When readers become fans: How did social science history become popular? China Newsweek reporter / Ni Weifa published the 1053 issue of China Newsweek magazine on July 25, 2022. At 8 p.m. on July 7, pan Xuewen, from Chuxiong, Yunnan, waited in the live broadcast room of the social science literature press, waiting for this week's limited edition special edition book "twenty four solar terms and etiquette and music culture" to be on the shelves. In the live broadcast room with more than 20000 people, only sevenoreight hundred copies were released and emptied in two seconds. He poked at the screen and grabbed a copy. There are few such opportunities. The Social Sciences Literature Publishing House can only grab four to five special books every month, and he can only grab them once or twice at most. The three sides of the special edition of 24 solar terms and etiquette and music culture are sprayed with orange patterns, and ancient etiquette and music activities intercepted from ancient paintings are painted, which perfectly matches the content of the book. In March this year, pan Xuewen accidentally bought a special book in the live broadcast room and entered the pit. So far, he has bought more than 30 books. The cost of special books is high, and there is basically no discount. "It turned out that the budget for buying books was fixed at 500 yuan per month. In recent months, it has been running for more than 1000." He told China Newsweek, "some of the things you like are not available, and you have to buy them at a premium." There are also many booksellers gathered in the live broadcast room. On the night or the next day of the live broadcast, someone raised the price on the second-hand website. In the past two years, major publishing houses have launched special bound books, which are made into works of art on the basis of ordinary hardcover books, plus techniques such as inkjet printing, printing, laser engraving, etc. The first special book that Pan Xuewen bought was the Oracle series. Oracle is one of the leaders of this round of special bound book trend. They launched the first special bound book in April 2020, and then this wind blew to the publishing industry. Oracle is a brand of Humanities and social sciences books established in 2013, which belongs to the Social Sciences Literature Publishing House and focuses on translating and introducing foreign public books with academic standards. In the past ten years, this blank area in the field of books has been "rolled up", and a series of brands have gradually appeared. Before the trial of special books, oracle was famous for its rich and colorful binding design, which affected the overall design style of domestic world history books. Because of the public oriented historical topics and highly styled design, oracle bone inscriptions and historical series such as history hall, Sohn, Cape of good hope have not only become popular in the reading world, but also become the first choice of some book collectors. They accumulated these books in dozens or hundreds of places and stacked them neatly on bookshelves to "build walls". Buying books can also be addictive. Many people admit that they are just reading like a thread, but buying books like a mountain, they just can't help "cutting their hands". How do these social sciences and history departments, which originally seemed to be modest, move readers and collectors at the same time? How did you design the special book you robbed? In 2020, live selling of books has just sprung up. In order to create some topics for the live broadcasting room of the publishing house, the social science literature publishing house is considering making some special books. Dong ran, director of the design center of the publishing house, and his colleagues concluded that it was difficult to write articles on the cover, and there were only three book mouths left in the available space. They used the gold rolling process to make the first special book of oracle bone inscriptions, the search for extraordinary manuscripts, with the mouth painted with golden color on three sides. On the day of the live broadcast of reading day, 400 copies of "search for extraordinary manuscripts" sold out in one minute. Inkjet painting at the mouth of the book is the most widely used special binding process, which has been used on sticky notes previously. I don't know when this kind of book got the name of "special binding book", that is, "special binding". Starting from Phnom Penh, spray painting, printing, laser, carving, gold cards and other forms have emerged in succession. Traditional processes such as raw edges and cloth surfaces have also been incorporated, all of which are used as Daoists in the snail shell at the mouth of the book. One of Dong Ran's favorite special bound books is the Knights Templar, which is printed in gold. He collected molds specially made for printing, which were as heavy as weights. The mold cost several thousand yuan. The cost of each special book of the Knights Templar was about 30 yuan higher than that of the ordinary edition. He also likes the special edition of Paris biography "Seine shadow edition" of Yilin publishing house. On the basis of ink-jet painting at the mouth of the book, the concave convex feeling is carved along the Seine River, and the design is exquisite but not abrupt. Technology is universal, and design is the more distinguishing factor. Dong ran said that a good special design must be consistent with the content of the book and have ingenuity, which can deeply echo the spiritual connotation of the book. For example, with the Renaissance as the background of the great turn, the two special editions of gunheikou and yayinkou were named "ignorant edition" and "enlightenment edition" respectively, which summarized the theme of that era; "Fear and freedom" is split into two different styles of design, "fear version" and "free version". Dong Fengyun, the founder of Oracle brand, told China Newsweek that Oracle's special book can not only meet the collection needs of some readers, but also achieve a more realistic purpose. It also hopes to play a guiding role through the publicity effect of the special book, increase the traffic in the live broadcast room, and let more readers pay attention to the book itself. "Later, I found that many people really like it, so I'll do it for a long time." Now, the Social Sciences Literature Publishing House will launch a special book every week, and it will be open for rush purchase in the live studio on Thursday night. The supply exceeds the demand. For publishers, another purpose of making special books is to explore whether there are more forms of books. "To put it bluntly, there are only a few parts in a book. You can't make it round, can you?" Zhang Peng, editor in chief of houlang's "history hall" series, told China Newsweek, "the form of a book is essentially a choice between several elements." Special books are a kind of handicraft with a long history abroad. Every page of real special books is made by hand, using lamb skin, hand illustration, etc., each of which is unique. At present, the essence of special books in the Chinese market is still industrial products. "I think the current special binding book is a transitional state." Duan Qigang, the founder of Sohn, a publishing brand, said. In fact, the earliest specially bound books in China can be traced back to the famous works collection series of Shanghai Translation Publishing House in 2013. The whole set of famous works have been painted with gold border, but the trend of specially bound books did not become a trend until 2020. Nowadays, publishing special editions for key titles seems to be the default option of publishing houses, and readers will urge them if they slow down. In addition to history, the most concentrated theme is western literary masterpieces. Some readers left a message to the press asking for a special edition of the popular Dostoyevsky anthology as soon as possible. Readers who are keen on special books are a small and relatively stable group. Special books are generally limited to hundreds to thousands of copies, and the printing volume of Oracle's best-selling special books is twoorthree. Oracle has set up more than a dozen special books exchange groups, gathering thousands of readers to exchange new special books from various publishing houses. Some Oracle boutique special books will be allocated about 1000 copies for sale in the group, and the link will be released almost seconds. Special books show the potential of collectibles. On the old book trading network, some people resell them at a ten fold increase in price. "At the beginning of that period, the potential of the collection was very obvious, and it didn't rise by a star and a half." Dong ran said that after the rich product line, the price rise has ebbed, "but with the passage of time, now these products are likely to rise in price, because time is a coordinate axis of collection." Radical design in the form of the book is the consistent style of Oracle, and it is also an important reason for its initial broken circle. It can be said that it is the continuation of this style to try the water first. When oracle was founded ten years ago, in order to distinguish from the social science and history covers with a simple style on the market, Song Tao, the binding designer of Oracle, went the opposite way, trying to create a high saturation style and shaping the brand image of Oracle. At that time, physical bookstores were still very important sales channels, and bright and eye-catching covers could attract more attention in bookstores. And the richer the color is, the less afraid of the deviation in the printing process, so as to reduce the printing and time cost. "In fact, there are many color deviations, but it's not important, because the color is rich enough to withstand the loss." Song Tao told China Newsweek. The gorgeous cover has also encountered controversy. Oracle published a philosophy book "the right to freedom" in its early stage, with a bright yellow cover, which many readers felt unacceptable at the first time. Why should a philosophy book be so fancy? But the market finally proved that people who like more than those who hate, and this style continued. In the past decade, world history books have been dominated by this rich and colorful design style, and spilled over to other theme types. In traditional book design, simplicity and elegance are almost equal to seriousness, but now serious books can also be extremely complicated. It is the highly recognizable cover that makes the solemn and beautiful history department the first choice for "building walls". After ten years of reclaiming and reading the wasteland, 170 oracle bone inscriptions series have been built on the wall of Lingxiao's house. He lives in Hangzhou and works in environmental engineering. He has a collection of nearly 2000 books, of which Oracle is the largest series and his favorite series. He also collected thirty or forty copies of the history hall and the Sohn series, and more than 20 copies of the Republic translation series, which have been stored in succession over the past decade. Several e-commerce promotions every year, he started a batch of new books with a discount of about 40%. In Douban's "buying books like a mountain, reading like a silk drawing" group (hereinafter referred to as the "mountain group"), which has 610000 members, the topic of "picking up wool" has lasted for a long time. "I like reading history and stories. I'm not interested in too theoretical things. Oracle books are very storytelling." Lingxiao told China Newsweek, "and the cover is very good-looking, and beauty is also a very important factor." According to rough statistics, several major social science and history brands have published hundreds of popular books, which can be said to be a remarkable achievement of the publishing industry in the past decade. At the end of last century, when Dong Fengyun went to university, the most popular authors in the field of social sciences were theoretical masters such as Max Weber, Foucault, Hayek, etc. At that time, Huang Renyu's "fifteen years of Wanli" had been published in the mainland. After reading it, Dong Fengyun was astonished that a rigorous historical work could be written with such a literary texture. In fact, narrative historiography, which writes history well, is a tradition in western academic circles. Later, the works of Sinologists such as Shi Jingqian and Kong Feili were gradually introduced, and Chinese readers saw more. Huang Renyu was the first. At the beginning of the 21st century, when Dong Fengyun studied abroad, he saw more good-looking historical works abroad, including the Mediterranean epic trilogy. After returning to China, he joined the Social Sciences Literature Publishing House as an editor and began to ponder the introduction of such books into China, so he founded the Oracle brand. Oracle published its first book "the rise of the Roman Empire" in 2013, and "Mediterranean epic Trilogy" was also introduced, and sales were quite good. His positioning of Oracle is very clear - standing on the balance between academic and popularization. Such books are almost blank in the Chinese market, but potential readers have always existed and continue to expand. Since the expansion of university enrollment at the end of last century, the population base with higher education has greatly increased, and there are higher requirements for the quality of books. In the field of historical reading, they are no longer satisfied with general reading materials. "Some academic history books sell well, such as some books by Mao Haijian. That