Publishing's 'blockchain' product is on fire

Original title: "Over 2,000 copies sold in two minutes, is it a book or a code? "

On May 10, Xinhua Wenxuan cooperated with "Ali Auction" to launch the country's first "digital book collection" product - Alai's "Zhan Dui" with a limited number of 3,000 exlibris, and the sales data exceeded 2,000 copies in just 2 minutes after it went on sale. The sales interface attracted more than 30,000 onlookers.

The results of this "street bombing" are not unexpected. The day before, People's Literature Publishing House's cultural and creative brand "Humanistic Treasure" joined forces with Lingjing Culture and Koi Naqu to release the digital collection of Zheng Zigong's "Three Kingdoms" at a price of 19.9 yuan, and the sales exceeded 995,000 yuan in 60 seconds.

Back to two months ago, the publishing industry's first NFT (an entry in the blockchain "non-fungible token or non-fungible token") digital collection - "Story of Twenty Years" was put on the shelves and priced 19.9 yuan, limited to 8888 copies, sold out within 20 seconds of going online.

In just two months, publishing institutions such as Haixia Publishing Group and Chengdu Times Publishing House successively tested digital collections, integrating "book knowledge copyright + blockchain technology + digital asset operation". After a try, it became popular A piece of sky.

first intimate contact

The reporter learned from Xinhua Winshare that it only took 90 days from project approval to product launch. Kuang Rui, deputy director of the Cultural and Creative Department of People's Literature Publishing House, told the Worker's Daily reporter that after the Spring Festival this year, many relevant institutions have tried to cooperate with publishing houses to launch digital collections.

It can be seen that mining the intellectual property "rich mine" of the publishing house is a "long-planned" matter under the consensus of the digital collection production, operation, and sales platforms.

"The impact of technology is often the blow of dimensionality reduction. The arrival of Internet 1.0 and Internet 2.0 is silent, but it is unstoppable. In the first two waves of Internet technological innovation, the publishing industry used the Internet to broaden the channels of distribution and dissemination, but in copyright The Internet has also been greatly impacted by pirates. This time everyone finally realizes the importance of the first-mover advantage and actively embraces it. This is a very good situation.” said Chen Minqi, chief operating officer of Digital Communications Group.

"It's not surprising that the sales exceeded 995,000 yuan in 60 seconds," Kuang Rui said. But the reporter was quite surprised, "Isn't selling books at this speed?"

"On the one hand, Zhengzi Gongya's "Three Kingdoms" has always been a very popular IP; on the other hand, the digital collection market is hot. On the platform we cooperate with, it is normal to be sold out in a few minutes, but everyone predicted it at the beginning. 5 minutes or 10 minutes."

The editor of Xinhua Wenxuan wrote a very romantic and touching sentence, recording the birth of "digital book collection": "Human beings thrive on this ancient planet, the earth, and collect thousands of years of wisdom and culture. In different forms of books, there are traces left in the universe for eternity. Among the publishing editors, a group of young people who know the blockchain best, set up a "digital book collection" on a light rainy evening in Chengdu."

The gameplay is superimposed, and the tricks appear frequently

When books become digital collections, what exactly are buyers collecting? The answers given by the various publishers that tested the waters varied.

"The Story of Twenty Years" brings together the essence of the 20-year publishing career of Changjiang New Century. From more than 2,000 book covers, nearly 700 representative covers of the times are selected, including Jiang Wen, Zhang Yimou, etc. In an instant; the pulse of scholars such as Zhou Guoping and Ma Weidu... The exclusive blockchain code makes the collection "unique" in the hands of each buyer.

Chengdu Times Publishing House has launched a digital collection of "Yi Zang", which selects the earliest record of Go games that have been discovered - "Sun Cezhao Lu Fan Yiqi Situation" as a blueprint, and uses blockchain technology to endow it with unique identification and ownership information .

The literary magazine "Harvest" and Harvest APP released the world's first blind box of literary digital collections. They invited 8 writers including Liang Xiaosheng, Liu Liangcheng, Bi Feiyu, and Jiang Fangzhou, and each writer issued two digital collections: one is a static digital collection, that is, a picture, including an innovatively designed book cover and the author's handwritten signature, packed The second is the dynamic digital collection, that is, a video in which the author’s original audio and video special effects are added to the static picture for use in synthesis activities. Each "blind box" can randomly open a static digital collection of an author. If you collect all the static digital collections specified by a certain writer, you can synthesize a dynamic digital collection of the writer, and you can also apply for a gift for the writer A magnum opus or an anthology of , including signed editions.

The cover, content, image, audio, video... the content of the book and its surroundings are confirmed and certified on the chain, and the digital assets are also digitized. There are physical books or peripheral products, as well as digital codes and audio-visual files. The gameplay is superimposed, and the form of digital collections is constantly being updated.

Docking Metaverse, the future can be expected

The integration of the publishing industry and the metaverse, "digital collections are a beginning." Chen Minqi said. This point of view has also been recognized by Kuang Rui. "In the metaverse interaction scene in the future, the form of digital collections will definitely be different from what it is now, but this must be a development direction of the content industry. In the virtual world, the form of physical books will also undergo a relatively large change. What is it? What kind of form will it take? There is a lot of room for imagination.” Kuang Rui said.

In Chen Minqi's view, there are many advantages in getting involved in the publishing industry in the field of digital collections. Firstly, the publishing industry has huge and high-quality resources; secondly, digital collections can accurately and intuitively digitize the IP or core content of traditional publications; The uniqueness meets the taste of collectors, especially young people.

"Publishers should catch up with the trend of technology as soon as possible to lay a solid foundation for the integrated development of publishing and the transformation and upgrading of digital publishing and distribution." said Liu Tianjiao, Director of the Blockchain Copyright Center of the National Key Laboratory of Technology and Standards Comprehensive Key Laboratory of the State Press and Publication Administration.

Liu Tianjiao also revealed that the "Digital Book Collection" project led by their center will launch high-quality books and exlibris from major publishing houses across the country in the next step, including fiction, non-fiction, professional books, scripts, reports, diaries, book collections, Photography drawing set.

Perhaps, in the not-too-distant future, when we mention books, we will no longer think of paper books that we read frequently, nor e-books that can be browsed anytime and anywhere, or the mottled and dilapidated "old treasures" on museum showcases. Rather, it is a string of codes, a value-adding asset.