At present, an excellent editor needs to be all-rounder and all-rounder, and also become a saint on the basis of professional accomplishment in knowledge structure. The world of editors written by many senior editors in the United States says: Unlike the editors of the older generation, this year's editors must be proficient in various martial arts, such as book production, marketing, negotiation, promotion, advertising, press release, accounting, sales, psychology, politics, diplomacy and so on. , but also must have excellent editing technology. ?
The first thing to talk about is editing skills.
Turn decay into magic.
It seems that when it comes to excellent editors, many people think that they are planning editors, which can plan the content well.
Sell good books. In fact, a manuscript editor is an excellent editor if he does well. The key is that he must have the ability to turn decay into magic, that is, he can be an editor as the publishing industry often says? Save the manuscript? . A good-looking manuscript has many ideas, but it can't be published. It is either unsystematic, confused or unreadable. Because of the limitation of the author's ability or time, he can't change it himself, so he needs to edit it? Save the manuscript? .
Topic planning: make brand books or bestsellers.
Topic planning is a comprehensive reflection of editors' boldness of vision, academic ability and style. Whether an editor can plan the topic selection of brand books or bestsellers is directly related to his academic and cultural literacy, market grasping ability, social communication ability, understanding of the nature of publishing, and whether he has modern publishing concepts and mastering publishing technology. Editors should have the ability to plan and monitor the whole publishing process. Let me talk about a useful or valuable question for everyone, that is, how to plan the topic.
(1) Plan the topic from the publishing characteristics of the publishing house and the advantages of the editors themselves.
This is especially important for new editors.
(1) Planning the topic from the publishing characteristics of the publishing house. Only by planning the topic from the publishing reality can it be included in publishing, because a publishing house has formed its own publishing characteristics and mature distribution channels after years of accumulation and development. Even if the business expands, it is generally a similar extension and development, and it is impossible to cross a lot. It is impossible for a publishing house, such as the Commercial Press, to publish novels as reference books and academic works. So, want? Me? Obey? Big me? Planning the topic selection from the publishing characteristics of the publishing house.
(2) Plan the topic from your major and your personal connections. You know your major, you are a reader, and naturally know the development frontier of books in the professional field and the interest points of readers; Communicate with teachers you know and dig up topics from them.
③ You can get more unexpected results from the topics you are interested in. For example, People's Publishing House published a best-selling book by Kai-fu Lee, Be the Best Yourself. Its planner is an editor who just graduated from the publishing house. When he was at school, he read the letter written by Li Kaifu to college students, which was very enlightening. Many college students are also interested in Kai-Fu Lee's life planning ideas and life guidance suggestions, so he invited Kai-Fu Lee several times from the Internet. Many letters touched Kai-Fu Lee, and a best-selling book was born.
(2) Plan the topic from the political, economic, social and educational hotspots that people pay attention to.
Speaking of this topic, many people will say: I am also very concerned about social hotspots. Why can't I plan a good topic? This involves your editing consciousness and understanding of publishing, and how to find the combination of social hotspots and book publishing.
It should also be noted that the development of psychology textbooks at that time was not only to meet the needs of political hotspots and to find a suitable editor-in-chief, but also to pay attention to the educational hotspots at that time. Because after the Ma Jiajue incident, the whole country attached great importance to the psychological education of college students, and the Ministry of Education asked freshmen to establish psychological files, so they chose to start writing from the Department of Psychology.
(3) Pay attention to market analysis and information collection, and explore the trend of socialized reading in advance.
How to conduct market analysis? We should be good at discovering the signs of future mass reading from the current reading, and planning and publishing books in advance will inevitably take the lead in the market and lead the reading trend.
How to collect information? For example, collecting information through various media, attending various conferences, and communicating with experts, scholars and officials to obtain information. As an editor of an academic publishing house, it is particularly important to attend academic conferences, grasp the frontier and development direction of academic research, and interview and gather authors' manuscripts. You can also stimulate and collide with the inspiration of topic planning through conversations with authors, colleagues and friends. What is the so-called? Kung fu is outside the poem? . Find useful information from information collection and use this information to explore market opportunities in advance. For example, the textbook "Psychology and Life" was invited to edit this authoritative textbook because Mr. Huang Xiting, vice president of the Chinese Psychological Association, said at the academic conference that there was no general curriculum textbook for psychological education in comprehensive universities at present.
(4) Develop topics through interaction with other media.
For example, the popularity of CCTV's Lecture Room has promoted the popularity of Talking about the Twelve Emperors, Liu Dream of Red Mansions and Yi Zhongtian Pinning the Three Kingdoms. But the appearance of these books shows that these planning editors have a broad vision and a wide range of interests.
(5) Analyze competitors, adopt the strategy of following up and surpassing, and start the topic skillfully.
Just following the reality is following the trend, which may also catch a best-selling ride. For example, after Talking about the Twelve Empresses of the Qing Dynasty sold well, a publishing house published Talking about the Twelve Empresses of the Qing Dynasty. However, as soon as you follow the trend, the reading market will soon be chaotic. Just like a few years ago, after the bestseller Who Moved My Cheese, all kinds of cheeses came out. Finally, when readers see cheese books, they scold them, but no one reads them.
Competitors always have something to learn, but they must surpass it on the basis of follow-up, otherwise the planned book will have no vitality. For example, before liberation, the Commercial Press and Zhonghua Book Company were always a pair of competitors, and the commercial press published a set of four series, and then China people published a set of four series. But their titles and publishing methods are different, and their academic significance and collection value are also very different. Therefore, both of them have their own market space and their sales are good. After liberation, due to the different division of professional publishing, the two publishing houses did not compete. But in recent years, Zhonghua Bookstore wants to re-enter the reference book market, so it competes with merchants. When China takes out reference books, he must start with the largest primary school market and consider the monopoly position of Xinhua Dictionary. At that time, the planning of Chinese Dictionary was worth studying. For example, Zhonghua Book Company only asked the title of the dictionary for primary school students. There were different opinions at that time. Is it called a pupil dictionary, a China pupil dictionary or a Chinese dictionary? Finally, in order to pick flowers and move trees for a ride, it was named Chinese Dictionary with a title similar to Xinhua Dictionary. However, it is puzzling how dictionaries surpass Xinhua Dictionary, because it is not easy to innovate reference books. After careful study, the Chinese Dictionary is defined as not only having the function of consulting, but also helping primary school students to learn, that is, adding the discrimination of form, sound and meaning after each prefix, so that primary school students can clearly distinguish polyphonic words, similar words and similar words that are difficult to learn. When 1997 was published, there was no reference book written in this way, and the feedback from students after publication was really useful. The innovation on the basis of learning has made the Chinese Dictionary a rapid success, with the sales volume exceeding 6,543,800+0.2 million copies in the year of publication. It is still being revised and reprinted, and it has become a housekeeping book of the publishing house.
Of course, there are many ways of topic planning, but we should pay attention to cost planning, that is, how to control the publishing cost, low input and high output.
Influence and promote the market.
Marketing planning is actually the extension and expansion of topic planning, and it is an integral part of the whole book planning. Therefore, when making marketing planning, editors should first make clear their own positioning. Editors should assist the marketing department or marketing department in marketing programs and activities, rather than marketing themselves. Marketing planning mainly does the following work:
(1) Find the selling point of the book. Generally speaking, a marketer's grasp of a book is far less accurate than that of an editor. After all, the manuscript was planned by the editor or invited by the author. The editor has read the manuscript carefully from beginning to end, so he is very familiar with the manuscript and can accurately grasp the selling point of the book. The selling point of a book is its characteristics and essence, its life, the focus of marketing and the interest of readers. Therefore, the first task of the editor is to provide the selling point of the book to the marketing staff.
(2) Write promotional materials and invite authors or celebrities to conduct marketing. Especially the press release, book review and other publicity materials of the book conference, the editor should carefully prepare. For example, when Zhonghua Book Company held the new book release conference of Chinese Dictionary, the editors prepared more than 10 press releases for the media from different angles, so that the media could issue press releases from their own media positioning and readers. For example, what is the title of Beijing Evening News? What are the three new ideas in the newly compiled Chinese Dictionary? What is the title of China Youth Daily? Does the New Chinese Dictionary have a learning guidance function? What is the title of China Reading Newspaper? China dictionary challenges Xinhua dictionary: Do business leaders in China deny this? In particular, the articles in China Reading Newspaper are attractive, and the media has also contributed to the sales of Chinese Dictionary.
For example, marketing activities need the author's signature to sell books, speeches, etc. Or celebrities attending the new book launch conference. Editors should try their best to help the invitees.
(3) Provide marketing planning scheme. Which marketing method is more suitable for a book? Because the editor knows this book best, he can put forward the most suitable marketing plan. Is it a book launch or a book review by major media? Do you want to give an author's speech or sign a book? Mainly in newspapers and periodicals, or network preheating, first release manuscript fragments, release book news and comments? Or are the above methods overlapping? Editors and publishers should learn more and communicate more.
(4) Participate in marketing activities. In other words, editors should go into battle in person, participate in publicity activities, and even carry out publicity activities directly. Not to mention, many marketing activities have editors, and the most obvious one is to sell books in person.
Have editorial consciousness.
An excellent editor must be a conscientious person who pays attention to everything and has a sensitive editing consciousness. Editorial consciousness mainly includes the following five kinds of consciousness:
One is information consciousness, that is, the consciousness of information acquisition, filtering, analysis and use. It is useless to get useful information without knowing how to use it, and it can't produce benefits.
Second, the awareness of topic planning, not only have good creativity, but also have practical plans for book writing, publishing and market operation. Always pay attention, always pay attention, no matter when and where, be a conscientious person, combine your editing work at any time, and generate inspiration for topic planning at any time, which may be a best seller.
Third, market-oriented or business awareness, we should plan topics and analyze reading trends from the market, understand the market and deal with it, and books that cannot be planned are not bought and liked by others. When planning books, we should also pay attention to management, strengthen cost control and produce more with less input.
Fourth, advance consciousness, that is, editors should have a hunch or foresight, foresee ahead and lead the reading trend.
Fifth, innovation consciousness can not only innovate the topic of new market, but also create the old topic of new soul. The former mainly starts from scratch, especially to fill market gaps or develop new markets; The latter, like many old books, has been revised and reprinted, giving new vitality.
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