Officially enacted in 1993, the Publishing Law allows individuals and organizations to establish printing and distribution facilities. This led to the emergence of several private bookstores that proactively contacted authors, invested funds in finding manuscripts, and submitted them to publishers for editing, registration, printing, and distribution. However, this rapid and vibrant development also gave rise to numerous obstacles and even negative aspects in publishing activities. To summarize practical experiences and provide direction for 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 a significant milestone in the renewal of thinking regarding the direction and management of publishing, printing, and distribution units. Simultaneously, Directive 42-CT/TW served as an important guiding document for state management agencies to draft the revised Publishing Law, which was submitted to the National Assembly and passed in December 2004. Accordingly, it officially allowed publishing houses to collaborate with organizations and individuals to publish individual publications.
This regulation, on the one hand, facilitates many publishers in overcoming the problem of insufficient capital for manuscript investment, but on the other hand, it also poses a worrying risk for some publishers, making it difficult to tightly control the manuscripts being printed. In reality, after registering with the Publishing Department, the publisher signs the publishing decision (often referred to as a license), and the edited manuscript is handed over to the partner. The publisher has virtually no control over where the book is printed or whether the printed book conforms to the approved manuscript. In case of errors, besides the publisher naturally bearing the consequences before the public and the law, very rarely is the partner held accountable proportionally to their actions.
To address the aforementioned loopholes, after the 2012 Publishing Law came into effect, the Ministry of Information and Communications issued regulations on model partnership contracts, requiring a tripartite contract involving the publisher, the partner, and the printing facility. However, implementation has created difficulties for the parties involved, especially if these entities are geographically distant, easily leading to delays and bottlenecks in the work.
Furthermore, the reality of the publishing partnership process shows that some publishers have gradually lost their initiative and dynamism in analyzing, evaluating, and orienting topics, as well as in building their own brand and market. In particular, some publishers are content with simply organizing editing and licensing to collect management fees, without investing capital in printing and distribution, yet still generating income and having books published, thereby building their brand. This is a very mistaken notion and easily leads to errors, even violations, regarding content. From a market perspective, besides its advantages, this mechanism also creates negative aspects that subtly but strongly impact publishing activities. When submitting manuscripts to a publisher for registration, the partner publisher always demands a quick license; otherwise, they will take the manuscript to another publisher. If the publishing house's leadership is lax in management and fails to establish effective quality control mechanisms at all stages of the publishing process, then errors are inevitable.
Regarding the purpose of the partnership, both parties involved want to have many book titles published to establish their brand, and the Publishing Law also allows partners to print their logo alongside the publisher's logo. On the other hand, besides building brand awareness, partners also aim to gain economic benefits. Although no official survey has been conducted to provide specific figures on the profit-sharing ratio between publishers and publishing partners, the reality reveals a fairly clear picture of both the bright and dark sides. Firstly, the number of private bookstores participating in publishing partnerships is increasing, meaning they are making a profit. From only about four or five bookstores regularly engaging in partnerships in the 1990s, it is now difficult to give an exact number of bookstores capable of participating in publishing partnerships. Previously, bookstores participating in these partnerships were mainly concentrated in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, but now they have expanded to many major cities. From being criticized for operating under false pretenses and having many books flagged for content and copyright issues, many private bookstores have now contributed to the overall growth of the industry in both the quantity and quality of publications. Many collaborative works have won top prizes at the Vietnam Book Awards, such as the Vietnamese-English Dictionary (Gia Vu Cultural Trading and Service Company Limited), the Dorland English-Vietnamese Medical Dictionary (Van Lang Cultural Joint Stock Company)... Another example is the Diary of Dang Thuy Tram, a book that created a rare phenomenon in terms of its widespread appeal and reader attraction, as well as a record number of copies printed in our country, published under a collaborative mechanism between the Vietnam 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 considerable capital, organize numerous book-related media events, build brands in the domestic market, and are actively and proactively integrating into and expanding into the international market, such as Nha Nam, Thaihabook, Alphabook, etc., participating in international and regional book fairs, and engaging in activities of the ASEAN Publishers Association, the Asia- Pacific Publishers Association, etc. Furthermore, while some publishing houses face financial difficulties, making it challenging to proactively cooperate with foreign publishers, and even when participating in domestic and international book fairs, they cannot conduct copyright transactions due to a lack of control over the "output," some private bookstores have been quite flexible in directly contacting authors abroad to resolve copyright issues. This is the reason why publishing houses are linked to more than 50% of the published book titles (in some years the industry average was over 70%), but the copyrights are largely held by private bookstores.
The 2012 Publishing Law added several regulations to tightly bind publishing partners to follow procedures and share responsibility with the publisher for jointly published works. Specifically, Article 23 stipulates that the publishing partner is "legally responsible for the publishing partnership activities and jointly published works." Thus, the partner is not merely "jointly" responsible as in the 2004 Publishing Law, but is directly responsible before the law for its activities and products. However, this regulation only aims to prevent and assign responsibility, rather than creating conditions for publishers to reduce their dependence on publishing partners for capital. Article 7 of the Publishing Law stipulates that publishers can borrow preferential capital, but in reality, no publisher has yet been able to borrow preferential capital to invest in manuscripts in their medium-term or long-term plans. On the other hand, Government Decree 195/2013/ND-CP stipulates that publishing houses are allocated 5 billion VND to "ensure operations," but to date, almost no publishing house has received the funding as stipulated in the Decree.
If we only look for causes in objective factors, it's clearly very difficult to cure the "chronic disease" of publishing houses in their collaborative publishing activities. Evidence shows that some publishing houses, such as Tre, Giao Duc Viet Nam, and Kim Dong, have significantly reduced the proportion of collaboratively published books through years of persistent effort in training, developing, and organizing a team of editors and collaborators (authors), building their own brand and market focusing on specific book segments and book collections targeting particular reader groups. Another lesson learned from the success of publishing houses with a high proportion of self-published books is the need for long-term, reliable relationships with distributors. This trust is reflected in many aspects, first and foremost in the quality of the books, avoiding capital tie-ups, and ensuring fair payments. Building a brand and market is perhaps the subjective factor contributing to the success of businesses in a market economy, including publishing businesses. From the perspective of state management agencies, it is necessary to implement the Party's guidelines and the State's laws into a legal system in the spirit of a constructive government, a service-oriented government, and support for businesses and citizens to create products for society and profits for businesses, thereby enabling them to pay more taxes to the State due to more efficient business operations. At the same time, unnecessary procedures need to be reduced, such as the requirement to re-register a new project for reprinting, which is inconsistent with the current government policy.
2019 marked the 15th anniversary of the publishing partnership regulations stipulated in the Publishing Law. Despite the aforementioned challenges and shortcomings, this regulation has significantly contributed to creating a diverse, rich, and up-to-date publishing market, closely linked to the global book market, and experiencing continuous growth by mobilizing social resources for publishing investment. Furthermore, the years of operation have fostered a team of Vietnamese entrepreneurs in the book publishing sector. This is even more significant considering that many of those currently working in the publishing industry are young, passionate individuals with foreign language skills and a cultural background deeply rooted in Vietnamese identity. This can be considered an achievement that publishing partnerships have contributed to publishing activities in particular and to the reform process initiated, organized, and led by the Party in general.
Source: https://nhandan.vn/lien-ket-trong-hoat-dong-xuat-ban-post368603.html
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