Foreign Publishing Group: Long-term strategy with painstaking efforts

In recent years, world-renowned publishers such as Bertelsmann, Pearson Group, Thomson, Al Seyvia, Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and John Willy have all taken their place in the Chinese book market and launched a fierce battle for the market. . The reason is simple: China's accession to the WTO is imminent, and the huge book market has naturally become a target for foreign investors, and China's book trade will also show a trend of further "into super". The Foreign Publishing Group has successively occupied the Chinese market and expanded its consumer groups in China through various modes of cooperation and cooperation with domestic companies and clubs.
Bertelsmann: ready to go forward Ekkehard Rathgeber, vice president of the East Asia Group of the Group, claimed that the Group has done a full study and has made further preparations for wholesale and logistics. After China's entry into the WTO, it will increase investment in China. . At the same time, he also stated that he is willing to work together with domestic people to develop China's media industry market, and plans to increase the market share of China and Asia from 3% of the group's total turnover to 10%-15%.

Through e-commerce, the implementation of multimedia strategies, the Internet as the pillar industry of Bertelsmann and not stick to the traditional model, is the biggest characteristic of Bertelsmann under the control of Middelhoff. At present, the Group is vigorously promoting the "multimedia strategy". Its core is to integrate resources for books, music clubs and e-commerce, and to introduce customers to all Bertelsmann products and service platforms in the most direct way. The development of membership is just the initial and fundamental behavior of Bertelsmann in nurturing the market in China, and the multimedia strategy confirms that the group has the idea of ​​“introducing” other businesses beyond Bertelsmann’s book sales to Chinese members. The group’s goal is to sell all products through e-commerce, including books, music products, magazines, professional books, and almost everything. With the rapid growth of the number of Chinese Internet users, the Group fully affirmed the important role of e-commerce. At present, Bertelsmann has 200,000 of its 1.5 million members in China who have contacted them via the Internet. Its practice can be seen as a model of traditional businesses turning to e-commerce. It relies on the book club to develop a customer service system and an internet platform. This traditional media product operating mechanism and open network platform are both the first case within the group and will inevitably become the main course of development in China in the coming period of time.

Localization operation, making progress

Thomas Middelhoff, the Group’s chief executive officer, once said at the “Fortune Forum” that “we hope to open a printing factory in China and set up CD production lines and publish magazines with the permission of the government”. This plan cannot of course be implemented under China’s current policy, but Bertelsmann has indeed found a way forward.

In the process of entering China, Bertelsmann's use of the Internet for information services and online publishing of the two plans have been rejected by the relevant policies, leaving only one end of the online sales. Group leaders believe that it is understandable that governments of all countries have some control over their cultural ideology. In the face of barriers, the Group emphasized the localization operation. The products sold were all produced by China, and the brands promoted were all Chinese brands, and they did not promote the Group itself. This attitude of cooperation has undoubtedly laid a solid foundation for the Group to take root in China and expand its business in the future by taking advantage of the restrictions on the relaxation of the government’s accession to the WTO.

Bertelsmann and China Science and Technology Books Co., Ltd. jointly established the Bertelsmann Book Club, providing members with good book recommendation information through the Internet, as well as providing readers with missing book registrations and book delivery services.

Bertelsmann could not set up a publishing house in China, but it used a variety of cooperative publishing formats that conformed to the law. It is very likely that Bertelsmann will become an important business in the future. Bertelsmann believes that the space for policies, regulations, and reality is enough to make it work. For many companies, this is not a problem that cannot be done, but a problem. Although many of Bertelsmann's globally-renowned businesses are still unable to be fully promoted in China, Echo still insists: “There are many opportunities in China to have a lot of things to do.”

In the face of the domestic industry’s opposition to the group’s rivalry, Bertelsmann also made a gesture to “make the cake bigger” instead of “a piece of cake”. Regardless of whether this will deter Chinese publishers from being vigilant, this stance of considering development from the standpoint of locality is undoubtedly welcomed by the people of the country, and it is beneficial to make up for the group's weakness in cultural affinity.
Pearson: Building a Strong Education Brand Pearson Education Group, after investing more than US$4 billion in the acquisition of the education section of Simon-Schuster International Publishing Company, once again merged with the famous D.K Company to establish its position as the world's largest educational publishing group. . At present, there are 75 million people in the world who use the Pearson Group's textbooks. This brings its annual sales to over US$5 billion and profits over US$700 million.

Pearson's business in China is mainly copyright trade and services. The basic outputs of Pearson's exports to China are management, computers, English, primary and secondary schools, and so on. Last year, it reached more than 500 kinds. In order to expand their business and cultivate the market, each year they have to invite foreign experts and authors to come to China to hold a seminar and invite domestic university teachers or people from the publishing and education sectors to participate. In order to solve the problem of localization of teaching materials, Pearson's Asia-based company has established a group of Chinese experts and original authors to tailor and modify the Chinese textbooks. It is reported that Pace is currently promoting a set of personalized multimedia software.

Pearson has cooperated with more than 20 publishers in China. Basically, all computer books are in Beijing Publishing House, and management books in Beijing, Shanghai Press, English books, and education agencies in Hunan, Guangdong, and Shenzhen. Elementary and junior high school textbooks are all educational institutions. Pearson claimed that the output of copyright is mainly to see the introduction of ideas and marketing programs of the other publishers. "They must have a practical plan, or else the book has harmed them." The person in charge of Pearson told reporters.

They rarely deal with the domestic news media, but there are many contacts with the business-related education departments. The education reforms of the country, especially the introduction of teaching materials, are of great concern to them. They are also eager to know the policies of China's publishing industry after its accession to the WTO. They claim that because the policy has not yet come down, the specific concept has not yet been clearly defined.
McGraw-Hill: Will not be involved in the book distribution industry McCraw Hill Companies (Inc.) was founded in 1888 and headquartered in New York, USA, with operations in more than 30 countries and regions around the world. The scope consists of three major blocks: 1. Teaching and vocational book publishing; 2. Information and media services; 3. Financial Services. In the face of China's huge potential market, McGraw-Hill will naturally not stand by.

As early as 1986, they cooperated with China Foreign Economic and Trade Press to publish "Business Week/China" (formerly known as "International Business Management"). In addition to copyright trade and co-publishing with a number of domestic publishers, they also held seminars on the frontiers of modern economics with some domestic universities, and recently established a joint venture with the China Financial and Economic Publishing House. Naturally, they are also active in the book fairs.

McGraw-Hill said that it mainly provides supporting teaching services in China. At present, more than 200 universities and colleges use their teaching materials, mainly in economics, science and engineering, and life science books. Regardless of the original edition or the book that they have co-published, they will provide them with a series of supplementary services.

According to the person in charge of McGraw-Hill, China's "accession to the WTO" will not have great impact on the import of books, because books are originally zero-tariff. However, overall business conditions will be better and should be more conducive to business expansion. They will not be involved in the publishing industry that will soon be liberalized, because “McGraw-Hill is a content provider and will not be involved in the issuance field, and China’s issuance profits will not be enough to make it reinvest in this area.” But Mai Grau-Hill's financial services sector will soon establish offices in the country.
Poplar Society: Looking forward to more extensive cooperation. The Japanese Poplar Society is a children's publishing house. They have not yet set up an institution in China. It is just a simple liaison office. It is mainly to promote the copyright of the Poplar Society in China. They often participate in book fairs across the country. They have contacts with various agencies, and there have been so many clubs that have been talked about. There are more than a dozen contracts signed. Besides Beijing, there are also children's clubs in Guangxi, Shanghai, Jilin, and Anhui.

The relevant staff of the Poplar Society stated that the establishment of this liaison office was mainly aimed at considering China's accession to the WTO and prepared for more openness. Now the effect of copyright trade is not good and far from ideal. They hope that China will open up wider and cooperate with domestic publishers on a wider scale. They mainly do children's books and found that domestic picture books have not yet been developed. They hope to cooperate with domestic publishing houses to develop picture books.

Now that the Chinese are learning English, it is commonplace to have an Oxford dictionary; it is not surprising that college teachers and students have books and academic books on Cambridge and McGraw-Hill; Pythe, Macmillan’s The name is well known to many publishers and their high quality, comprehensive books have a considerable market in China.

Although the original book is still limited in the domestic market and the book prices in China are relatively low, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Poplar have both reported that the current results are not very satisfactory. At the same time, they are increasingly participating in various activities in the domestic publishing industry and are involved in the Chinese publishing industry in various ways. Because they are optimistic about the Chinese market, they do not care about the short-term gains and losses of the future president.