“One Source, Multi Use”
The Experience of YLib Group in Digital & Online Publishing

Jung-Wen Wang / Chairman of Yuan Liou Publishing Co., Ltd 2006. 10.19

This is my second visit to Korea. Last May I first came here with a group of Taiwan scholars and professionals of culture industry and technology management. We visited the Ministry of Information and Communication（MIC）, and had a wonderful experience at the Ubiquitous Dream Hall, and also went to KINTEX, seeing the Smart Home Network Show of the year. We had the privilege and pleasure to learn about the “Hallyu-Wood Project”, which gets a budget up to 2 billion US dollars. At the same time, I was most favorably impressed with Seoul while going window shopping on 仁寺洞, and strolling along the 青溪川 after enjoying our dinner of Korean cuisine. Nevertheless, I must admit that I was thrilled and amazed to discover the ambition and planning of the uniqueness in the architecture to combine production, ecology and life so wonderfully together when visiting Heyri ArtValley and Paju Bookcity. After returning home, I found and looked into more materials introducing the ArtValley and Bookcity, because I really want to know more about the heroes who had achieved such great accomplishment.

Luckily, here I come again to Paju. This time I have two roles. One is the panelist at the Paju Bookcity Forum 2006, meeting with dozens of Asian professionals to discuss the “Paradigm shift of book publishing.” The other is the Chairman of Magazine Business Association of Taipei, and I take a group of 30 people to exchange thoughts on the themes of the Forum and also to learn more about the good and bad experiences throughout the time building Paju Bookcity.

Korean government made the slogan “One Source, Multi Use” as the core principle to integrate all ideas and creations in developing Korean culture industries. From there, Korea decided to intentionally focus on content creation, and further chose movies, TV dramas, and on-line games as the pioneers. By ways of （1） first-time audio-video content creation （2） integration of sources from related industries （3） multi-format presentable （4） multi-media plus multi-channel （5） providing services to different audiences （6） and the above 5 factors can be duplicated in other countries, the policy has brought benefits to other industries, such as publishing, music, design and fashion, tele-communication, tourism and Korean cuisine.

Today I just take the slogan “One Source, Multi Use” to talk on my experience in Digital and Online publishing. But sometimes I might use “One Creation, Multi Use” during my speech to emphasize the importance of creation in publishing industry.

This session is to cover “Strategies for Publishing New Format of Books of the D&N Age”, and our theme here is to discuss “Publishers’ View on the Production Environment”. My presentation today will aim at four points, and they’ll be shown by the Power Point to you.

1)
Brief outline of Taiwan’s publishing industry, and YLib group.
2)
Identify some of Yuan-Liou’s milestones in D&N age.
3)
Showing one example of Yuan-Liou’s experience of “One Creation, Multi Use” in D&N age.
4)
Seeing the once-for-a-lifetime opportunity in D&N age for us all, I humbly make a proposal for all Asian publishers.

Interview :

Question 1.

Your simple overview of publishing market in your country regarding theme you are going to speak at Paju Bookcity.

Answer :

A simple overview of the publishing market in Taiwan : There are over 5000 registered publishing houses in Taiwan, bringing out 40,000 new titles annually. Among the publishing houses, only 1000 publishers publish at least 4 titles annually. There are 4185 magazine titles in print and only 600 local ones and 400 foreign magazines are sold on retail stands. The annual market of books and magazines are nearly 2~2.5 billion US dollars.

In the Digital and Network age, on-line magazines, e-books and on-line databases are increasing dramatically. On-line book stores have become one of the most important sale channels of books and magazines, with an annual sale 100 million US dollars. A lot of experiments on e-book and e-magazine potential market are invested but since the market is still initialized, so far we haven’t seen any reasonable returns. The environment of new publishing formats on Internet is abundant. Therefore, publishers have to find the best format for each publication.

Based on the strategy of "One Source, Multi-Use", the methodology and business models have become more and more complicated and adaptive. The solutions to our difficulties are important. As a result, the practical experiences, Chinese language learning and the illustration of children's book, will be demonstrated in my speech.

Question 2.

Have you ever heard of Paju Bookcity ? If it is ok, are you having a business with companies in Bookcity ?

Answer :

I was very impressed with Paju Bookcity when I fist visited there in June 2006. If there is any Korean publishing company interested in Yuan-Liou’s publishing resources （http://www.ylib.com）, Yuan-Liou is open to discuss any joint venture possibility.

Question 3.

Expectation and Hope of This Forum

Answer :

Through this forum, I suggest that we might consider the possibility to work on an “ Asian Publishers’ Copyright Newsletter” in digital format to introduce Asia publishers’ excellent books regularly. I hope through this newsletter to help mutual communications and learn other publishers’ experience and strength.