囧次元动漫 https://www.9ciyuan.com/
Hello, Mr. Robin LiLast week, my publisher and friend Shen Haobo and myself went to a paper mill in Shandong to destroy more than a million finished copies of the second edition of “Party”. Over 300 tons of paper and industrial waste went into the pulp grinder. A couple of millions lost may not be a big deal to you, but for a publisher that’s close to the equivalent of working an entire year for nothing, and then we’re talking a fairly sizeable Chinese publisher. That’s the tragedy of this industry, a year’s profits of a company of over a hundred employees still can’t compare with the returns of flipping a single villa in Shanghai. And yet any time of the day we need to put up with being labeled “evil book sellers”. Still, during the whole process Shen Haobo was very upbeat. He said the talks with Baidu finally were getting somewhere, that Baidu had finally agreed to send someone to discuss the Baidu Library situation. Li Chengpeng, Murong Xuecun, Lu Jinbo, Peng Haoxiang, these are all among China’s bestselling authors, directors and publishers. So everyone was pretty excited, and well prepared.
Then when the discussions kicked off yesterday, it turned out you sent a few arrogant mid-level managers, who from start to finish denied that Baidu Library violated any intellectual property rights whatsoever. These guys claim that your 2.8 million archived documents, which include pretty much every single work ever published in this country, do not violate any copyright, that it is your users who upload the content and share it with everyone, and that you are merely a platform.
In my view, we don’t need to discuss whether or not you are a platform, and whether or not you are violating copyright, because you very well know the answers to those questions in your heart. You’ve lived in the US for so long, and now your wife and daughter also live there. So you must be aware what would happen if tomorrow you would launch “Baidu America”, and then make all books and music published in the US available for free. You won’t do that, and you won’t tell the American people that you’re merely a platform either, that it has nothing to do with you, that it’s the users uploading the content, and that the spirit of the internet is sharing. It is precisely because you know this that today you have only set up shop in China. You also know who can be bullied, and who cannot. You see, you haven’t started a “Baidu Movie Theater”, letting everyone share the newest movies and TV series.
Perhaps you don’t really understand the publishing industry all that much, so I’ll explain it to you in simple terms. In 1999, twelve years ago, my books sold 18 yuan a piece. In 2011, they sell 25 yuan a piece, and many readers still find them expensive. You must know that in these twelve years, paper, salaries and logistics services have become several times more expensive, but publishers haven’t dared to hike their prices all that much. That is because they are afraid of being lambasted; people in the cultural industry are thin-skinned.
For a 25 yuan book, the average author makes about 2 yuan. Deduct 30 cents taxes, and you’re left with 1.70 yuan for each book sold. Any book that sells 20,000 copies is considered a bestseller, and an author who can write one of these every two years will make 17,000 yuan (USD 2,600) per year. If he does nothing else but write — no eating or drinking — then he needs to stay at it for a hundred years to be able to afford a decent 2-bedroom apartment in the suburbs of a large Chinese city. For a 10 yuan book, the cost structure is as follows: author royalties 1 yuan, printing costs 2 yuan, publisher 1 yuan, book shop 5 yuan.
Authors with some degree of fame will go promoting their works with book-signing events. They will stay in 3-star hotels, and if they can get to fly to and from their destinations that is considered quite a feat. The travel conditions certainly can’t compare with those of the junior staff at Baidu. The last couple of years I haven’t done any book-signing events, but before 2004, I attended such events in a number of cities, and at that time I was already considered a bestselling author. None of the hotels I stayed at cost more than 300 yuan (USD 50) a night, and very often we found ourselves waiting at the airport for several hours together with the publisher and some friends, because our discount flights would invariably take off at dusk, and if we had stayed in our hotel rooms we would have had to pay extra for late check-out. That’s the harsh reality of this industry.
The industry’s top earners are the publishers; they take home a few million each year. The publishing and internet industries are truly different – you guys spend a few billion on private planes and luxury yachts to enhance your social status; I have yet to see any publisher travel first class. Yet, we’re not envious of your wealth. We just think: since you’re pretty much swimming in money, why can’t you leave us a few pennies, and must you still wrest intellectual property from our hands?
Musicians can at least make some money off concerts, but how do you expect authors and publishers to survive? Maybe you’ll say: traditional publishers go out of business all the time, that doesn’t mean their industry isn’t viable.
The art and publishing industries won’t go out of business, they are simply transformed. In the beginning they just painted on cave walls, then carved on bamboo, now it is books, and maybe in future they’ll use some other technology, but the industry will always be around. I don’t mean to whine about our predicament to you, but this is indeed the only industry in China with plenty of resources, yet with no wealth to speak of. Such are the consequences of the damage done by copyright infringement and the violation of intellectual property rights.
We don’t ask that you close Baidu Library, we only hope that it could voluntarily respect and protect copyright. So when one day in the future today’s countless readers will have grown up, perhaps Baidu Library will have become a source of livelihood for Chinese authors, unlike today, where you have become the industry’s enemy and target of public criticism.
Because there are no permanent enemies, and no permanent benefits. In 2006 I had a public spat with Shen Haobo from Motie Books. We hurled insults at each other in open letters like there was no tomorrow, over the issue of modern poetry. Yet today we are friends and business partners. Baidu Library could very well become the basis for the wealth of Chinese authors, and not the grave in which they are buried.
Compared to the average Chinese writer, I’ve done pretty well for myself. Mr. Robin Li, maybe you and I are not that different. Although we both know no fear, we don’t like to live life without emotion. I like to bask in the sun and play with mud, you like to bask in the sun and grow flowers [translator’s note: a word play on “slinging mud”, in which Han Han regularly engages, and an allusion to Robin Li’s admitted preference for “growing flowers and sunbathing” as opposed to his wife, who is an avid wild river rafter. A more subliminal point is that Robin Li is risk-averse and therefore actually lacks courage.”> Regardless of how you share my intellectual property, both of us can still bask in the sun, as in the end I can still make a living racing cars.
The majority of Chinese authors however rely on traditional and digital publishers to have a decent life. If things continue the way they are today, they might not have their own place in the sun in future. Your company will push them back into writing ceaselessly in a small, dimly lit room, and yet the sun above your head won’t grow any brighter for it.
So many Chinese authors are forced to give away their intellectual property for free on Baidu. Not only have they never made any trouble for Baidu or came to ask for a share of the profits, in addition they put up with the insults of Baidu supporters, and the contempt of Baidu employees during negotiations. You are now the country’s number one entrepreneur. As a role model for others, the time has come to make your position known on the damage done to the publishing industry by Baidu Library. If you refuse to back down even a single step, then I can take a few more steps forward, until one day in the not too distant future, when you look down from your office in Beijing, you will see me standing there.
Wishing that you’ll make your daughter proud,
Han Han