Semiotical Analysis Of The Transition Of China's Publication Of Best Sellers

Modern books inherit the coagulation of various kinds of symbols since books began to appear. They can be divided into three categories according to the proportion of their semiotical characteristics. The first kind is the books which have inherited the symbols of traditional books and mainly spread the author's viewpoints, including academic monographs, publications on author's own expenses and the readings which convey government's ideology and policies. The second kind is the books of practical value which carry symbols of modern popular books and convey scientific and technical knowledge, humane studies, including various kinds of teaching materials, students' books and academic books. The third kind is best sellers which show concern for the hot spots of society, meet the need of consumers, create semiotical hegemony and make colosal profits. Of them, best sellers and best seller phenomena are the most outstranding representative in the transition of cultural consumption and have gradually attracted the attention of the researchers of popular culture. But for quite a long time the study of best sellers is not so deep-going as that of televisions, newspapers and periodicals. There are two reasons for this. The first one is that best sellers, as successful examples of business operation of popuplar books, are only a few among a large number of popular books and best sellers cover a wide range of topic and have countless ties with the development of social economy and culture so that their editions are too scattered to find. The second reason is that the operation of best sellers have so mny links. Whether a book sells well or not, the version only occupies one third of its successful elements.Besides, there are many other elements, such as editing, publishing, designing, binding, publicizing, marketing and circulation. It is too difficult to manage them well enough.At a time when information spreads unchecked and attention has become scarce resource, book producers have to confront fiercer and fiercer competition They have to face the division of the book market by million titles of books and the distraction of attention by newspapers, periodicals, films, televisions and internet. To win victories in such a fierce competition, to maximize the circulation of books and to make book best sellers which can bring fame and profit have become the target book-publishers are seeking. Reality calls for a deep study of the mode of best sellers, but nowadays the study of best sellers is mostly that of the phonomena of singular cases.Best sellers are at the highest stage of book production and circulation. They condense the historical connotation of symbols and shows the various kinds of cultural consumer goods of the contemporary consumer society. In order to explain better the real characteristics of best sellers and best seller phenomena, the study takes books as an integral cultural symbol, and puts it in the historical and social environment, pay attention to the semiotical characteristics of books in different historical periods, focus on the transition from traditional classical book to modern popular books and to the contemporary best sellers, tries to find the relation between the production of book symbols and the development of social politics, economy and culture, explore the dialectical relation of book symbols to influence of people's realization and the construction of social culture so as to deeply understand the semiotical consumption of best sellers and the current thought of the society and find the rule of best sellers. The study which centres on this topic is divided into eight parts.Chapter One deals with the necessity and importance of the study of transition of book symbols. Section One outlines the difficulty popular-book publishers are confronted and the importance of the study of best sellers to the development of publishing industry. Section Two relates that best sellers are the typical cases of symbol consumption so as to lead to the necessity of the study of the best sellers and best seller phenomena from the semiotical angle.Chapter Two introduces the train of thoughts and methods used in the study. Section One generalizes the present situation of the study of best sellers and points out the limitation of the study of books. Section Two makes an introduction to the source of editions under the study and the method used for the choice of the editions. Section Three systematically deals with the theory of semiotics used in the study, especially the theory and fruits of Roland Bathes'hermeneutics and Baudrillard's semiotical economy so as to lay the foundation for the study. Section Four puts forward the creation and difficulties in the study and points out the important academic significance of the study. Section Five introduces the framework of the study.Chapter Three makes a deep description of the semiotical characteristics of books in ancient China. Section One deals with the history of the development of books from the aspects of the need of the development of civilization, the rise of productive techniques and the popularization of cultural education and points out that books are the symbol of social civilization. Section Two describes separately the classical books, children's primers and light readings so as to give a brief account of editions of books in ancient China.Section Three deals with the general survey of the production and circulation of books in ancient China, and describes in detail the influence of social political system to book symbols from the angles of cultural and educational policies and civil official system, and, with the circulation of The West Chamber as an example, proves the leading role of mainstream idieology to the circulation of culture. Section Four generalizes the main value carried by traditional books and sums up their styles, distribution of content and reading methods so as to get the fundamental semiotical characteristics of traditional books.Chapter Four analyses the transition from traditional books to popular ones.Section One introduces the development of China's modern publishing industry with the shock of Western industrial civilization and makes a classified description of new-type publications so as to help us to have a rough understanding of the modern publishing industry.Section Two analyzes the process of popularization of books in modern China from the aspects of changes of creators of books, the popularization of mechanical production and the change of the aim of book production. Section Three generalizes the semiotical characteristics of modern books which are practical, conventional, pluralistic in politics and interactive in exchange and discusses the relation between the changes of value system of modern society and the transition of book symbols. Section Four discusses in detail the rise of mass media in modern society and the cultivation of popular readers and describes process of transition of book symbols in the popular cultural environment so as to prove that the change of book symbols is closely related to the construction of society.Chapter Five deals with what the urban people like to read. Section One makes a brief account of the history of the development of best sellers, analyzes their semiotical significance and points out the importance of studying the best sellers. Section Two names all the best sellers from 1995 to 2004, displays their development cources, and describes and analyze the situation of every year so as to provide enough materials for the study of best sellers.Chapter Six systematically makes a semiotical classification analysis of the biographical best sellers and those of business management. Section One analyzes the hot spots of biographical best sellers and deals with the change of the standard of "successful people". Section Two seeks the knowledgement of the "realization of self value" after the analysis of the concept of wealth contended in economic best sellers and gets the conclusion that the symbol consumption of best sellers derives from the acknowledgement of the transition of values.Chapter Seven analyzes the semiotical strategy in the managwement of best sellers. Section One deals with the use of semiotical strategy in the process of the production, publicity and marketing of best sellers. Section Two proves, with Poor Daddy and Rich Daddy as the examople, that semiotics have immense power in the management of best sellers and that best sellers are the mystery which the authors, publishers and readers have created in the mechanics of symbol circulation.The last part is the conclusion. It summarizes the fruit of the study, points out the importance of the study of best sellers to the development of book industry and at the same time proves the practical value and broad prospect of semiotics in the circulation and marketing of books.The second, third and fourth chapters of the dissertation make a comprehensive study of book symbol in terms of time. The study of this part is based on the analysis of and comment on a large number of data and summarizes the semiotical characteristics of traditiohnal, modern and contemporary books with the fruit of scientific research of the predecessors. The fifth and sixth chapters are the focal points of my research. They emphatically discuss and analyze the best seller symbols from the angle of contemporary society, culture and economy. This is the contemporary study of best seller symbols so as to find out how various social facters influence each other and how the author, mass media and readers work together to construct the mystery of best-selling books in the the system of popular culture. My research is done from two aspects. The first is to analyze books in different backgrounds of society, economy and culture so as to find the relation of books as the consumption of psychological symbol of human culture with the development of society, economy and politics. The second is to take best sellers as the example of contemporary book symbol to study the changes of the topics of best sellers in the past ten years, to know how they are combined with the aesthetical need of the reading public and how they are coded, decoded, and accepted in the processes of production, publicity and marketing and to find the relation of the use of semiotics and book selling so as to make clear the relation between cultural consumption with people's aesthetical value and the mode of semiotical operation of human aesthetic value in the publicity and circulation.The study mainly uses semeotics which combines sociolology, psychology, the study of mass communication, borrows the fruits of Roland Bathes' theory of semiotical analysis and Baudrillard's semiotical economy and combines the theories and methods of content ananlysis, phenomenology, hermeneutics, aesthetics of reception to analyze and evaluate the book production, circulation and maketing. The study is the forerunner of semiotics of book circulation and marketing so that it is of rather high academic value.In the modern consumer society, people's attention becomes a scarce resource. Only when the book producers and circulators understand and master the semiotical method, can they straighten the internal relation between book production and circulation and the social econmic and cultural development, can they know the changes of social aesthtical pyschology and values, and can they use the principles of semiotics to plan topics which can meet the need of the reading public, increase their semiotical connotation, speed up their circulation, booster their acception and understand of books and maximize their sales volume. Therefore the result of the study is of great practical significance.