Successful Beijing Wraps Up
By Teri Tan -- Publishers Weekly, 9/4/2007 8:24:00 AM
At the end of the Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) on Monday, it’s clear that China is no longer a hyped market. The two main challenges of low pricing and piracy won’t disappear any time soon, but these are not slowing down foreign publishers’ march into the country. More exhibitors are selling and inking deals at the fair instead of just scoping and being “visible.” And many are already looking forward to the next fair, tentatively scheduled for September 3–8, 2008.
Over at American Psychiatric Publishing, editorial director John McDuffie signed a groundbreaking memorandum of understanding on collaborative publishing with People’s Medical Publishing House, including the translation of APP’s major reference title, Textbook on Clinical Psychiatry. “This copublishing agreement revolves around publishing works on integrated treatment programs combining Western biomedicine with traditional Chinese medicine [TCM]. We will have titles on Western practices with TCM perspectives, and vice versa,” said McDuffie. Previously, APP has sold some rights and has its flagship journal, American Journal of Psychiatry, translated.
For Columbia University Press, its famed Center for East Asian Studies has played a major role in breaking into China. Said sales and marketing director Brad Hebel, “We have translated numerous Chinese classics and contemporary fictions into English, and these original editions—as well as those on East Asian languages and cultures—are selling very well. The demand comes mostly from the sizable expat community and the so-called returning turtles, i.e., Chinese professionals educated overseas and now back in the country to live and work. On the other hand, scholars and those working at universities also tend to read in English.” With the recent establishment of Columbia Business School Publishing, specializing in business and economics titles, stronger sales are almost a certainty.
Kaplan Publishing, meanwhile, is eyeing China’s estimated $72-billion education market. Kaplan has just launched a portable, pocket-sized, abridged test prep series with lower price points to match Chinese consumers’ conservative buying habits. “It will be used to up-sell the bigger books. Our initial target market will be those in pre-college preparing for SAT as well as those taking TOEFL and TOEIC tests,” said senior director of sales and rights Jennifer Grace. “This is our first BIBF, and it is essentially an information-gathering trip: we want to get the words out that Kaplan is here and interested in doing business in China. We are talking to Amazon.com over here and looking at various distribution options for our publications.” Just recently, Kaplan formed a joint venture with a Shanghai-based private education provider to offer preparatory courses for students entering U.K. universities.
China’s new education reform laws focusing on active learning and critical thinking have also opened up a big window of opportunity for foreign publishers with creative learning and teaching materials. And this is precisely what CEO Malcolm Watson of U.K.-based English Language International is offering. “Our products are less on paper and more on DVD and computer-based delivery, and this is in tune with the growing demand for digital editions of English language teaching materials in China,” Watson said. As a BIBF first-timer, Watson arrived with realistic expectations and went away most encouraged by the meetings with and feedback from various players in the industry.
International sales manager Chris Campau of Creative Teaching Press in California is also eyeing China’s education market, specifically the k-8 segment (approximately 150 million students). “With English now a mandatory subject from grade 3 onwards, students need more readers as well as materials on learning English. In the meantime, higher levels of disposable income means parents can now afford to buy more educational materials for their kid.”
In a marketplace enamored with academic achievement and entrepreneurship, fiction is almost an afterthought. It accounts for about 8% of the Chinese book market, but the genre has shown some growth in recent months. At the rights agency of Andrew Nurnberg Associates, Russian fantasy writer Sergei Lukyanenko had a surprise hit. The first of Lukyanenko’s Night Watch trilogy (now a tetralogy) sold more than 40,000 copies within the first three months of publication. “No Russian contemporary fiction author has appeared in China—much less enjoys this kind of success—since Chinese readers tend to go for the classics,” said Nurnberg, who also handles Dan Brown and Stephen King in China. “Titles like Janet Evanovich’s Eleven on Top are beginning to sell and so too is contemporary literary nonfiction. We licensed Jack Kerouac’s classic, On the Road, last year, and it has sold over 170,000 copies. Even parenting titles and picture books are starting to pick up, something unheard of in the past.”
Nurnberg is thrilled with the progress made by his five-year-old Beijing office. The agency sold 40% more titles in the first six months of this year compared to the same period in 2005. “Thinking back, I’d be very bemused—bewildered, really—should someone have asked me, say 10 years ago, if I’m going to set up shop in China. Now, it’s the place to be for everyone in the book industry,” he said. As to what would sell in China, Nurnberg offered this piece of advice: “Don’t rule out anything!”
