Discounting not good for authors, publishers

Eight publishing houses based in Beijing and 46 in Shanghai have jointly issued two statements claiming they are not cooperating with domestic e-commerce platform JD.com in its plan to sell books at a 70, or even 80, percent discount.

Though they did not spell it out, the cost of a book, which includes copyright royalty for the author, salaries for the editing team and the cost of printing, cannot possibly be less than 30 percent of the marked price. A discount of 70 percent would mean almost zero profit for publishers. The publishing industry is such that readers do not benefit in the long run by buying books cheap. If so, publishers will stop making profits, they will not be able to provide royalty to authors on time, or pay the editors.

Already, the annual financial report for 2023 of 28 domestic publishing houses, publicized in April, shows 17 of them made moderate profits, nine of them made less than 100 million yuan ($13.80 million) in profit while two of them registered losses. If the publishing houses give in to the competitive price competition among e-commerce platforms, the situation will only get worse.

Yet the fact that only a small number of the over 500 publishing houses nationwide are rejecting the platform's initiative shows how heavily the sector relies on the platform for sales. After all, more people buy books online than from bookstores.