News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
While the rest of the world suffers the economic squeeze, the government-run Chinese publishing industry has counterintuitively managed to cultivate opportunity for expansion both for local entrepreneurs and international publishers. Talk of less state interference and mounting interest from foreign markets is encouraging some publishers to brave the censors, fears of piracy, and the cultural [...]
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August 2004
Droves of wide-eyed children queued up outside the Hong Kong Convention Center on the eve of the July 21st opening of the Hong Kong Book Fair in the hopes of having first dibs in the fair’s famed comic book section. The grown-ups weren’t far behind, as this year’s fair drew a record crowd of 503,396 [...]
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April 2004
Youths Kick-Start Japanese Market, China Makes the Grade, French Teacher Explores Afterlife When 19-year-old Hitomi Kanehara and 20-year-old Risa Wataya recently became the youngest authors ever to win the coveted Akutagawa Prize (which helped launch the careers of greats like Kenzaburo Oe and Ryu Murakami), the Japanese literary scene received just the spark it needed [...]
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February 2003
Stroll through Shanghai’s “Book City,” a four-story goliath crammed with titles on a surprising breadth of subjects, and you’ll notice something big is happening in the land of Mao’s little red book. As the Chinese government makes unprecedented moves to loosen its grip on book retailing and distribution — working to satisfy obligations under China’s [...]
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