A report released at a recent conference of publishers showed that the post-tax profit of all publishing houses in Vietnam was VND190.4 billion in 2017. 

Only a few publishing houses could make profit of over VND10 million, including the Youth Publishing House (VND13.7 billion), the National Political Publishing House (VND19.7 billion) and Kim Dong Publishing House (VND30.3 billion).

The profit is modest compared with a 90 million consumer market where more than 90 percent of population are literate. 

According to the Publication Agency, by the end of June, 48 publications had been given warnings because of too many mistakes, while the number of recalled books are higher than in 2017.

An analyst commented that Vietnam’s publishing industry has been lagging further behind other Southeast Asian countries, attributing this to the lack of a master development strategy.

He said other regional countries all have national book development strategies. Malaysia set up the National Book Committee, while Indonesia five years ago built up a master book strategy with investment of millions of dollars a year. 

Vietnam does not have any book development plan at the national level. The existence of unreasonable regulations has made it difficult for publishers to grow.

The Publishing Law allows publishing houses to join forces with other economic sectors, mostly private enterprises, to organize book production. The 59 existing publishing houses can be classified into three groups. 

The first one comprises four profitable publishing houses which have capital to develop books. The number of books churned out by the publishing houses in cooperation with private businesses only account for 10-20 percent of total books.

The second group comprises publishers which earn modest profit. Their numbers of books published in cooperation with private investors account for 40-50 percent.

The third group, with publishing houses weak at both capital and human resources, mostly have joint publication programs which produce 80-90 percent of total books.

According to Tiki and Vinabook, the two largest online book retailers, there have been big changes in book sales from private publishers and state-owned publishing houses.

In 2012, the ratios were 65 percent from private publishers and 35 percent from state-owned ones, while the ratios were 75/25 in 2013 and 80/20 in 2014.

Nguyen Canh Binh, president of Alpha Books, commented that private publishers operate more effectively than state-owned. 

However, private book companies do not have official legal status like state-owned publishing houses. The companies have to cooperate with state-owned publishing houses and dare not set long-term development plans.

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