Analysis Of The Factors Affecting Book Prices And Book Market Performance

Books are a special commodity with both material and spiritual&cultural attributes.The determination of its price is a complex issue in the category of economics.It involves demand,market competition,industrial structure,and macro-control policies that coordinate economic and social benefits..The existing book pricing methods,such as the printing sheet pricing method,the Cost-Volume-Profit(CVP)pricing method,and the differential of demand pricing method,have different emphasis on the main factors of concern,but the market environment is constantly changing and many factors that actually affect the price of books are not yet described in the existing pricing methodology.With the rapid development of online distribution channels in recent years,there has been increasingly fierce discount competition in the publishing market,and the discount situation is also reflected in the changes in book prices.Based on the above situation,the National Press and Publication Administration issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Publishing Industry" on December 28,2021,proposing:Strengthen the supervision and management of publication prices,promote book price legislation,and effectively prohibit the vicious ’price war’ of commodity sales between online and offline publishing.Creates a healthy and orderly market environment.In order to identify the important factors affecting book prices in the current market environment,and to discuss the necessity of introducing appropriate market intervention to regulate discounts,this paper uses the Hedonic model to analyze book prices from the perspective of influencing factors,and divides the relevant characteristic variables into cost-profit category,market environment category,content value category,and social impact category,regression analysis was carried out on the price without discount(MaYang)and the actual discounted price(ShiYang),so as to determine the influence of each factor on the book price and the contribution percentage of each category of factors;In addition,quantitative analysis of book sales is carried out on the basis of considering different distribution channels.The result shows that the factors affecting MaYang and ShiYang are different.For MaYang,the cost-profit factors have a greater impact;but after the books are put into the market,ShiYang is more affected by the market environment factors.In addition,although the price discounts alone seems to improve the market performance of books,the combined analysis with prices shows a contradiction.The promotion effect of discounts on sales is due to the adjustment of unbalanced prices.High prices and low discounts will not have a positive effect on the sustainable development of publishing industry.Instead,it will lead to more intense competition,and making book prices increase again and again.which further exacerbated the operational pressure witch come from the rapid development of online sales on small and medium-sized bookstores and even small and medium-sized publishing houses.without regulation,not only will the book pricing commodities become more and more unbalanced,but may also cause the monopoly of the publishing and distribution market.Therefore,book price legislation should be promoted,and appropriate intervention should be carried out on the fierce "price war" in the book market.