The (book) world according to China

Today was networking day at BIBF – or the Beijing International Book Fair 2008 in Tianjin. On the international side, we had one workshop with presentations of major international book fairs, namely Frankfurt, London, Hongkong, Abu Dhabi, while I had the pleasure to represent BookExpo America. But it was not anymore a simple wooing for a high potential new customer, but some serious debate about strategies of internationalization, and why – in the words of Frankfurt director Juergen Boos – in a globalising world, more and more rights will be traded, broken down into more and more slices, for more and more customized regions (and again, the issue of ‚localization‘ was the buzz word).

Then we had another workshop between Chinese and US publishers, with big houses from both sides at the table. While some  like Penguin or Harper Collins – have opened their own Beijing offices already a few years ago, or Wiley trading in China already in the second generation of the founder family, highly specialized scientific journals (like the „Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery“) exploring whether they rather translate their journal, or have at least Chinese abstracts, but in the certain perspective of finding a readership here.

Another issue was that most Western publishers who have not set up shop in China, still need to go through local ’sub-agents‘, but as helpful as those intermediaries and go betweens may have been initially, in walking the first mile into uncharted territory, this system of only indirect contacts  turned now into a hurdle to deepen and specialize the mutual understanding. „We need more direct editor-to-editor conversations, as a colleague of Simon and Schuster put it, and many at the table nodded in approval.

Lesson learned: It is not „cultural dialogue“ or politics anymore, but nuts and bolts, heavy, steady work.

The same is true from a Chinese perspective, it seems. I had dinner with a major Chinese publishing group who set up their overseas office already a year ago in London, and is full of enthusiasm and strategic ideas how to overcome the cultural barriers the other way round. And guess what, the tale sounds very similar to that of the Western explorer’s accounts before. I asked them, among other things, what was their core business here atBIBF, and the answer came without hesitating a second: 1. Selling into the Japanese and Korean markets, 2. Selling to local booksellers, 3. Looking for cooperations with the West, and 4. building theirs brands for the Western attendants. Which is a pretty clearly framed plan, I think.

So the Chinese slogan of „Going out!“ (not refering to partying, but to go overseas for publishing business), drafted by government officials at first, is kind of a reality already for many at both sides. This reality, I will try to look at a bit more in detail in my conversations at BIBF tomorrow.

BIBF – The day before the opening: Chaos and Fun

Tomorrow is the grand opening of this year’s Beijing International Book Fair BIBF in Tianjin. That means for some, this is lazy Sunday…

while for others, it is frenzy work, many last minut calls and anxiousness for everything to be perfect…

I am always amazed the day before a fair to open when the chaos is at a climax…

You may discover that for some exhibitors, there is still room for improvment, e.g. in their marketing skills

while others have finished their day well ahead…

So they can go out to play (while the others are still in the works)

To be continued as BIBF opens tomorrow.

„We are all wolves“, says a Chinese publisher to the world – and Mickey as well, ads another.

It is a unique story, on several levels, that promises to unfold at this year’s China International Book Fair BIBF – in Tianjin, 120 km from Beijing in this 4 m harbour town. Upbeat not only by 50+ gold medals from the Olympics, but even more so by a surge in dynamics, growth and profile in Chinese publishing over the past five or so years, Chinese publishers, book retailers and guests from overseas are gathering under a motto that simply says: China wants to turn what used to be a one way street – of China buying rights for translation and imports of books from Western publishing houses -into a market of equal contenders.

With the Chinese buying over 10.000 rights per year and selling in return, even by very optimistic accounts, at best one third of this, the new goal, as defined here at various seminars on the day before BIBF’s 2008 openening, this is a bold claim. But aside from the ambition, it is worth to listen to the fine print.

Hou Mingliang of Children’s fun Publishing Co. Ltd., which has earned a substantial investment from Scandinavian publishing group Egmont and is one of China’s best children book publishers, lined out the strategy in some interesting detail. He said that of course, at first, it was good and important, to translate from the West, and to learn how to behave properly in an environment regulated by international copyright (China joined the Bern and UCC agreements back in 1992). In a second step, which is roughly now, China must „behave like the Romans in Rome“, or, it must develop all the skills and habits that are the standard all around.

Already, this does not mean however, to mimic the rest of the world (or the West), but to prepare its own share and heritage, to put it on an equal level, by „localizing“ international content for the Chinese audience.

Localisation is the second most important buzz word here, it seems. It means on the one hand to adapt marketing or formats to Chinese – local – usage. But it also claims to soon thereafter ‚localize‘ foreign content in its core – by local Chinese elements, and soon by full blown Chinese creation as well.

You think „Mickey Mouse in China“? You are absolutely right!

We have been shown samples of a „Michey Mouse travels around China“, under fully legitimate Disney  licensing agreement, and local Chinese ‚creative‘ work based on Disney’s „Princess“ series as well. That’s not all.

„My first reference“, again from Disney, was considered by the Chinese licensing partner as „too much entertainment“, and having even structural shortcomings, labeled „lack of system“by the Chinese. Well, no problem, with again agreement from Disney, „Children’s fun Publishing“ corrected this, deepened and extended the learning aspects, and off it went to the press and to a few million kids in the East.

This is not reserved to ambitious children and their parents. Liu Yuan, deputy President of China’s largest educational publishr Higher Education Press gave a broad overview of her company’s strategy, including digitasation, online & print integration, user enhancing platforms and all that stuff around text books, under the headline of ‚glocalization‘ – or how to merge globalization with local adaptations. You may remember that slogan „Think globally, and act locally“. Here this is turned into a publishing strategy.

The borders between the local and the global is blurring, added  Meng Chao of Renmin University Press, because for Chinese publishers, he sees only „one global market“ in which they have to act. And on this global stage, the Chinese consider themselves as being just wolves, among wolves, with not much difference between Western and Eastern carnivores.

Recently, both Macmillan and Pearson signed deals for Chinese teaching material to travel West. And the novel „Wolf Totem“ (oh yes, Wolf metaphores are currently pretty popular here), after some months, and after the Olympics, once again the #1 fiction bestseller in China, with over 70,000 copies sold in its English translation at Penguin, all this is not only dreams, but probably the early days of just one more Chinese miracle to come.

Well, perhaps it may take some time before we – or our kids – learn our Math the Chinese way, or read something like „The Devil Wears Mao“. As Pearson’s grande dame of the rights business, Lynette Owen, who had started coming to China as early as 1982, remarked: One key to selling rights onto the world market is ‚relevance‘, or you only sell in the book markets what the others consider cool, or being some sort of gold standard. Standards don’t change overnight. But they shift, as times go bye.

Beijing International Book Fair – a sidestep from the Olympics

Arriving at the Beijing airport this morning from Europe, I find myself picked up even before I could realize the really dump whether and the thick smog clouds above the city, by a young band of helpful youngsters waving billboards spelling the fair’s acronym BIBF, and guided gently to the bus stop for Tianjin. For several days from now on, they wait patiently at the international arrival hall to collect every single soul that may show up not for the ‚paraolympics‘ – which seem to start these days after the classical Olympics -, or for any type of other business, but for books.

So half an hour later, I find myself in this medium sized bus, being driven not so much across the country side, but foggy highways, for some two and a half hours, until I am dropped again, at the Tianjin bus  station where, you bet, another group of young people, waving similar bilboards, shows up, with a long list with names in their hands -trying to identify me, which fails. But no problem, they get me into another bus, this time for me alone, and from the shabby bus station neighborehood, I am driven to the heart of the city. Midway, I am allowed a quick glance at the huge olympic statium of Tianjiin (London’s Millennium Dome pales in a comparison). The the journey ends at the exhibition hall and my somptuous hotel.

Across the street, in the early evening, there is another impressive and very big hall whose purpose I ignore, a tower with not formal purpose aside from being a flashy landmark, with laser beams on its top, and hundreds (or even a few thousand) of people leisurely strolling around, some dancing in groups to the sound of a ghetto blaster, others controlling kites high up in the sky at the end of long strings, some of the kites even have colourful lights attached, while other people ambitiously make rounds and rounds on their rollerblades.

What this has to do with books? It is simple: In China things tend to be really big. We saw it with the Olympics, and with their cities and their ambition. We need to acknowledge the same lesson when it comes to books, publishing and the size of the reading audience, and hence the size of the market.  And the Chinese became pretty good and straight forward in getting all this set up and connceted with the rest of the (of our) world.

Those details will follow in the BookLab over the next few days, coming directly from Tianjin, PR China.