The HCM City General Publishing House has released 94 titles of books ordered by the State. Photo courtesy of the publisher

HCM CITY — Publications ordered by the State, besides serving political and social purposes, should also include books for children, said local publishers at a conference held in the HCM City on December 6.

Speaking at the event organised by the HCM City Department of Information and Communications, Phan Thị Thu Hà, deputy director of the Trẻ (Youth) Publishing House, said: “Publishing houses should pay more attention to books for children, teenagers and people with visual disabilities.”

“This will contribute to promoting reading habits among children and teenagers,” she said.

Publishers at the conference said that books ordered by the State had helped people learn about the Party and Government’s political, economic and social policies, but some books had not met the requirements of general society.

Đinh Thị Thanh Thủy, director of the HCM City General Publishing House, said the publishing house in the last eight years had released 94 titles with more than 239,090 copies, at a cost of VNĐ28.7 billion (US$1.24 million) from the HCM City budget.

“Many of them contain a lot of information about politics, society, culture and history. These books are not easy for many people to read. They are more suitable for organisations with purposes of deep research,” she said.

Thủy added that the publishing house had encountered problems creating publications ordered by the State because of strict regulations.

She said, for example, that one regulation required publishers to use a specific kind of paper for publications, but it was not a practical rule.

Nguyễn Ánh Tuyết, deputy director of the HCM City Culture, Arts and Literature Publishing House, said her company also had problems with authors. She said that publishers at times had asked authors for a 300-page draft for a publication, but the authors later submitted a 600-page draft.

In addition, many authors missed the deadline, which caused the publisher to release the book late, according to Tuyết.

Nguyễn Ngọc Hải, deputy head of the Department of Planning and Finance at the Ministry of Information and Communications, said the ministry was collecting opinions from publishing houses in HCM City in order to solve their problems.

"This work will help improve the quality of publications ordered by the State as well as the topics for the books, and will encourage publishing houses to join in creating books," Hải added. – VNS