BEA Panel on Chinese Publishing

Twitter posts made by me during the BEA Panel on Chinese Publishing, information related by Hou Xiaoqiang, CEO Shanda Literature — SNDA.com — one of the largest Chinese publishers.

• novelists in china post their books online, get book deals and sell 3 million copies. 3 million!
• all the young authors in china get their start on the web now
• people dont have credit cards in china, so cell phones allow publishers to collect money
• chinese online books take off from the internet and news and current memes to create work
• 1/10 of online book is free, then every 1000 characters cost 3 cents
• in china over 200,000 titles are published each year
• 1/3 of chinese bestsellers are about young, urban life
• publishers do not market to small towns in china because its all pirated books there

Some thoughts about this: When asked if these popular Chinese books would be translated into English, Mr. Hou said that they were not "international books" and their stories "aren't that good", which answer I found frustrating, as someone incredibly curious about Chinese popular literature and not the incessant march of dreary books about the Cultural Revolution which seem to mark the bulk of Chinese translations to English.

Also, it occurred to me later: if the books in small towns are all pirated copies, that probably means that they're not marketed toward them; books that might primarily appeal to rural areas simply don't get published because, even though there might be a demand, there's simply no profit. That's something to think about.