In-depth Analysis of the Publishing Industry Market in 2024: The Value of Publishing Industry Expected to Be Revalued Under the AI Wave
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The publishing and media industry is a comprehensive field involving economy, politics, technology, culture, and other areas. It is an important part of a country's cultural industry. The cultural and creative industry relies on publications as carriers to disseminate knowledge and inherit culture, while also achieving economic benefits through the operations of publishing units. Therefore, it serves dual functions of creating both social and economic value, playing an increasingly prominent role in national economic and social activities as well as in the competition of comprehensive national strength.
Industry Development Overview
Publishing, or publication, refers to the act of making a work available to the public through any means. In most countries, a work is protected by copyright as soon as it is completed, regardless of whether it is published. A work that obtains an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and is printed by a qualified publishing institution is called a publication. Publications presented in digital form are called electronic publications or e-books. The production or industrial sector primarily focused on publishing is referred to as the publishing industry. Any public dissemination with large-scale reproduction or equivalent reach is generally termed as publishing.
The publishing industry encompasses various stages, including publishing, printing, and distribution, making it a comprehensive cultural industry. Within the publishing industry, publishing houses are the main institutions responsible for planning, editing, and publishing various books, journals, and other publications. Additionally, the publishing industry includes production stages such as printing and binding factories, which transform publications into readable printed materials.
Furthermore, the publishing industry involves distribution and sales. Distribution refers to the process of delivering publications to readers and audiences through specific channels, while sales involve the commercialization of publications as products.
The publishing industry has entry barriers, and its characteristics determine that state-owned entities dominate the market. Due to its high ideological significance, the publishing industry is subject to regulations. According to the Several Decisions on Non-Public Capital Entering the Cultural Industry, enterprises in the industry must have state-owned capital holding at least 51% of shares.
The requirement for state-owned ownership has shaped the industry's competitive landscape, with state-owned comprehensive publishing groups dominating and private players playing a supplementary role. The market structure remains stable. Central and Beijing-based publishing groups include entities like China Publishing Group, which focuses on professional and mass publishing. Local publishing groups include Phoenix Publishing & Media and Shandong Publishing Group, while private publishers include New Classics and Guomai Culture.
By the end of 2020, there were 586 publishing houses nationwide, including 219 central-level publishers and 367 local publishers. In 2020, the total pricing value of books, journals, and newspapers published nationwide reached 276.368 billion yuan. Among these, books accounted for 218.533 billion yuan (79.07%), journals for 21.192 billion yuan (7.67%), and newspapers for 36.643 billion yuan (13.26%). Additionally, there were 121.9467 million audio recordings, 53.2034 million video recordings, and 252.7074 million electronic publications.
2024 Publishing Industry Market In-depth Analysis
The publishing and media industry is a crucial information-intensive cultural sector and a frontier of the information industry. In recent years, with the deepening of economic globalization and the rapid development of high-tech advancements such as mobile internet, IoT, cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence, industry giants and new media companies like Wikipedia, Google, Apple, and Amazon have leveraged their advanced information technologies and innovative business models to establish new monopolistic positions. This has further raised the industry standards and barriers in the publishing and media sector.
In recent years, the booming development of high-tech innovations like mobile internet, cloud computing, and big data has led to reduced production and sales of traditional publishing products, stagnant growth in physical import-export trade, and a market increasingly eroded by digital publications.
According to media reports, the news publishing giant Axel Springer has signed an agreement with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, becoming the first publishing organization globally to collaborate with OpenAI in deeper integration of journalism and AI technology. This marks a significant milestone for media in securing financial compensation for the use of their content in AI tools.
The agreement between OpenAI and Axel Springer indicates that AI will need to pay media brands for using their content in large model training, suggesting that compensating data providers for intellectual property may become an industry trend. For publishing companies with high-quality data resources, this payment model could help them leverage existing "dormant" copyright assets to create high-quality datasets for AI model developers, thereby generating new revenue streams.
The publishing industry is rich in linguistic resources. The digitalized text and image libraries formed by publishing companies serve as vital datasets for AI model training. Coupled with their advantages in copyright and IP resources, these could become key foundations for AI model development.
China's 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through 2035 propose implementing a digital strategy for the cultural industry and accelerating the development of sectors like digital publishing. As an essential area in building a culturally strong nation, digital publishing plays a significant supporting role in advancing the digital China initiative. In recent years, with national policy support, the news publishing industry has accelerated its digital transformation, achieving substantial breakthroughs in integrated development, with digital publishing showing promising growth momentum.
The rapid advancement of technology has altered the dynamics between knowledge providers and audiences, redefined their relationships, and continuously revolutionized the concept of publishing itself while innovating traditional publishing business models. The traditional publishing value chain, represented by printed books, is increasingly losing its competitive edge, and traditional publishers are seeing their influence and dominance wane in the ever-evolving publishing value chain. The ability to quickly and effectively adapt to these dramatic environmental changes has made integrated publishing the inevitable path for the sustainable development of traditional publishing houses.