Digital publishing sees solid growth in 2012

The year 2012 has been an extraordinary year for China's press and publication industry. In this year, the world economy has been running at low level, technologies have changed dramatically, international tycoons have competed with one another fiercely, and there have been all kinds of industrial trends. These have all brought forth severe challenges for the reform and development of the press and publication industry. Reform produces innovations, and practice produces truth. In this year, China's press and publication industry has resisted severe pressure, made great efforts and innovations, taken solid steps forwards on the path of digitalization, industrialization, and internationalization, and entered an important strategic stage of its development.

Year of Deepening for digital publishing

On the morning of December 24 Beijing time, a piece of news once again got on people's nerves: America's renowned 80-year-old Newsweek announced that it would stop issuing its print magazine from December 31 on, and it would completely transformed to digital publishing.

This news from across the Pacific again made "digital publishing" a heatedly discussed topic. The year 2012, which has come to an end, has witnessed the thorough deepening of the digitalization of China's press and publication industry. After its incubation stage, the digital publication industry is taking shape.

As of the first half of 2012, major publishing corporations, who constitute the main force of China's publishing industry, had all established their digital media companies or digital publishing divisions. Their main concerns had also focused on such practical problems as how to forge core competitiveness, achieve sustained profitability, and promote reform of their corporations. China Publishing Group lists digitalization as one of the 6 major strategies of the development of the corporation, and promotes the construction of a comprehensive platform that is based on the group's advantageous resources and that integrates the collecting, spreading, trading, and service of open, internationalized and extensive contents; Phoenix Publishing and Media continues to make effort in digital contents and establish a professional content library that includes professional databases in such fields as primary and secondary school students textbook practices and traditional Chinese medicine.

In 2012, telecommunication operators, such as China Mobile and China Telecom, digital publishing platforms like 9yue.com, chineseall.com, and read.douban.com, and digital publishing service providers like Brainsoon, have all embraced distinctive growth models. Take chineseall.com for example. It practices a "quality" media digital publishing model and proposes to establish a complete industrial chain of "full-content, full-media, and full-channel" quality reading, extending its services to numerous fields including the internet, digital libraries, and mobile reading.