After the ripples of the public opinion storm slowly dissipate, you may as well turn your attention back to the capital market. The flow of funds honestly reveals the current situation of the publishing industry.
According to data from Oriental Fortune Choice, as of July 5, a total of 32 publishing companies were galloping in the A-share market. For them, the adage “a house of gold in the book” no longer needs to be justified. Opening the financial report, there may be a more contemporary refinement of the book’s wealth classics – teaching materials, teaching aids, and children’s books are “rich mines”.
From 2015 to 2021, children’s books will continue to rank among the books with the largest proportion in Mayang (total price of all books). Children’s books have become cash cows, but at the same time, some books have unacceptable errors and omissions. What is the reason behind this?
Every reporter’s investigation found that the remuneration of children’s book illustrations has not increased for almost ten years. From the older generation to the Mesozoic and the new generation, there are many illustrators in China who are willing to draw for children, but except for a few famous masters who can make a living, the authors who are dedicated to children’s illustrations generally cannot fill their stomachs with this.
Teaching materials, teaching aids, and children’s books are “rich mines”
In the compulsory education stage, textbooks are distributed free of charge, and students do not have to pay for it. For companies that produce textbooks and teaching aids, although the profit margins of textbooks and teaching aids are thinner than paper, they cannot hold a large number, so they still become a kind of education. good business.
Taking Phoenix Media (SH601928, stock price of 7.19 yuan, market value of 18.3 billion yuan) as an example, its revenue in 2021 will be 12.517 billion yuan, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies will be 2.457 billion yuan. “Strong” No. 9, is the only Chinese company in the top ten list. The total revenue of its teaching materials and teaching auxiliary products is nearly 8.4 billion yuan, accounting for more than 67% of the overall revenue for the year.
Image source: Daily Economic News (data map)
“In terms of profit margins, textbooks and teaching aids are actually relatively low, but because they are rigid demands, the market and reprint volume are large, so the overall market size is not small. Even if a book only makes a dime, it can Make a lot of money.” Song Yan (pseudonym), who used to be an executive at a leading publishing company, told every reporter.
In the first echelon of publishing companies, according to the company’s annual report, the reporter counted nearly three Based on the annual revenue data of teaching materials and teaching aids, it is found that the importance of teaching materials and teaching aids to the top publishing companies is beyond imagination.
From 2019 to 2021, the revenue of Xinhua Winshare’s textbooks and teaching aids accounted for 64.41%, 68.97% and 66.75% of the overall revenue for that year, respectively. The production volume of its textbooks and teaching aids has been maintained at the level of over 700 million copies for three consecutive years, and the production and sales rate has exceeded 90%, so there is no need to worry about selling it.
As one of the important publishing bases for national textbooks, Southern Media also stands in the capital market by relying on textbooks and teaching auxiliary business. In the past three years, Nanfang Media’s revenue from textbooks and teaching aids accounted for 71.95%, 73.12% and 78.3% of its overall revenue in the same year, respectively.
The relevant person in charge of investor relations of Southern Media told every reporter that in the company’s teaching materials and teaching supplement revenue, teaching materials will account for a higher proportion. “Guangdong Province is basically a set of one teaching and one auxiliary, and the textbooks used are basically from Southern Media, but the teaching and auxiliary will use the versions of other provinces, and its market competition is more sufficient.”
It is reported that since 2019, the national compulsory education grade morality and rule of law, Chinese, and history textbooks have all used the unified textbooks newly compiled by the Ministry of Education and published by the People’s Education Press. Southern Media is the general agent of the three-subject textbook of the People’s Education Edition in Guangdong Province.
“The market share of PPE textbooks in Guangdong Province also increased significantly from 2017 to 2019,” said the person in charge of investor relations. According to the 2020 annual report of Southern Media, the market share of the PPE version of primary and secondary school textbooks in Guangdong Province reached 63.87% in the compulsory education stage and 81.89% in the high school stage. In 2021, the total number of textbooks in the human education edition of Southern Media will increase by 9% year-on-year.
Textbooks and teaching aids can become a source of income for listed publishing companies, and also benefit from the government’s increased investment in education. According to the Ministry of Finance, the national general public budget education expenditure in 2021 will reach 3.76 trillion yuan, 56% of the central government’s transfer payment to local education will be used for compulsory education, and about 156 million urban and rural compulsory education students nationwide will be exempted from tuition and miscellaneous fees and receive free textbooks.
In addition to textbooks and teaching aids, children’s books are also best-sellers and become an important nutritional solution for a number of listed publishing companies.
According to the open-book data, children’s books will continue to maintain the position of the category with the largest proportion of code and foreign languages in 2021. It is reported that since 2016, this category has been the largest segment of the market. According to every reporter’s verification, among the top 10 children’s book sales in 2021 based on open-book data, Phoenix Media, Xinhua Wenxuan, Zhejiang Edition Media (SH601921, stock price 7.4 yuan, market value 16.4 billion yuan), Shandong Publishing (SH601019, The stock price is 5.85 yuan, and the market value is 12.2 billion yuan. Its products occupy 8 seats, showing the dominance of large companies in this type of book market.
Image source: Screenshot of Beijing Open Book Public Account Report
Salary for children’s illustrations hasn’t risen in ten years
Since there are people who “paint for children” and there is a strong market demand, why do children’s books still appear?
Huang Xiaoxiao, a freelance illustrator born in the 1980s in Xiamen, Fujian, who has worked in the industry for 15 years, can clearly perceive the changes in the supply side of Chinese original children’s picture books. “When I first graduated, most children’s picture books were imported from abroad, but now there are a lot of original children’s illustrations and picture books in China.”
Since 2015, children’s books have ranked first in the national book code category for many consecutive years.
Having been in the book binding business for more than 20 years, Xiao Ruizi also has an intuitive feeling about the development of the children’s book industry. “My mother painted “Bao Er” in 1993. At that time, there was no concept of children’s picture books. For a long time, children’s books were not favored by the book market. With the society’s emphasis on children’s reading, the children’s book market has grown rapidly. Growth, which peaked about eight years ago, has been relatively flat since then.”
However, for more than a decade, the market has not paid positive commercial returns to children’s illustrators.
After experiencing various shocks and baptisms including marketization, in the circle of art practitioners, children’s publication illustrators have fallen to the “bottom of the food chain” – low remuneration and low threshold.
“Many netizens feel that the complaints in the illustration industry are out of nothing, but my work experience is really like this. The manuscript fee for children’s books is indeed relatively low, but the workload is very large.” Huang Xiaoxiao: “Also because of the low budget, many children’s publications I am willing to find authors who have just graduated to draw illustrations. More than ten years ago, for example, I did illustrations for children’s books that learn alphabets. One book has twenty or thirty illustrations, each ranging from tens of yuan to one or two hundred yuan. After completing one book per month, the income is only about 3,000 yuan, and a few hundred yuan of taxes and fees must be deducted, and it usually takes half a year to get paid after the book is published and sold.”
A Geng, a popular cartoonist who teaches in the art major of Guangxi Academy of Arts, said that the income of children’s illustrations belongs to the standard of remuneration in the traditional publishing industry, which is not high, and there has been no change in ten years. The problem, with the development of the high-return commercial illustration market, there may be a considerable number of authors who will turn to the commercial illustration market.
According to Ah Geng, there are two types of illustrators who are new to the industry: one is the way of traditional publication illustration, the work is trivial and the remuneration has not increased in ten years, and the prices are not the same as ten years ago. Therefore, the income is naturally stretched; the other is the commercial illustration sector, which is at the forefront of popular culture, and the remuneration is more than ten times that of traditional literary illustrations. Therefore, the economic rate of return, social awareness and traffic effects interact, and it is natural to compare with life. well-off. “The remuneration for a children’s book illustrator, a book is only equivalent to the cost of a relatively mature commercial manuscript, what is this concept? It is a concept of survival and an ideal concept.”
“Don’t save the cost on the author”
Compared with the low income of children’s book illustration, young people who do this industry have to pay high tuition fees to learn art and design.
Illustrator An Xiaoyi has not studied in professional art academies. Because she likes this line of work, she holds the brush by taking technical courses. An Xiaoyi told reporters that entry-level courses range from a few hundred yuan to one thousand yuan per cycle, and later to learn some master-level courses, 3,000 yuan per cycle.
Zhang Ru (pseudonym), who graduated from a major university, has been engaged in children’s book illustration for more than ten years because of her love, and has drawn nearly a hundred projects of children’s book illustration. The top student in the school only discovered that children’s book illustrators are so weak when he entered the society, “unless you are very, very famous, you basically have no pricing power. We all need other jobs to support our lives, including illustrators who graduated from famous American schools in the circle of friends, It has won awards internationally, and people say that there is something else to do besides illustration, and it is difficult to treat children’s illustration as a pure profession.”
Zhang Ru said that for more than ten years, the remuneration of children’s book illustrations has not only not increased, but has been declining in the past two years. “The remuneration given by traditional publishing houses is very low. The previous project of 500 yuan for a picture is now 200 to 300 yuan.”
Because of the popularity of painting the 2021 Tokyo Olympic champions on Weibo, An Xiaoyi has become famous, and the bids for her painting have also increased accordingly.
Image source: Photo courtesy of An Xiaoyi
Comparing the income of various projects, the salary of children’s publication illustration is still the lowest. “From a few dozen yuan a piece, it has risen to a few hundred yuan, and now it’s almost seven or eight hundred yuan, and a cover painting is one or two thousand yuan. Basically, in the circle of children’s publications, the ‘high’ can be obtained, which is this level. Commercial projects will be much higher, I have drawn a list of IP design, and the price of a few pictures will go up to 10,000.”
But at the same time, the contract terms of children’s publications are the most demanding on creators.
“We will make an agreement on revisions for commercial manuscripts. Generally, it is free to revise three times. If there are more than three times, I will add a little fee for each revision. But the contract with the publisher will not have this clause. Maybe when you draw the second or third manuscript, the front It has already been reviewed, and the leader later saw it and called back, redrawing it many times.” An Xiaoyi said.
Liu Nian (pseudonym), an illustrator who has been in the business for 10 years, said bluntly that the publisher’s contract does not protect the creator. Her lawyer friend saw the clause that “Party B will pay 200% for breach of contract”, and said bluntly, “You dare to sign this kind of overlord contract?” “But what can you do if you don’t sign it? China does not lack illustrators, but everyone is in short supply. Money, income is not stable, even if you don’t do it, others will (will) do it. The publishing house can’t wait to let you paint for nothing, 300-800 yuan for a children’s book inner page illustration is a common market, I have never seen more than 1000 Yuan for a piece, but the publishing house’s list generally fluctuates around 300 yuan, and it can’t reach 800. The original game painting can be tens of thousands or even higher.”
“Recently, because of the teaching materials incident of the People’s Education Society, the publishing house has self-examined. For the projects I have completed before, there are also a lot of books and illustrations to be revised. The review is close to harsh. The previous printing and publishing have passed, and if it is reprinted later I need new illustrations, and there is no modification fee.” Liu Nian said.
According to the direct employment of BOSS, in 2022, the monthly salary level of fresh illustrators in Beijing will be roughly 5,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan, and the original painters will be roughly 9,000 yuan to 15,000 yuan. From the interviews with illustrators, the actual income of children’s book illustrators is far from the level of recruitment online, and it is very unstable. “When it’s good, it’s 10,000 to 20,000 a month, and when it’s bad, it’s 3,000 or 4,000.” An Xiaoyi said.
Luo Liang (pseudonym), a publisher who has worked in the children’s book publishing industry for nearly 20 years, revealed to every reporter that compared with other popular business categories, the children’s book illustration industry is indeed relatively unpopular. “There are a small number of well-known and high-selling children’s book picture book illustrators, who rely on drawing children’s book illustrations to get high wages, and they are professional picture book painters. Most other children’s book illustrators need other jobs to maintain their income, such as mainly doing game illustration. And design, which makes a lot of money, in my spare time I use children’s book illustration, which is not very profitable, as a hobby.”
“We can’t require all standards to be the same, but I sincerely hope that children’s book development units can see and improve this problem, and don’t use cost savings on authors.” The wish of a children’s book illustrator.
Whether it is because of hobbies or feelings as the starting point, ordinary children’s painting creators still have to fill their stomachs first, and then insist on hobbies or talk about feelings.
hidden book number business
The market demand must be met by a large number of children’s painting creators, but the predicament faced by ordinary children’s painting creators is so clear, so the unmet market demand is harvested cheaply – or through the qualifications that have just graduated. Shallow author implementations, or through part-timers. In addition, there is an undercurrent that is easily overlooked: the book number business.
“In a regular business publishing house, the probability of such a problem is very low. It mainly occurs in a small number of publishing houses that sell book numbers, because some booksellers are not strict with publishing censorship in order to make money.” Luo Liang told reporters During the interview, he pointed out the “invisible business” of book number trading in the industry.
The book number is the identity certificate and copyright certificate of the book. The publishing house applies to the national publishing management department and obtains it through allocation. If you want to publish a book, you need to get the book number through the publisher.
Some industry veterans also revealed to every reporter that selling book numbers is a common phenomenon in the publishing industry. “Some publishing houses rely exclusively on selling ISBNs to survive. They have weak publishing capabilities and don’t even have many employees. But by selling most ISBNs to booksellers every year, they can live very well.”
Every reporter’s investigation found that the current price of a book number on the market ranges from 20,000 yuan to 70,000 yuan.
“Send some of the sample chapters to us for the first review. If you meet the publishing requirements, you can submit a declaration form to formulate a publishing plan for you and match the publishing house.” Wu Yong (pseudonym), a relevant person of a cultural communication publishing company, learned that the reporter wanted to use When the book was published in the name of the individual, it was explained in detail.
“Publishing is now at your own expense. We cooperate with many publishers here, there are hundreds of them, and we will match the publisher’s resources according to your content. It can be published 3 to 6 months after submission.” According to Wu Yong Every time the reporter saw the business license, this cultural communication company “specialized in comprehensive publishing” was established in 2010. “We have been in the industry for more than ten years and have been doing book publishing, post-distribution and sales, etc.” Wu Yong said.
Wu Yong emphasized, “The book number cannot be bought alone. The XX publishing house I recommend to you costs 65,000 yuan in total, which includes all the costs of publishing, such as book number, third review and three proofs, cover design, typesetting, etc.”
When the reporter said that he wanted to publish children’s picture books, Wu Yong said, “The requirements for picture books are relatively low. As long as the content of the paintings is popular and meets the requirements, they can be published.”
“As long as the regular publishing house does not contact you directly, it is book number trading.” Luo Liang pointed out to reporters, “Some publishing houses lack market vitality, and the quality of the books they publish is very poor, and books written by relatives and friends can be distributed. The level of published work varies.”
Reporter’s Notes丨Children are no small matter
After the unpleasant illustrations in the mathematics textbooks of Renjiaoshe Primary School were fermented on the Internet, He Yu, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, suddenly realized that his children had also used the textbooks.
“It can be said that it is a problem of skill level, but why are there so many pictures that are not suitable for children?” He Yu, who is also an art professional, both disapproves and is confused about the illustrations in elementary school textbooks. When I asked my wife, I found out that there have been doubts in the parent group for a long time. “This version of the textbook has been used for ten years. My wife said that she thought this textbook was ugly. Some parents complained ten years ago, why are they so slow to respond?” He Yu told us.
There are voices who think that parents are overthinking, isn’t it just a few illustrations, why do we need to enlarge the discussion so much. But we don’t think it’s a trivial matter for children. Many interviewees, including He Yu, also held similar views: although there is no fixed template for illustrations, it is impossible to quantify the creators through the level of painting. But it must not be shoddy, and any visual product provided to children should be devout and awe-inspiring.
Planning丨Liu Xuedong
Reporter丨Ding Zhouyang, Zhu Peng, Du Wei
Editor丨Zhang Haini
Vision丨Shui Lingqian
Video Editing丨Bujing
Typesetting丨Zhang Haini
