin as early as 2020. He usually posts some video clips of his performances and has gained more than 15 million fans so far.

But it was not until March this year that Guo Degang started his first personal live broadcast. The main content was to chat with the audience with several apprentices. Nearly a month later, Guo Degang appeared in the live broadcast room again. What is different about this live broadcast of

is that Guo Degang also listed product links, including a new book priced at 35 yuan, and a signed version of the new book priced at 49.8 yuan.

A third-party data platform shows that the two-hour live broadcast attracted more than 17 million viewers, with a maximum of 217,000 people online at the same time. The estimated sales were between 2.5 million and 3 million.

During the specific live broadcast, in addition to introducing relevant content in the book, Guo Degang also actively interacted with the audience and answered some questions related to Deyun Society.

Judging from the atmosphere of the entire live broadcast, since there are no third-party products, the pace is also very slow, and the nature is closer to a "new book signing + chatting".

It is worth mentioning that Guo Degang still enabled the reward function during this live broadcast. In the middle of the process, his "non-staff disciple" Jia Nailiang also entered the live broadcast room for more than ten minutes and brushed aside almost all the high-end gifts. "Carnival" worth 3,000 yuan was given out one after another, and it soon became Guo Degang's live broadcast room. "Big Brother".

Guo Degang’s live broadcast has actually been traced for a long time.

In the live broadcast on March 24, Guo Degang specifically clarified the online rumor that "Members of Deyun Club are not allowed to broadcast live." According to him, his original words were that live broadcasts of cross talk were not allowed, but there was no prohibition on live broadcasts. Therefore, members of Deyun Club such as Yu Qian and Sun Yue have carried out live broadcasts to bring goods, and Guo Degang has no objection to this.

It seems now that Guo Degang mentioned this matter at that time, possibly paving the way for this live broadcast. And since I only brought my own new book, it hasn’t caused any negative publicity yet.

As for whether he will officially enter the idea of ​​​​entering into live streaming to bring goods in the future, it is unknown.

Live streaming of book sales is completely popular

Dong Yuhui has broken records many times

In addition to being Guo Degang’s first live broadcast, there is another point that is more eye-catching, that is, Guo Degang sold a total of 8 items in more than two hours. Thousands of books.

can still be seen in Guo Degang’s Douyin showcase. The new book this time is the only product on the shelves. Although it has only been on the market for a few days, the cumulative sales have reached 90,000 copies, including those sold in Guo Degang's live broadcast room.

The last time a host sold books so well was in Dong Yuhui’s “Walking with Hui” live broadcast room.

On January 23 this year, Shi Zhanjun, editor-in-chief of "People's Literature", and writers Liang Xiaosheng and Cai Chongda were guests in the "Walking with Hui" Douyin live broadcast room. They were chatting with Dong Yuhui and Yu Minhong while promoting "People's Literature" magazine. This was also the first live broadcast in history that "only sold one literary magazine in the whole process".

"It used to be slow, and cars, horses, and mail were all slow. A period of time, a magazine actually has an emotional carrying function for many people. You will be happy on the day you receive the magazine, can't wait to start reading, and then I relished telling the highlights to people around me." Dong Yuhui spared no effort to promote "People's Literature" during the live broadcast.

In the end, the cumulative number of viewers of this live broadcast reached 8.95 million, with a maximum of more than 700,000 people online at the same time.

In the four hours from 8 to 12 o'clock that night, the "People's Literature" subscription for 2024, priced at 216 yuan, sold 382,600 sets of , equivalent to 992,000 copies, with a transaction amount of 17.85 million. The sales volume (total price of books) is 19.83 million.

After the great success of Dong Yuhui’s “People’s Literature”, “Harvest” magazine also came to the live broadcast room with Hui on February 28. That night, Yongxin, the chief programmer of Harvest magazine, and writers Yu Hua and Su Tong were guests in the live broadcast room, chatting with Dong Yuhui about literature and writing.

As expected, after the nearly three-hour live broadcast ended, a total of 382,000 sets of "Harvest" bimonthly and "Harvest Novels" quarterly magazines subscribed throughout 2024 were sold.

After that, many writers held "new book launch conferences" in Dong Yuhui's live broadcast room. For example, on March 26, writer Mai Jia brought his latest novel "Letter to the World" to have tea and chat with Dong Yuhui, which attracted more than 250,000 people to watch online at the same time. The new book, priced at 39 yuan, sold 68,000 copies...

Nothing It is an exaggeration to say that Dong Yuhui has now almost become the number one anchor in the book category, and his past glorious "records" will be difficult to surpass.

However, with Guo Degang now having half of his foot in the live streaming e-commerce industry, Dong Yuhui’s “number one” position seems to be somewhat unsafe.

Just the day before this live broadcast, Guo Degang also posted a video introducing his assistant. With such a big fanfare, it is impossible to say that Guo Degang may actually have long-term plans to carry out live broadcasts to bring goods.

Let’s make a bold assumption, what would it be like if Guo Degang really entered the live broadcast to bring goods? Judging from the results of 's debut, 80,000 books is already a very good result for a new anchor, and unlike selling wine and so on, selling books is not easy to overturn.

Compared with Dong Yuhui, Guo Degang, as one of the top figures in today's cross talk circle, also has a deeper foundation in traditional culture and has a wide audience. If he subsequently promotes more excellent literary works and traditional culture through the live broadcast e-commerce channel, it seems to be a good choice.

More importantly, from a platform perspective, there is an urgent need for the emergence of a "second Dong Yuhui". From the perspective of industry trends, books have now become one of the key categories of Douyin e-commerce. Guo Degang’s live broadcast is supported by the Douyin platform, and the possibility of more cooperation between the two parties in the future cannot be ruled out.

Short video e-commerce has become the second largest sales channel for books

On April 17, Douyin e-commerce released the "2024 Douyin E-commerce First Quarter Reading Report". The

report shows that Douyin’s book sales exceeded 150 million in the first quarter of this year, with an average of more than 2 million books sold every day. The book trailer short video has been played more than 21.6 billion times, and book-related live broadcasts have been viewed more than 3.9 billion times.

Earlier, data released by Douyin e-commerce showed that more than 400 million books were sold throughout 2023 - sales in the first quarter of this year saw a substantial increase of about 50%.

At the same time, book industry statistics also support the rapid development of Douyin books. The "2023 Book Retail Market Annual Report" released by

in January this year shows that the year-on-year growth rate of the domestic book retail market has changed from negative growth in 2022 to positive growth, with a year-on-year increase of 4.72%, and the size of the country is 91.2 billion yuan.

At the same time, the short video channel Ma Yang grew by 70.1% year-on-year, surpassing vertical and other e-commerce and physical stores to become the second largest book sales channel, accounting for 26.67%.

Under this trend, many book publishing houses have expanded their online markets to short video e-commerce platforms such as Douyin. In the first quarter of this year, the number of publishing houses broadcasting on Douyin increased by 64% year-on-year, and the overall GMV of publishing houses increased by 33% year-on-year.

At the end of last year, "Southern Media", a listed company that owns 10 publishing houses including "Guangdong People's Publishing House", "Guangdong Education Press", "Guangdong Science and Technology Press" and "Guangdong Huacheng Press", was still answering investors When asked, he said: "In terms of book sales, the company currently uses Douyin as the main position, covering all new media platforms such as WeChat video account, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili."

It can be seen from this that for the traditional book publishing industry, In other words, short video and live broadcast e-commerce have long become one of the channels that need to be focused on.

But behind this, there are still some issues that need attention. For example, in order to better promote books, many publishing houses will continue to engage in promotional activities when selling through short videos and live broadcast platforms, or they will be asked by cooperating anchors to provide the lowest price on the entire network, etc.

However, the profit margin of the book industry is not high. If it is further compressed, it will really have to rely on "small profits but quick turnover". The "2023 Book Retail Market Annual Report" mentioned that although the overall book retail market code (total book pricing) turned from negative to positive year-on-year, the actual price (actual price after discount) fell by 7.04% year-on-year.

This is because the book retail discount in 2023 will drop from 6.6% off in 2022 to 6.1% off. The lost profits can be imagined.

Regarding this, Dong Yuhui once mentioned in the live broadcast room: "The low price of grain hurts farmers, and the same goes for books." Therefore, when he sells books, he rarely uses discounts to attract consumers.

From this point of view, if the "book + short video e-commerce" model wants to develop a long-term business, discounts alone are far from enough. At least it is necessary to attract more high-quality talents who can play a positive role in the development of the industry and join the ranks of book delivery.

author | Li Songyue