China Publishing Group Corporation was founded in 2002 and is one of the largest holding companies in Chinese publishing. The company includes 40 large publishing houses with 96 subsidiaries and three wholesalers, including the People’s Publishing House, the People’s Literature Publishing House, the Commercial Press, Zhonghua Book Company (established for more than 100 years), Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, China Fine Arts Publishing Group, People’s Music Publishing House, SDX Joint Publishing Company, China Translation and Publishing Corporation, Orient Publishing Centre, Xinhua Bookstore Head Office, China National Publishing Industry Trading Corporation and China National Publications Import & Export (Group) Corporation (CNPIEC).
CPGC aspires to become a major actor in the global publishing industry, and currently claims 10,000 new publications (including periodicals) and 1,000 rights deals on average per year.
CNIEPC, its import/export division, has established a network of 28 offices in 130 countries and imports and exports a total of 200,000 titles per year, with a market share of 62 % for imports and 30% for exports. CNPIEC claims annual revenues of 2 billion RMB.
Key Company Developments 2012
Financial
In 2013, CPG reported revenues of 9.09 billion RMB, up 32.8% from 2012, with profits of 1.02 billion Yuan, up 90.77% over 2012, with total assets of 12.36 billion RMB (up 22.22%f from 2012).
Ownership, Mergers & Acquisition, Internal Organization
In 2013, CPG president Tan Yue launched a campaign to systematically develop CPG’s company brand, as a key for the group’s strategy of expansion, internal consolidation and growth.
International:
CPG has business with partners in 130 countries and regions.
Digital:
CPG has a catalog of 20,000 e-books. The CNPeReading platform, launched in 2013, aims to bring Chinese readers access to international journals and other electronic resources through libraries and schools. Since its launch in summer 2013, the database has accumulated 1.6 million digital titles and added a new service called Language Cloud.
Total digital revenues in 2013 were 460 million RMB, with 400 million RMB worth coming from CNPeReading and 35 million RMB from Language Cloud.
Bestsellers
In 2013, seven CPG titles were included in the Top 50 Books Favored by General Readers.
One hundred million copies of the Xinhua Dictionary were issued in 2013, generating sales revenue of 890 million RMB, beating the combined revenue in the past decade. 890,000 copies of the Chinese edition of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China were sold in 2013 at 88 RMB, as well as 1.05 million copies (at 18.80 RMB) of Students’ Standard Dictionary (Xuesheng Guifan Zidian, revised edition), and 120,000 copies of Re-launch the Reform Agenda. Sixty-five titles exceeded sales of 100,000 copies, a 27.4% from the previous year. Nine of these titles were new releases, while the rest were backlist titles.
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