The Fifth East Asia Publishers Conference took place over three days, November 7-9, 2007, at the Nan Garden conference center in Xinzhu, Taiwan. United Daily News, one of Taiwan's flagship newspapers, provided detailed coverage of the conference, which was co-organized by affiliate Linking Publishing Co. Chen Wan-Chien and others report that East Asian publishers face a crisis of declining sales and readership with the rise of the Internet; if they are to free themselves from the curse of "the death of the book," they must cultivate more creativity and talent. But the heart of the problem lies in the commercialized publishing industry itself: the pursuit of bestsellers has drained publishers of their creativity and lost them their readers. The publishers' most powerful weapon is still the book; they must join forces in an effort to reinvigorate readers with the desire to read. At the Taiwan Conference, participating publishers agreed to develop a "100 East Asian Books" library series.

China Times, another premier Taiwan daily, extensively covered the Taiwan Conference in its cultural section, highlighting the historical ties between Taiwan and humanities publishing in Japan and Korea as well as featuring interviews with publishers from mainland China. Journalist Ding Wen Ling writes that through their dialogue at EAPC meetings, East Asian publishers have grown aware of the common threads in humanities publishing shared by their regions. Belonging as they do to the same "publishing culture zone," these publishers seek to build an East Asian "reading community" and are taking leisurely but deliberate steps in this direction, vowing to work together toward a richer cultural environment throughout East Asia. Mainland China was represented by publishing industry heavyweights as well as members of the younger generation, who spoke of the harsh conditions they face in an industry that has grown increasingly commercialized and consolidated under the liberalized economy. Although mainland publishing may appear to be growing by leaps and bounds, it can neither extricate itself from the influence of government bureaucracies nor come under the umbrella of large corporations as in the West. Mainland publishers therefore have no choice but to develop their own distinctive publishing system.

Beijing-based Publishing Today has covered every one of EAPC's conferences. Reporter Huang Xinping summarizes the reports of representatives to the Taiwan Conference from China, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, noting that a highlight of the meeting was that it brought together three generations of publishing professionals. Conference organizer Linden Lin of Linking Publishing Co. described the first generation as one that undertook a reexamination of history, the second generation as responding to a demand for intellectual resources from the West, and the third generation as confronting a wave of Western influence imposed by globalization. The writer asks whether a voluntary, private cultural exchange among East Asians can address these past and present issues, overcome language barriers and embrace differences in perspective to build an East Asian cultural zone or publishing community that is relevant to the present day.

Published by the Disarmament Research Institute, the Tokyo-based monthly Disarmament Review invited EAPC Representative Kato Keiji to review the past two years of EAPC activities. He writes that the current globalization-induced crisis in humanities publishing cannot be solved within individual national borders; a regional approach, something between global and local, is required. East Asian publishers must shift their focus from the West, which has consumed their attention, to the regional culture to which they all belong. Only by joining forces in this manner can they preserve and promote the diversity and plurality of East Asian culture; that is the objective of the East Asia Publishers Conference. Far from aspiring to cultural or economic hegemony, such efforts will be effective precisely because they oppose hegemonic impulses. In that respect, there is no better strategy for regional security than cultural exchanges of this kind.

A monthly published by Asahi Shimbunsha, Ronza is one of Japan's top journals of commentary and criticism. It devoted ten pages of its February 2008 issue to the crisis in humanities publishing, centering around reportage on the Taiwan Conference and including interviews with participants from Japan, China and Korea. Producing the feature was journalist Nakajima Mina, who also covered the conference. In an interview titled "To Build a Reading Community," EAPC co-founder Ryusawa Takeshi discusses the motives for launching the conference and its significance. EAPC member Dong Xiuyu, Vice President of the China Redactological Society and a veteran editor, relates her expectations for the conference and the editing profession. In a roundtable of three of Korea's most eminent publishers, Kim Eoun-Ho (President, Hangilsa Publishing), Ko Se-hyun (President, Changbi Publishers) and Han Chul-Hee (President, Dolbegae Publishers) talk about the "humanities spirit" of the 21st century against the backdrop of Korean publishing history and changes in Korean society. Nakajima also reports on the participation of young editors as well as veterans at the Taiwan gathering.

In response to a request from the U.K.-based quarterly LOGOS: Forum of the World Book Community, EAPC Website English editor Alan Gleason wrote an article describing EAPC and the issues faced by editors and publishers in East Asia. In his preface to the article, LOGOS editor emeritus Gordon Graham wrote: "The article relates a remarkable initiative undertaken by the publishers of four adjacent countries in East Asia... The East Asia Publishers Conference has elements of practicality, spontaneity and philosophy which make it worthy of study worldwide. An exciting element of the EAPC is how participants face up to political antagonisms more frankly than their governments are willing or able to do."

Beijing-based Chuban Cankao (Information on Publication), which also covered the Seoul Conference, carried a two-page article offering a comprehensive look at the Hong Kong Conference including topics discussed, journalists’ impressions, and background on the conference. Reporter Miao Liping writes that participants debated such issues as: How should East Asian publishers internationalize in response to the globalization environment? How can they revitalize East Asian culture and preserve its diversity through the medium of humanities publishing? Efforts to articulate new values for a new readership got underway with proposals for concrete measures such as the creation of an East Asia publishing fund, an East Asia publishers school, and an East Asia "library" series.

Wen Wei Po, a prominent Hong Kong daily newspaper (circulation 400,000), produced a special section on the Hong Kong Conference that included participant interviews. Journalists Wei Wei, Lin Yisheng, and Zhang Junfeng collaborated on the coverage, reporting that conferees asked themselves how East Asians might best present their culture and thought to the rest of the world, and discussed possibilities for cultural exchange and internationalization within East Asia. Cooperation among East Asian publishers is a challenging and complex process, as evinced by varying attitudes: the Japanese not overly enthusiastic but quietly confident of their experience as publishing pioneers; the Koreans displaying the same passionate engagement one sees in Korean dramas; and a diversity of views from Chinese-speaking regions that were difficult to pin down. Nonetheless the conference is moving forward slowly but surely.

Beijing-based industry journal Publishing Today, which covered the Hangzhou and Seoul Conferences, followed up with one of the earliest reports on the Hong Kong Conference, citing its more international flavor thanks to the presence of participants from Singapore and Thailand. The theme of "Publishing in East Asia and its Internationalization" was particularly appropriate for the Hong Kong venue. Conferees reported on the progress of internationalization in their regions and discussed unresolved issues and future prospects. They agreed that in the face of globalization, they should begin by taking steps toward internationalization within East Asia, and that the moment was historically ripe for such efforts in the publishing world.

Chuban Cankao (Information on Publication), a thrice-monthly, Beijing-based journal whose directors include representatives of China's publishing houses, groups, and related enterprises, carried an article about the Seoul Conference. Journalist An An writes that publishing professionals from China, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan agreed on the need to nurture the East Asian publishing market through exchanges of personnel, books, and publishing projects. As a first step, it was proposed that the participants jointly create a "space" for such exchanges among East Asian publishers.

Kyodo News, Japan's largest wire service, published a report on the Seoul Conference filed by Kyodo senior writer Aida Hirotsugu, who attended the gathering. He reports that against a backdrop of unsettling developments in the region, executives and chief editors representing the humanities publishing "hard core" in different areas of East Asia met in Seoul to discuss the exchange of knowledge and ideas. Picking up where dialogues at two previous conferences had left off, they engaged in intense discussions of proposals presented by speakers about concrete programs for East Asian publishing. These include joint publishing projects and personnel exchanges and training of editorial staff in the region.

Publishing Today, a major Chinese publishing industry newspaper based in Beijing with a circulation of 50,000, covered the EAPC Seoul Conference across three pages (the front page and page 10-11) of its 29 October 2006 edition. Journalist Lai Yin reports that publishing professionals from five regions of East Asia met in Seoul in response to calls for the building together of a new reading community, one that transcends even as it recognizes the different histories and current realities of each region. The participants are seeking ways to create a new century of Asian publishing.

Publishing Today, a Chinese publishing industry newspaper with a circulation of 50,000, devoted four full pages of its 16 April 2006 edition to the EAPC conference that took place in Hangzhou two weeks earlier. Journalist Qu Lei writes that publishing professionals from five regions of East Asia, all of whose publishing industries face daunting problems, met for dialogue in Hangzhou. Although outlooks on the future of publishing varied from optimistic to pessimistic, they agreed that publishers must take action to preserve the cultural value and status of publishing amid the growth of an increasingly diverse culture industry.

Publisher Linden Lin of Taiwan's Linking Publishing Co., who attended the March 2006 Hangzhou conference, contributes a regular column to the Taiwanese daily United Daily News. In his 11 April column he writes about the conference, remarking that the publishers he met in Hangzhou were a bit morose, the cause being the stagnant state of the publishing industry throughout East Asia. While publishing is one type of culture industry, it has a special role in the public sphere. In that light, publishers must strive more than they have in the past to combine a spirit of cultural enlightenment with one of commercial adventurousness.

In the pages of the Early May 2006 issue of the Japanese publishing industry journal Shuppan News, EAPC Representative Kato Keiji reviewed the first and second EAPC conferences, held in Tokyo in September 2005 and in Hangzhou in March 2006. In his article he states that exchanges with publishers throughout East Asia are one answer to the question of how Japanese publishers can extricate themselves from their industry's long recession. Through intense discussions like those that occur at the EAPC gatherings, publishing professionals begin to get a clear sense of the specific issues they face in the future. The third EAPC conference, to be held in Seoul in October 2006, offers the opportunity to take the first steps in addressing those issues.