80 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 9, 2020
Soapbox
“As a company, we are being forced to adjust our plans.”
Working and Waiting
An editor at a Beijing-based publisher describes the Chinese book business in
the wake of the coronavirus outbreakBy Fangzhou Yang
excessive discounts. Likewise, we do not
offer e-books. Instead, we rely on print
book sales, many of which are made
directly to customers through subscrip-
tions or online promotions.
Online influencers, many of whom are
still working, are also an important sales
channel for us. One influencer, Diandian
Mom, who runs a small reading club for
parents and kids, recommended Zhu’s
medical biography series five times last
month, saying she found them very
helpful when explaining the current situ-
ation to her child; she ultimately sold 64
sets.
Almost all editors at publishing
houses are also now taking part in this
kind of online marketing. Liu Ya, edito-
rial director of our children’s imprint,
Duxiaoku (which means “young Duku”),
has been cycling an hour every day to our
deserted office. Recently, she hosted a
WeChat book club where she recom-
mended books to 1,500 parents (a smallernumber than usual), focusing on books
about common diseases, nature, and
viruses. She also recommended two YA
books: one on understanding the media
and another on becoming a doctor.
Orders are still coming in, but busi-
ness is slower than usual. To cater to our
customers, our warehouse staff returned
to work on February 1. But deliveries
around the country are taking longer—
up to seven or eight days, from a typical
delivery window of three to four. At least
dealing with the complaints about slow
deliveries has kept our customer service
team occupied, as they, like me, continue
to work from home. It also appears that
the editing department can run smoothly
for quite a long time under conditions
like these.
Still, as a company, we are being forced
to adjust our plans. Right now, we have
colleagues who take turns working in the
office every day. And printing is of par-
ticular concern to us. Though plants are
gradually returning to work, there are
not enough workers and our books will
be delayed.
And it’s not just the production
schedule we need to worry about. We had
scheduled to move Duku’s warehouse
from the suburbs of Beijing to an as-yet-
unfinished warehouse in Nantong before
June, and this too may be subject to
change.
Although it seems things are getting
under control, the question remains:
what will happen if the virus continues
to spread and the lockdown decree lasts
much longer? No one knows. ■In Beijing, the book business is holding
its breath to see how the coronavirus out-
break will impact the lives and careers of
its workers. Though the Chinese New
Year holiday was officially prolonged to
February 10 because of the virus, most
colleagues at Duku, the publishing
house where I serve as deputy editor-in-
chief, started working from home over a
month ago, on February 3.
At 8 a.m. sharp that day, Duku pub-
lished a post on WeChat about how a
virus affects the human body and how
our immune system works to protect us.
The post was by Zhu Shisheng, a doctor
and IT engineer now living in Canada.
Duku has just released his series of 14
short biographies of medical pioneers,
among them Alexander Fleming,
William Harvey, Edward Jenner, and
Andreas Vesalius. The series shows how
several of the most important medical
discoveries were made and changed our
world, and how these great people fought
intellectual ignorance and cultural
inertia in the process.
The post received more than 100,000
clicks in a short time and prompted the
sale of 100 sets of the series that day. We
were fortunate that, with most book-
stores closed, we could still sell books at
all; though some bookstores are starting
to reopen, sales have fallen 90% since the
start of the outbreak.F
ortunately for Duku, 60% of our
sales come from online orders—
but unlike other Chinese pub-
lishers, Duku has opted out of selling
through the dominant online book-
selling platforms, such as Dangdang (the
largest online bookstore in China) and
Amazon, due to their demands forFangzhou Yang is the deputy editor-in-chief of
Duku, an independent publishing company based
in Beijing.