This year, national reading has been written into the government work report for the ninth time, from “advocating national reading” to “deeply promoting national reading”, and the depth and breadth of national reading have been continuously extended. One embodiment is that digital reading is becoming a new trend of national reading.
At the first national reading conference held recently, the 2021 China digital reading report released by the China audio visual and Digital Publishing Association showed that in 2021, the number of Chinese digital reading users exceeded 500 million, the digital reading industry maintained a good development momentum, the market scale continued to expand, excellent works continued to emerge, and user stickiness continued to rise.
bring increment to the reading of the whole people
The overall revenue of the digital reading industry has reached 41.57 billion yuan, the number of digital reading users has reached 506 million, and the per capita e-reading volume is 1158. A series of data released in the 2021 China Digital Reading Report (hereinafter referred to as the report) point to a trend: in recent years, the leapfrog development of China’s information and communication industry and the continuous innovation and application of digital technology are changing and affecting the reading form of the whole people, Constantly promote the development of reading services to digitization, systematization and personalization.
The results of the 19th national reading survey released by the China Press and Publication Research Institute also show that adult citizens have an obvious tendency to digital reading, especially the middle-aged and young people have become the main body of digital reading. In 2021, 77.4% of adult citizens had read on mobile phones, an increase of 0.7 percentage points over 76.7% in 2020; 71.6% of adult citizens have read online, an increase of 0.1 percentage point over 71.5% in 2020; 27.3% of adult citizens read on e-readers.
“Reading takes a long time and covers a wide range of people, reflecting that digital reading is becoming an important way of reading.” Wei Yushan, President of the China Press and Publication Research Institute, said in an interview with the Economic Daily that in 2021, the average daily mobile phone contact time of Chinese adult citizens was 101.12 minutes, and the average daily Internet contact time was 68.42 minutes. The two items add up to nearly three hours, far exceeding the average reading time of paper books by 21.05 minutes.
With the continuous improvement of users’ requirements for content quality, their initiative to pay for knowledge is also improving. From the survey, digital reading users have developed mature payment habits. 92.17% of users paid for digital reading in 2021, and the most paid reading form is electronic reading, accounting for 60.07%. Compared with audio reading, users are more willing to pay for online literature and e-reading.
“Digital reading is bringing new growth to the reading of the whole people. You may not expect that the Analects of Confucius is the most popular reading material on the reading platform in 2021, with nearly 30 million readers on the site throughout the year. More than 80% of these readers are young readers under the age of 30. Readers discuss classics and answer questions in the comment area, so as to revitalize the classical culture in the digital space.” Cheng Wu, CEO of Yuewen group and vice president of Tencent group, said that at present, the publications of Yuewen platform cover dozens of categories, with hundreds of millions of readers last year.
Col Digital Publishing Group Co.Ltd(300364) chairman and President Tong Zhilei also believes that the Internet is an important position for the whole people to read Col Digital Publishing Group Co.Ltd(300364) built a “scholarly China” Internet digital library, collecting more than 100000 books and building a “lifelong study” for the people. At present, Col Digital Publishing Group Co.Ltd(300364) has built more than 28000 digital rural book houses for 12 provinces and cities, helping to revitalize rural culture.
innovative immersive reading experience
With the accelerated development of digital technology and the continuous deepening of the connection between virtual and real world, the reading scene is also undergoing profound changes. Scientific and technological innovation has brought more imagination space for the content production, reading form, experience and scene creation of digital reading.
“China’s scientific and technological innovation is facing the forefront of the world, the system and mechanism are further improved, the vitality of innovation and creation is continuously released, and digital technology continues to be empowered and integrated, providing a good development environment for the digital reading industry.” Zhang Yijun, first vice president of China audio visual and Digital Publishing Association, said.
Maze · Ruyi Linlang atlas, Xinhua Dictionary app, Chinese poetry class, national rhyme inheritance app, “history and learning” multimedia publishing project, shadow China ar picture book, Migu 5g cloud party construction, 5g cloud travel Museum, tomato novel AI reading… The digital reading experience hall established by the first national reading conference provides a professional and scene immersive reading experience for the audience. Among them, China Mobile Migu’s multimodal explanation scheme – “5g + digital intelligence explanation” based on Virtual Digital Homo sapiens, 3D virtual scene and virtual reality integration and interaction was unveiled for the first time. Following the steps of “Gu Yifei”, users can punch in yuancosmos future bookstore and “cross” to enterprise cloud bookstore, smart party building room and rural primary school to experience diversified reading services.
“Panoramic immersive interaction can innovate the reading experience of ‘paper reading + screen reading’. For users of 5g cloud bookstore, they can choose to order a cup of Yunnan Baoshan Xiaoli coffee in their favorite bookstore, choose a favorite good book, borrow, purchase, or receive as membership interests. After the bookstore closes, 5g + artificial intelligence unmanned bookstore will continue to serve users to select, purchase and receive books 24 hours.” Liu Xin, general manager of China Mobile Migu company, said that up to now, more than 18 million users have obtained the new experience of 5g cloud bookstore. Looking forward to the future, in the world of meta universe, the production and consumption, form experience and scene space of reading will realize higher dimensional transformation, so that every user can enjoy reading anytime and anywhere.
“With more than 1 billion internet users and more than 500 million Internet Literature users, we can see the vigorous trend and broad space of the digital reading industry.” Ireader Technology Co.Ltd(603533) founder Zhang Lingyun said in an interview with reporters that in terms of reading experience, intellectualization has practical applications: connecting massive high-quality content, intelligent voice search, instant playback, and voice interaction can be customized according to personal preferences. Taking the handheld reading platform as an example, it adopts the intelligent recommendation system to continuously optimize the content matching, realizes the content customization function of “thousands of people and thousands of faces”, and greatly optimizes the efficiency and experience of users receiving information.
Tomato novel is a free reading product launched by Tiktok in 2019. At the scene, the reporter clicked on the concept of tomato novel and listened to the electronic screen. A highly anthropomorphic voice of Liu Xinwu’s “bell and Drum Tower” in Tianjin dialect gave people a personal experience of the charm of Tianjin crosstalk. According to the on-site staff, the AI reading of tomato novels explores and optimizes the model in multiple directions such as synthetic sound quality, rhythmic stress, mood and intonation, providing users with a highly anthropomorphic immersive listening experience. The multi style timbre matrix can adapt to the different settings of the characters in the novel, express a variety of emotions such as happiness and sadness, and let the AI timbre properly express the joys, sorrows and joys in the story.
high quality content is the core competitiveness
Digital reading has developed rapidly, forming a pattern of multiple content themes. In particular, the free reading mode and the rise of new media have further sunk the digital reading market. However, there is still much room for improvement in how to better reflect real life while maintaining the characteristics of the network, so as to improve the quality of works. In this regard, the industry said that the precipitation and accumulation of high-quality content and the core services provided based on content are the core competitiveness of the digital reading industry.
“China’s digital reading work has entered the current mature adjustment period from the promotion and development period in previous years.” Sun Shoushan, President of China audio visual and Digital Publishing Association, believes that digital reading is an indispensable part of national reading. In the context of the new era, the digital reading industry should continue to adhere to integrity and innovation, maintain high-quality development, consistently promote the content construction of digital reading platform, constantly innovate the service mode of digital reading enterprises, and unremittingly pay attention to the training of digital reading talents.
With the increasingly fierce competition in the digital reading industry, how to obtain more high-quality copyright resources, how to efficiently produce and incubate high-quality IP, further break the barriers between Pan entertainment industries and lay out the whole industry chain are also the development direction of the digital reading industry in the future. According to Yan Xiaohong, President of China Copyright Association, reading is the basic right of every citizen. Under the conditions of new technology, the rapid changes of reading carriers and reading methods have made positive contributions to meeting the reading needs of different groups. Therefore, we should take copyright as the strategic resource of cultural development and the basic condition of industry development to protect the development of high-quality content.
“Copyright protection is one of the content barriers and core competitiveness of digital reading enterprises. To make the online literature industry develop healthily and in the long run, we should not only ensure that the works signed by the platform can not have copyright defects, but also ensure that the legitimate rights and interests of the settled authors are not infringed by others.” In terms of copyright supervision, Zhang also said that in terms of technology. For example, “content warehousing” technology refers to marking an identification code on each chapter of each online literary work, and then summarizing all identification codes to establish a digital library. When new works are warehoused, the platform can supervise copyright infringement in time according to the digital information.
“No matter how the reading methods and transmission channels change, the essence and power of reading will not change. I hope everyone can participate in reading and make the application of digital reading technology speed up the reading of the whole people.” Zhang Lingyun said. (Economic Daily reporter Han Bingzhi)
