The following is a summary of a lecture that I delivered on June 22, 2004 during the 27th Congress of the IPA (International Publishers Association) in Berlin.
The IPA, founded in 1896, represents the publishing industry worldwide through 78 national, regional and specialized publishers associations in 66 countries and is an accredited Non-Governmental Organization enjoying a consultative status to the United Nations.
In my lecture, I talk about the current situation of pricing and distribution that publishers face today.
Dynamic Distribution Systems and Co-editions in the New IT Age
The arrival of information technology has made book production extremely efficient. It is now possible for publishers, editors, authors and printers to reside in locations miles apart, yet work simultaneously on the same publication. Such innovations will continue to change the way books are being made.
Many publishers now choose to produce books in China where the latest technology is available at a low cost. There are also an increasing number of people who coordinate such arrangements. Present technology allows publishers to change title, binding, and content of a book to suit local markets, and small editions are no longer a problem.
The current trend is to sell large editions to worldwide markets at moderate prices. In such circumstances, the development of quality content is becoming important as ever, for publishers must now face global competition. International cooperation between publishers is becoming crucial as well.
On the other hand, it is still important for small but unique publishers to continue publishing highly specialized books in relatively small editions. In an age where giant, multinational publishers dominate, I believe that the IPA and its affiliated publishers must seriously rethink ways to protect the profitability of traditional print publishing so that young aspiring publishers can enter the business with confidence.
I have asked several librarians, scholars, bibliophiles, researchers, and readers the same question: "Where does the future of the book lie?" Many replied that books are portable, can be easily hidden from authorities in times of extreme censorship, and with the exception of certain areas such as the natural sciences and technology where speed is the priority, they will continue to exist forever. I am greatly emboldened by such voices.
I will now proceed to illustrate by several examples, how traditional book publishing can continue to be a profitable business for publishers, how to effectively sell books, and how to avoid price-related difficulties.
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I would like to give as an example the case of books written in English, a language that boasts the largest non-native readership.
English-language publishers are now expanding their networks beyond their native lands to encompass countries where English is used as a primary or secondary language. To accomplish this, however, publishers must take into account the varying purchasing powers of consumers in these countries. For example, if a UK publisher were to simply export its domestically produced book -- priced 20 pounds in the UK -- to India, by the time the book had reached the Indian retail shops, the price would have come up to more than 25 pounds. The average Indian personal income is still far below the UK, and books thus sold would be of limited appeal to Indian readers, despite their level of English literacy.
Therefore, with the necessary technology now readily available in India and China, many publishers are now moving towards localization of production. These "local editions" are printed, marketed and sold locally with retail prices well below the USA or UK editions to suit the average consumer's wallets. It is not difficult to imagine the confusion these cheap editions may cause if they are re-imported to the UK or USA, or even to non-native countries with a higher economic profile, such as Japan.
Of Japan's 20 billion dollar book market, imported books amount to a mere 1 billion (5%). Many people of the Japanese book industry believe this figure will double in the near future, but this optimistic view is being threatened by the rise of such "local editions". If cheap "local editions" flood the Japanese market, prices will tumble, piracy will abound, and the entire book-import industry may plunge into chaos. Identical problems with re-imported CD's are being addressed in the music industry, and I believe we publishers must act immediately to adopt protective measures against such dangers.
An alternative direction which I would like to suggest is co-publishing with local publishers. To illustrate my point, I will like to share with you several co-publishing projects we have initiated in the past year.
Dr. Donald Keene's biographical study of the Japanese emperor Meiji, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World 1852-1912, was first published as a two-volume Japanese translation in October 2001 by Shinchosha of Japan. This translation has sold 70,000 to 80,000 copies. In the following year, the original English text was published as a one-volume edition from Columbia University Press. In Japan, this English edition sold only 100 to 200 copies, mainly through the traditional book import channels of foreign book dealers, this figure not including direct imports through Web retailers such as amazon.com. Like all imported books, retail prices varied from store to store, due to the different discount or mark-up rates between dealers and general exchange fluctuation.
Yushodo Press will re-publish this English edition in Japan, but with substantial changes: this time we will divide the book in two volumes to correspond with Shinchosha’s translation, add a new introduction by Dr. Keene, and -- most importantly -- allot a Japanese ISBN. The final point is the most crucial, since a Japanese ISBN allows us to sell the publication through domestic book distribution channels. Although compared to the import market the advertising costs used in domestic distribution are quite higher, but publishers can benefit from the Japanese resale price maintenance system which allows them to fix retail prices.
The success of this project depends on how we judge the true potentiality of the Japanese book market to embrace foreign language material. There have been similar such attempts in the past, some of which have been successful, but these were dictionaries, encyclopedias, travel guides, art books, photographic books -- not books to be "read", but rather "browsed" or "looked at". This will be the first time that a literate book, entirely in English, will be introduced to the Japanese domestic book market. I have great hopes in bringing this challenge to a success.
Another example is The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, published by HarperCollins Publishers. Yushodo has imported 2000 to 5000 copies of each successive edition since the first single-volume edition in 1967, and has sold it through the traditional import book route and door-to-door sales. We can proudly say that due to these efforts the Times Atlas has been one of the most successful titles ever in the Japanese foreign book market. However, in recent years sales had dropped, partly due to price competition with parallel imports and the burden and risk of holding stock of obsolete editions. From the eleventh edition we changed our approach; instead of purchasing a "finished product" from the publisher at such-and-such discount, this time we approached HarperCollins well before publication, and by bearing part of the production costs, we released it as a co-edition, with a Japanese title page and a Japanese ISBN (Figs. 3-4). Because this was the first time that we distributed the Atlas through domestic distribution channels, the eleventh edition was in essence an entirely new title to most of the wholesalers and retailers.
We have also done similar co-projects in the area of fine-art facsimiles of unique manuscript volumes. The New Ellesmere Chaucer Facsimile reproduces in full-color, high-definition printing the Huntington Library's precious illuminated manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. This was a truly international project, with the printing done in Japan, the paper provided from England, and the binding done in the USA. Another example is The Peterborough Bestiary, co-published with Faksimile Verlag Luzern to coincide with the 650th anniversary of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where the beautiful manuscript is housed. In both cases, Yushodo took the initiative in the project from an early stage, coordinating with the holding institutions and bearing part of the production cost.
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