During the Double 11 shopping festival, a major shopping Web site in Taiwan offered books at a discount of up to 34 percent, selling at a loss to drive up demand. Other online shopping sites and bookstores followed suit, and ended up frustrating many independent brick-and-mortar bookstores, which protested by closing for a day on Wednesday last week.
The unexpected nature of the price war also sparked concern among publishers, who were worried that the popular practice of offering a discount of 21 percent for online book sales would no longer be competitive enough, and that shopping Web sites would dominate the sales channels, push prices further down and cut into their profits.
Ever since online book purchases gradually overtook brick-and-mortar bookstores, 21 percent discounts have become the norm. Although the Ministry of Culture and the publishing industry have proposed fixed prices for books, the reality is that, even with a 21 percent discount, books are hardly flying off the shelves, and are often returned to publishers. Fixed prices are not a sure-fire solution.
The shopping Web sites’ 34 percent discount book promotion should be sounding alarm bells. What if this shot in the arm still failed to significantly boost sales? What if book sales go back to the old strategy of 21 percent off after Double 11? The real problem is not the 34 percent discount, but because the public has gotten used to reading materials for next to nothing, or even free via online searches.
Paid subscriptions for online publications in the nation have never really got off the ground, and in some cases magazines have resorted to offering daily access for only a few New Taiwan dollars, including access to all content available to readers of the print edition. Even then, this policy has failed to make significant headway.
The situation has been exacerbated by initiatives such as intercity/county book borrowing from public libraries, as well as the large amounts of reading that students are expected to do when they start high school. Given this, it is no wonder that it is difficult to sell new books without significant discounting.
Publishers are faced with a sea change in reading behavior for which the usual strategies no longer work. Instead of launching a stream of new titles to stimulate the market, they should publish books that would inspire readers and make them want to collect them or discuss them with the person sitting next to them.
There have been a few examples recently of titles that have proven very popular and are already in their third or fourth printing. On the other hand, some books do not make it beyond the first printing.
If the book is good, it would sell itself, whatever the price. The others will just end up in bargain bins or returned to publishers.
Selling books at a 34 percent discount on Double 11 is not the real problem. When reading content is readily available, publishers will only be able to survive if they print books that can truly inspire readers.
Chang Hsun-ching is a writer.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
On Sept. 3 in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out a parade of new weapons in PLA service that threaten Taiwan — some of that Taiwan is addressing with added and new military investments and some of which it cannot, having to rely on the initiative of allies like the United States. The CCP’s goal of replacing US leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized
In an article published by the Harvard Kennedy School, renowned historian of modern China Rana Mitter used a structured question-and-answer format to deepen the understanding of the relationship between Taiwan and China. Mitter highlights the differences between the repressive and authoritarian People’s Republic of China and the vibrant democracy that exists in Taiwan, saying that Taiwan and China “have had an interconnected relationship that has been both close and contentious at times.” However, his description of the history — before and after 1945 — contains significant flaws. First, he writes that “Taiwan was always broadly regarded by the imperial dynasties of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will stop at nothing to weaken Taiwan’s sovereignty, going as far as to create complete falsehoods. That the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never ruled Taiwan is an objective fact. To refute this, Beijing has tried to assert “jurisdiction” over Taiwan, pointing to its military exercises around the nation as “proof.” That is an outright lie: If the PRC had jurisdiction over Taiwan, it could simply have issued decrees. Instead, it needs to perform a show of force around the nation to demonstrate its fantasy. Its actions prove the exact opposite of its assertions. A
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
RSS