Small Presses Look for Opportunies
At Beijing International Book Fair
by Teri Tan -- Publishers Weekly, 8/31/2007 6:15:00 AM
On day two of the Beijing International Book Fair, the smaller presses, American and British alike, have as much to cheer about as the big boys. There are plenty of success stories. And some cautionary tales.
At Weldon Owen, which participates under its U.K. subsidiary, the licensing of Encyclopedia of Animals to Shaanxi People’s Publishing House is its biggest BIBF event. The Encyclopedia is copublished with National Geographic for the American market, with more than 500,000 copies sold in eight languages worldwide; the Chinese edition will have a 10,000-copy first printing. Said CEO John Owen: “We are not new to this market. We started collaborating with local publishers back in the 1980s when we did two major photography titles, The Long March and Over China.” Licensing sales began about five years ago, and Weldon Owen has done about 20 contracts so far, mostly for adult and children’s reference titles.
For Lion Hudson’s Tony Wales, the latest feather in his cap is the contract signed with Central Compilation and Translation Press for The Bible: History. So far, he has licensed about 45 titles and these include the bestseller Stories from the Bible (to Huaxia Publishing House) and the popular Lion History series (to Peking University Press). “Selling religion and spirituality titles to China is not as impossible as one would think. There are sensitivities involved, and these do require very careful handling. Getting approvals and going through the censorship process is, needless to say, challenging, and one needs to know how to go about it and who to approach,” Wales said.
Over at Laurence King Publishing, rights manager Janet Pilch has licensed nearly all of the house’s 150 backlist titles and a huge percentage of new ones. Unfortunately, the much cheaper Chinese editions have found their way into bookstores in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore, and thus cannibalized sales of its original English editions (which are sold nonreturnable). “Our Chinese publishing partners rely on wholesalers to push the titles to the market, and these wholesalers are too eager to make sales wherever they can find it,” said Pilch. “We are now considering holding back on Chinese language rights for as long as a year after the original publication to circumvent such issues. It’s going to be a hard decision since Chinese publishers are known for wanting the ‘newest’ of new titles.” For Pilch, pirating comes in the form of bogus—cheaper—English editions. One example is the highly illustrated Detail in Contemporary Residential Architecture. LK’s Chinese partner canceled the contract after the pirated editions appeared since there wasn’t any point in producing a much more expensive Chinese edition involving complex technical translations. And LK had to compensate its partner for the work that was already done.
First-timer Anna Wilkinson of children’s publisher Award Publications is pleasantly surprised by the busy and professionally run BIBF. “We started licensing and making copublishing deals with Chinese publishers several years ago, and even though the children’s book market, especially picture books, remains relatively small, there is sufficient interest in our publications for us to forge ahead,” she said. Her not-so-pleasant experience? “One contract had expired back in 2003, but I have come to know that some of the titles are still being published as we speak. Naturally, we are now very careful in selecting publishing partners.”
Given China’s one-child policy and nearly 100 million children in nursery and primary schools, it’s not surprising to see the massive interest given to supplementary textbook materials and anything to do with children’s reference titles. Parents are more than willing to invest in the best of educational materials to ensure their child’s academic achievements. Such is the experience at Minneapolis-based Lerner Publishing Group. “In general, nonfiction titles sell much better, as Chinese consumers prefer information-based publications,” president and publisher Adam Lerner said. “At the same time, people here do not take beautiful full-color books for granted, unlike Americans or Westerners who tend to be quite blasé about them.” Lerner has been exporting original editions and selling rights to China since 2002, and one of his major challenges in licensing highly illustrated children’s titles revolves around photo rights. “We would normally clear the rights for the Chinese editions, but it’s hard for our publishing partners to understand why they have to pay for the rights in the first place.”
The fair’s newest feature, International Children’s Publishing Exhibit, is also testimony to the popularity of (and market demand for) children’s educational and reference materials in China. Jointly organized by the American Collective Stand (ACS), the Association of Educational Publishers and BIBF, this exhibit is going to be an annual event. Said ACS v-p Jon Malinowski, “For independent children’s publishers, this is a platform for them to gain exposure, and reach out to the market. The plan is to grow the current 70-odd title display into a 300- or 400-title exhibit from countries around the world.” More information on this exhibit is available from www.icpeonline.com.
