Officially issued in 1993, the Publishing Law allows individuals and organizations to establish printing and distribution establishments. From here, a number of private bookstores have emerged to proactively contact authors, invest funds to search for manuscripts to send to publishers for editing, registration for publication, then print and distribute. Faced with rapid and vibrant development, but also arising many obstacles, even negative manifestations in publishing activities..., to summarize the practice, orient publishing activities in the new development period, on August 25, 2004, the Central Party Secretariat issued Directive No. 42-CT/TW on improving the overall quality of publishing activities. This is an important milestone in the innovation of thinking in directing and managing the activities of publishing, printing and distribution units. At the same time, Directive 42-CT/TW is an important guiding document for state management agencies to compile the draft Law on Publishing (amended) to submit to the National Assembly and was approved in December 2004. Accordingly, it officially allows publishing houses to associate with organizations and individuals to publish each publication.
This regulation, on the one hand, creates conditions for many publishers to solve the problem of lack of capital to invest in manuscripts, but on the other hand, it also leads to the risk that some publishers may fall into a worrying situation where it is difficult to strictly control the manuscripts for printing. In fact, after registering with the Publishing Department, the publisher signs the publishing decision (many people call it a license), the edited manuscript is delivered to the partner. The publisher has almost no idea where it is printed, whether the printed book is exactly like the approved manuscript or not. In case of errors, besides the publisher having to bear the consequences before the public and the law, it is very rare for the associated partner to take responsibility commensurate with their actions.
To limit the above-mentioned loopholes, after the 2012 Publishing Law took effect, the Ministry of Information and Communications issued regulations on the model of the association contract, requiring the signing of a three-party contract including the publishing house, the association partner and the printing facility. However, when implementing, difficulties arise for the parties if these units are geographically far apart, which can easily cause delays and congestion in work.
In addition, the reality of the publishing association process also shows that some publishers have gradually lost their initiative and dynamism in analyzing, evaluating and orienting topics, in building their own brands and markets. In particular, some publishers are satisfied with just organizing editing and licensing to collect management fees, without having to invest capital and print and distribute, still having income and publishing books, thereby building their brands. This is a very wrong concept and can easily lead to errors, even content violations. Or from the market perspective, besides the advantages, this mechanism also creates negative aspects that quietly but strongly impact publishing activities. When submitting manuscripts to publishers for registration, the associated partners always require a quick time to get a license, otherwise they will send them to other publishers. If the leadership positions of the publishing house are lax in management and cannot build a good quality control mechanism for each stage of the publishing process, errors are inevitable.
Regarding the purpose of the association, both parties involved in the association want to have many books published to affirm their brand, and the Publishing Law also allows partners to print logos next to the logo of the publishing house. On the other hand, in addition to building a brand, partners also aim to gain economic benefits. Although no unit has officially conducted a survey and given specific figures on the profit sharing ratio between the publishing house and the publishing association partner, looking at reality, we can see a clear picture of light and dark. Firstly, the number of private bookstores participating in publishing associations is increasing, meaning that they are doing business profitably. From only about four or five bookstores often conducting associations in the 90s of the 20th century, it is now very difficult to give an exact figure of how many bookstores are capable of publishing associations. Previously, the bookstores participating in the association were mainly concentrated in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, but now they have developed in many big cities. From being known as "hiding in the shadows", many books were "blown the whistle" on content and copyright, today many private bookstores have contributed to the overall growth of the industry in both quantity and quality of publications. Many associated works have been awarded the highest prize of the Vietnam Book Awards such as the Vietnamese - English Dictionary (Gia Vu Cultural Services and Trading Company Limited), the English - Vietnamese Dorland Medical Dictionary (Van Lang Cultural Joint Stock Company)... Another typical example is the work Dang Thuy Tram's Diary, a book that created an event in terms of rare popularity and appeal to readers as well as a record in the number of copies printed in our country, a product published under the association mechanism between the Writers' Association Publishing House and Nha Nam Cultural and Communication Joint Stock Company. In terms of economic efficiency, it is easy to see that while most publishing houses lack capital to invest in products and publishing activities, many private bookstores have a good amount of capital, organize many book communication events, build brands in the domestic market and gradually actively and proactively integrate and reach out to the international market such as Nha Nam, Thaihabook, Alphabook, ... participate in international and regional book fairs, participate in activities of the ASEAN Publishing Association, Asia-Pacific Publishing Association... And, while some publishing houses have financial difficulties, so it is difficult to proactively cooperate with foreign publishers, even if they participate in domestic and international book fairs, they cannot conduct copyright transactions, because they have not proactively "output"... some private bookstores have directly contacted authors abroad to resolve copyright quite flexibly. That is the reason why publishing houses are associated with more than 50% of published book titles (some years the industry average is more than 70%), but the copyright is mostly held by private bookstores.
The 2012 Publishing Law has added many regulations to strictly bind the associated partners to implement the processes and procedures to be jointly responsible with the publishing house for the associated publications. Specifically, Article 23 stipulates that the associated partner “shall be responsible before the law for the associated publishing activities and associated publications”. Thus, the associated party is not only “jointly” responsible as in the 2004 Publishing Law but is directly responsible before the law for its activities and products. However, this regulation is only aimed at preventing and assigning responsibility, not creating conditions for the publishing house to reduce its dependence on the associated partner for capital. Article 7 of the Publishing Law stipulates that publishing houses are entitled to preferential loans, but in reality, no publishing house has been able to borrow preferential loans to invest in manuscripts in the medium-term and long-term plan. On the other hand, Decree 195/2013/ND-CP of the Government also stipulates that publishing houses are granted 5 billion VND to "ensure operations", but up to now, almost no publishing houses have been granted capital in the true sense of the Decree.
If we only look for the cause from objective factors, it is clearly very difficult to cure the "chronic disease" of publishing houses in publishing association activities. The evidence is that some publishing houses such as Tre, Giao Duc Viet Nam, Kim Dong... have significantly reduced the proportion of joint books by making efforts over many years to persistently train, foster and organize a team of editors, collaborators (authors), build their own brand and market focusing on books, and bookcases targeting specific groups of readers. Another thing that can be drawn from the successful lesson of publishing houses with a high rate of self-published books is that they must have long-term relationships with publishers to form a highly reliable system. That trust is reflected in many aspects, first of all, good book quality, no capital misappropriation, and fair payment. Building a brand and market, perhaps those are the subjective factors that create the success of businesses in the market mechanism, including publishing businesses. On the part of state management agencies, it is necessary to implement the Party's policies and the State's laws into a legal system in the spirit of a constructive government, a government that serves and supports businesses, and supports people in doing business to create products for society and profits for businesses, thereby being able to pay more taxes to the State because business is more effective. At the same time, it is necessary to cut down on unnecessary procedures, such as the regulation that printing copies requires re-doing procedures almost like registering a new topic, which is not in line with the current Government's policies.
2019 marks exactly 15 years of publishing association activities as stipulated in the Publishing Law. In addition to the above-mentioned difficulties and errors, this regulation has truly contributed significantly to creating a diverse, rich, updated publishing market, linked to the world book market, with continuous growth thanks to the mobilization of social resources for investment in publishing. In addition, the operation process over the past years has formed a team of Vietnamese entrepreneurs in the field of book publishing. This is even more meaningful when many of the current bookmakers are young, enthusiastic, have foreign languages and a cultural background with Vietnamese identity. It can be considered an achievement that publishing association has contributed to publishing activities in particular and to the innovation initiated, organized and led by our Party in general.
Source: https://nhandan.vn/lien-ket-trong-hoat-dong-xuat-ban-post368603.html
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