At present, all activities to introduce and promote books have been nearly frozen. Therefore, Omega Vietnam can’t surely achieve its growth goals in 2020, said Director of Omega Vietnam Company Vu Trong Dai.
Similar to other sectors, revenues of publishers dipped as the Covid-19 outbreak is now travelling around the world, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake though the sector has strived to survive by boosting online distribution channels and partnering with e-commerce platforms to sell books.
However, it didn’t work much. As it was revealed, revenue of Omega was halved while revenue of the Ho Chi Minh City General Publishing House in the first six months was just 25 percent compared to the same period last year.
Worse, big publishing houses just bought good books that they can sell and some of them proposed to delay payment instead of settlement in six months like before.
Furthermore, publishing houses reduced the number of printed books. Director Vu Trong Dai said Omega Vietnam just printed 2,000-2,500 books instead of 3,000 books in 2019.
Meantime, the Ho Chi Minh City General Publishing House just printed 1,000-1,500 books, director of the publishing house Dinh Thanh Thuy has said.
According to Head of the Authority of Publication, Printing and Distribution Nguyen Nguyen, the number of printed books of publishing houses and companies has gone down by 26 percent compared to the same period.
The coronavirus pandemic has made damaging impacts on the sector while the sector received little support from the government.
Director Dai alerted that publishing houses and companies should prepare to live with the pandemic until 2021 proposing publishing houses and companies to radically restructure.
