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 (
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 (
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 (
"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 (
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.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to