Self-publishing Platform Service Model Analysis And Evaluation Research

Nowadays, Chinese digital publishing industry has become an essential economic growth point for the development of Chinese publishing. The revenue from domestic digital publishing in 2015 amounts to 44.0385 billion yuan, 30% more than the previous year. The proportion of digital publishing in publishing industry has risen from 17.1% in 2014 to 20.5%. The gross value of digital publishing for 2006 is 21.3 billion yuan, which has witnessed a 21-fold increase during the past 10 years. At the same time, the steady development of self-publishing on major digital publishing platforms has emerged as the essential approach for existence and development based on the boom of the digital publishing industry.Since self-publishing is an innovative and revolutionary concept under the category of digital publishing, for accuracy purposes, this thesis defines the digital publishing platforms capable of self-publishing as self-publishing platforms. In spite of the independent definitions of self-publishing platform given by other researchers, it is still impossible to separate self-publishing from the digital publishing. Self-publishing is a derivative product from the continuous development of digital publishing. Hence, with the tremendous development of self-publishing, its service is gaining more importance, whose success depends on its attraction of prominent and suitable writes. Only by contracting with more eminent authors, can digital publishing platforms seize a large number of users and can it gain a foothold in the present content war.From a new perspective of service, this thesis makes a classification, an analysis as well as evaluation of self-publishing platforms based on the theories of distinguished researchers. It classifies the self-publishing platforms into 4 models according to their major attributes: Community Forum Model, Direct Publishing Model, Paper Book Publishing Model and Original Internet literature Model. This thesis aims to evaluate the service quality of self-publishing platforms by illustrating and contrasting the services to both readers and writers after expounding the problems of the services so that the service to users can be improved.Starting from the state of the art of self-publishing, the first chapter of the thesis describes the research background of the self-publishing, revealing the theoretical as well as practical value of the analysis from the perspective of the service of self-publishing. The 2nd chapter gives definitions to self-publishing and self-publishing service with their individual attributes. The 3rd chapter makes a contrast of the development of the self-publishing at home and abroad. The 4th chapter expounds the 4 self-publishing models by giving concrete examples. The merits and demerits of the 4 models are analyzed from the perspectives of readers, writers and publishing houses. The 5th chapter puts forth suggestions to Chinese self-publishing industry with regard to their service problems.