AI Orchestrates, Emotional Value Leads: Seven Signals of China's Publishing Marketing Turn in 2025

Set in 2025, when the application scenarios of artificial intelligence (AI) in China's publishing sector continue to expand and the importance of emotional value becomes increasingly salient, this article delineates seven interlocking characteristics of publishing marketing and operations and argues that their co-occurrence signals a structural turn in sectoral operating logic. The discussion treats AI-enabled tooling and emotional-value orientation as mutually reinforcing drivers: intelligent tooling accelerates operational reconfiguration across the marketing chain, while emotional value redefines what counts as "effective operation" by shifting emphasis from one-off transactions toward durable reader relationships and sustained interaction. First, the rise of content e-commerce is framed as an organizational upgrade of retail. Book promotion and purchase are embedded in emotionally resonant communication and continuous engagement, thereby transforming "relationship operation" from an implicit by-product into a core, designable marketing capability. Second, physical bookstores are described as undergoing scenario upgrading. Through composite formats and the crafting of localized cultural experience economies, bookstores move beyond the role of single-purpose points of sale and become scenario-based spaces in which cultural participation and place-based experience mediate reader connection. Third, grid marketing is presented as a community-operation strategy that refines the boundaries of user service. By turning dispersed audiences into segmented service units, it renders differentiation, boundary-setting, and continuity of engagement operational rather than rhetorical. Fourth, the persistent heat of micro-dramas is positioned as a new domain for publishing IP operation. As micro dramas reconfigure attention and consumption scenes, IP operation becomes cross-media orchestration that links reading scenes and viewing scenes and extends the operational horizon of publishing marketing. Fifth, "light reading" is characterized by the light-weighting of form, content, and price to fit fragmented reading time and to lower decision thresholds, thereby aligning supply design with contemporary consumption rhythms without abandoning the provision of cultural content. Sixth, themed publishing is said to become more diversified. Through flexible narration and active international promotion, themed outputs are described as continuously "breaking through" and expanding their reach, suggesting a marketing logic that combines narrative elasticity with outward-facing dissemination. Seventh, AI constitutes full-line empowerment: by entering the full chain of publishing marketing and operation, it supports scenario innovation, intelligent tool use, relationship maintenance, and data-supported responsiveness, thereby strengthening the movement toward more systematic, agile operation. With the promulgation and implementation of the Regulations on Promoting Public Reading as an institutional backdrop, the article concludes that China's publishing marketing and operations are entering a new development stage: a transition from traditional product distribution to a modern marketing system centered on reader relationships, powered by all-domain data, and characterized by agile response. The overall contribution is a mechanism-forward synthesis that makes visible how scenario innovation, intelligent tools, and relationship operation jointly shape the sector's 2025 trajectory.