47 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections Investment Holding Group Co., Ltd. in Changsha for example, the main business revenue and total assets exceeded ¥10 billion as reported by GAPP (China Market Insight, BIBF 2012 GAPP 2011). Both houses, as is typical for Chinese publishing houses, cover a wide range of topics in their publica- tions, from philosophy, management, youth, and chil- dren to general trade books. “Zhong Nan,” short for China South Publishing & Media Group Co., Ltd., in Changsha, founded in 2008, has recently become number two in the list of China’s top publishing ventures on a GAPP ranking that combines several indexes. This development has been driven by Chairman Gong Shugang, who is known for his aggres- sive stock market strategies (interview with Publishing Consultant Cheng Sanguo, Beijing, Sep 2012, by Veronika Licher). China Education Publishing & Mediaholdings Co. Ltd., in Beijing, chaired by Li Pengyi, is listed as number three on this ranking. As a state-owned enterprise, the group specializes in publishing and distributing textbooks, periodicals, digital publications, and educational equipment. For some companies, nding the right time to announce their IPO is a tough choice, given the current over 2010 Lei Ren citing BIBF in her article in Publishing Perspectives, September 6, 2012), Chinese publishers aggressively broadened their lists with internationally competitive works. The government has played an active role in encour- aging the best-performing groups to form larger entities and compete internationally under the guideline of its “going out” policy. By November 2010, 435 of 528 o - cially listed state-owned publishing houses had under- gone restructuring. The goals of this e ort are to create more competitive companies and to identify those that should prepare to develop international strategies as well as to go public (notably on the Shanghai stock exchange). In this way, in late 2010, a new entity branded the “China Education Publishing and Media Group” was launched, with a projected turnover of ¥6 billion—com- bining the former Higher Education Press, the People’s Education Press, plus several smaller entities—to suc- cessfully confront the challenges of the digital transfor- mation and to reach out to international partners. Several of those groups are preparing for going public. For Jiangsu Phoenix Publishing & Media Group Co., Ltd. (PPMG) in Nanjing (the Chinese partner for the French Hachette group) as well as Hunan Publishing China Key indicators Values Source, comments Book market size (p+e, at consumer prices) €10.6 b ¥93,000 m (GAPP, 2010) Titles published per year (new and successive editions) 370,000 GAPP New titles per 1 m inhabitants Electronic Publications 11,154 GAPP. Not including “online literature” titles, which are not comparable, e.g., 6 m (Lisa Zhang, interview for this report) titles available from Shanda/Cloudary websites Key market parameters CEB China Ebook Format, a domestic ebook format, notably promoted by Apabi (of Founders company)