Warning given on proliferation of book publishers

An increasing number of publishers in a shrinking market spell trouble for the future of the nation's book publishing industry, an academic warned yesterday.

"These negative factors may undermine the industry like they did in Japan," said Chiu Jeong-yeou (邱炯友), associate professor of information and library science at Tamkang University.

Chiu said the growing popularity of Internet and television had attracted more young people and office workers away from reading. However, the number of publishing houses grew to 7,810 in 2001 from 3,491 in 1991, an increase of 123.7 percent over 10 years.

"Take Japan as an example. Japan's high book-return rate of up to 41 percent caused by the decrease in the number of readers has been ailing its publishing industry for the past 10 years," he said.

In Taiwan, the average book-return rate reached 30.8 percent in 2002, he said.

Chiu made the remarks at a press conference held by China Credit Information Service (中華徵信所) yesterday on the release of a survey about the nation's book publishing industry in 2002. The survey was finalized last month and sampled 599 publishing houses, 503 of which published more than four titles in 2002.

According to the report, 2,385 publishing houses applied for ISBNs, or International Standard Book Numbers, for their new publications in 2002. About 36,758 new titles were published in 2002, with total sales of NT$43 billion, the report said.

"Taiwan's publishing industry has largely prospered following the abolition of the Publication Law [in 1999], with many publishers springing up and publication numbers soaring," said Su Shih-ping (蘇拾平), vice chairman of Cite Publishing Ltd (城邦), the nation's largest publisher with annual revenue of around NT$3.1 billion.

"However, too many players and publications have resulted in a decline in profits," Su said. "The lack of professional talent is another potential problem for the development of the industry."

To overcome these problems, publishers may have to form strategic alliances with competitors or other bus-inesses in the movie industry or computer games industry to expand their customer base, the report said.

"Publishers can also expand their business scale through vertical integration," said Linden Lin (林載爵), editorial director of Linking Publishing Company (聯經出版).

Linking has five bookshops across the nation and an online bookstore. It is also cooperating with hypermarkets to sell its publications.

China, with a book market worth NT$99.4 billion in 2002, also provides Taiwanese publishers with room for expansion if they can capitalize on the shared language.

But China's ban on foreign investment in the publishing industry, poor copyright protect-ion, high operational risks and a lack of local government assistance provide significant challenges to Taiwanese publishers, the report said.