COVID-19 partially paralyzes books
China's printing and publishing industry going digital to deal with coronavirus
Avast host of sectors relying on the physical presence of staffers, among other resources, have been badly hit by the spread of the novel coronavirus pneumonia. A less visible, yet more profoundly worrying victim of the deadly virus is the printing and publishing industry that is being partially paralyzed by the epidemic, according to industry insiders.
With China’s printing prowess functioning as the mainstay of global publishing, a disturbing silence that grips a multitude of printing presses across the country could augur ill for avid readers worldwide hunting for physical copies that house their spiritual strength, observers said.
The impact is evident, with most of the printing houses yet to resume operation and subjecting their future plans to the progress on the epidemic’s control and prevention, an editor at a book publishing house in Beijing, told the Global Times.
Book printing, retailing hit by virus
Yizhuang in the southeast suburbs of the capital city and Linyi, East China’s Shandong Province are home to many major printing houses in the country, and they have largely remained closed, according to the editor requesting anonymity.
A printing house specializing in newspapers in downtown Beijing which employs mostly locals is still operating normally, but it is a rare exception, the Global Times learned.
The impact is also being felt in warehousing and logistics, the editor revealed, adding that publishing editors generally work from home, picking up various kinds of writings to read while dealing with online activities and marketing.
Book launch events have been postponed, she said. Many offline activities have either been canceled or shifted to live webcasts.
“With the date for the restart of work and production up in the air, our business will take a huge hit [ from the virus] in the first quarter,” said a sales manager giving his surname as Shi at a Beijing-based supplier of raw materials used in the manufacturing of hardcovers.
The epidemic would surely weigh on the launch of new books, according to Shi.
The virus onslaught appears to have also sent shudders through book retailing, an important component of the larger publishing sector.
The impact of the epidemic became evident in late January and while the majority of brick-and-mortar bookstores still tallied a certain amount of sales, judging by sales statistics recorded in the two weeks beginning January 20, the situation already looked grim, read a post on the WeChat official account of China Publishers on February 10.
The vast majority of bookstores posted a decline in sales in January from the year before, with a few of them reporting a plunge as high as 90 percent, per the posting based on data collected from more than 1,000 bookstores across the country.
With the epidemic control still at a critical period, the reopening of bookstores remains unknown and it will take a long time for their operations to get back to normal, the post said.
Global fallout
There are signs that the disturbance might feed through the global market.
Her company handles many foreign book ideas, the publishing editor disclosed. While the epidemic has yet to disrupt such book ideas, considering a long period of time required for book ideas to be translated into publishing activity and the books being handled are mostly the house’s reserve assets purchased long before, promotional events planned for some overseas authors have inevitably been hampered, she said. “Foreign book rights deals are unaffectedly made online, although some of the books can’t be printed out due to printing houses’ production suspension.”
There’s still no case for the London Book Fair in March to be canceled, but publishers from the Chinese mainland might be absent, she told the Global Times.
Although there have yet to be any quantitative estimates for the fallout of the epidemic when it comes to the global book publishing market, previous reports of concerns voiced by US industry insiders about the impact of tariff hikes on the US publishing market at the height of the China-US trade war last year could provide a clue.
In her testimony in hearings of the US Trade Commission in June 2019, Lui Simpson, then vice president for global policy with the Association of American Publishers (AAP), said the imposition of tariffs on books printed in China “would have a severe adverse economic impact on American publishers and partner businesses, including booksellers and schools, because there are no alternatives to printing these books in China.”
An overview of US printers versus their Chinese counterparts in Simpson’s testimony gives a glimpse into the prevalent prowess of Chinese printers.
“American publishers do use qualified US printers wherever possible, but the reality is that our home-grown printing capacity has been extremely confined since the 1980s. Indeed, many of the most technically complex and innovative books, including many children’s books, can only be printed in China because Chinese printers invested in the most complex and labor-intensive manufacturing processes,” according to Simpson.
US printers are not capable of either printing these books at the volumes required or the specialized technical capability, she noted, “it would take years, and massive capital investment, for other printers to try to develop anything resembling the resources available in China.”
If that is the case, the fact that printing presses are forced to be kept idle amid the virus outbreak would arguably be disturbing for publishers across the Pacific.
Digital silver lining
Still, there is a silver lining of the virus-created plight, as the digital part of the publishing world, just like an array of internet-based businesses, is gaining steam, industry watchers said.
While sales of physical books are under pressure from multiple factors including logistics delays, digital books and audio services are seen on an upward trend, according to the Beijing-based publishing editor.
Data garnered from online retailers showed that sales of physical books via the internet see no apparent uptick or decline amid the epidemic, the China Publishers post said, stressing that a host of podcast platforms such as Himalaya have reported notable gains in new users around the Spring Festival holidays when the nation was mired in anxiety over the virus.
Most platforms posted a 20-percent-plus rise in new subscribers during the period and some of them recorded a more than threefold surge, according to the post that summarizes a growing trend that helps in blowing away the black clouds resulting from the spreading disease.