Trend 3: Film books sell well
In theory, selling books sounds simple: You find the right book, and then you find a sales method—for instance, by trying to stir up some discussion about it. Then you work hard at selling. But what may sound easy is actually quite difficult.
There are times when a book is perfectly positioned to sell well. A book like Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs was almost assured to sell well. The only question was how well, and for how long. But such a book will enter the highest ranks for sales only if it has true breakout potential and staying power. Books of that ilk are true exceptions.
The year 2011 marked a revival of Taiwanese film, and several of those films pushed book sales. The film Seediq Bale led to six books of high quality and sales, including Director Bale and Seediq Bale: The True Story. This case may be the best example of how a film has pushed book sales, and it will be hard to duplicate.
The adaptation of Giddens Ko’s novel The Girl We All Wanted All Those Years Ago into the film You Are the Apple of My Eye created a whirlwind of new publicity for the book, pushing it to even higher sales. It also resulted in Somewhere, Somehow, Some Way, a book about the production of the film. Considering that Killer also sold well, it would be fair to describe 2011 as the “year of Giddens Ko.” Having vowed to become the “king of stories,” Ko writes at least 5000 characters a day and in just 10 years has already finished 60 books. In 2011, he got his feet wet for the first time as a director. The result was a success beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings: The story about this “king of stories” is already the stuff of legends.
Trend 4: De-cluttering gets de money
In 2011 organizational self-help books established a foothold in the market.
Throw Out 50 Things: Clear the Clutter and Find Your Life is one of four similar works about de-cluttering and organizing one’s possessions that were bestsellers last year. Similar clusters of bestsellers in the self-help category have previously only occurred with investment or diet books.
The logic behind these books is very simple: With chaotic, directionless lives, everyone has some hazy dreams or a thirst to change one’s life and change oneself. That used to be done with education or religious cultivation. These self-help books offer a method that anyone can adopt: You can start by throwing things away. In these books, “throwing away” is more than housekeeping: it’s a philosophy of life. After all, in many ways life is all about “putting things in order” and “letting go.” “Organizing” becomes a kind of dialogue between oneself and one’s things. Only by being able to “rid oneself of unneeded things,” by “letting go of the superfluous,” and by “separating oneself from one’s attachment to things” can one get in touch with one’s true inner nature and find a new beginning.
These books on “organizational techniques” touch on people’s dissatisfactions, insecurities and desires in a world that has lost its bearings. They offer a more practical orientation than books such as The Secret or The Power.
Trend 5: Book of the year
The book of the year is undoubtedly Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?.
Never before has a book made it into all three of books.com.tw’s year’s 10 top sellers, Kingstone’s 10 most influential books, and the China Times’ 10 best books.
In a market in which sales and quality are often incompatible, how is it that a philosophical textbook that is hardly an easy read and wasn’t the focus of much marketing, was able to surpass sales of books by Giddens Ko and Minato Kanae? Could it be that people have deeply embedded dreams about achieving fairness?
Justice has attained higher sales in Asia than in the United States, where it was originally published. In Japan, Korea and Taiwan it has been nothing short of a sensation. Consequently, it’s probably fair to say that its high sales are related to those nations’ cultural, political and educational structures.
Justice isn’t a book that tells people what justice is. Rather, it is based on classroom explorations by Michael Sandel, a Harvard University professor, who uses the Socratic method to get students to think about this issue from various angles and different levels. It makes readers realize how our assumptions are so superficial, how what appears to be right is actually wrong, how we lack true principles, and how we mistakenly allow personal prejudices to affect judgments about right and wrong. The book eventually leads to great edification. In East Asian Confucian nations there is tremendous pressure to study for high-school and college entrance exams, and people are used to the black-and-white certainty of standardized tests. There is also a strong sense of obligations but a weaker sense of rights. For East Asian readers, Sandel’s use of the Socratic method seems shockingly innovative as an educational method, and it helps to nourish a new style of reading.
Justice also demonstrates a method of public discussion that is unfamiliar to Asians: Rather than a no-holds-barred war of words, it offers different points of view to gradually improve and polish a position, with different sides absorbing each other’s points, so as to move to a higher level together.
In short, the book just happened to supplement a specific lack of knowledge among Asians. It was a book that Taiwan needed at this moment in time, and it also reflected the accurate judgment and outstanding knowledge and experience of publishers.
Era of dreams in motion
If Lin Keh-hsiao hadn’t died in an accident in the mountains, many people wouldn’t have been moved by the passion and persistence toward realizing dreams that he demonstrates in In Search of a Path.
In an article titled “In Search of a Path for Reunions in this Era,” publisher Shen Yunzong cites two books: Sun Dawei’s Reunions Backwards and Forwards and Lin’s In Search of a Path, which was his only book.
Sun Dawei is the “godfather” of the advertising industry, but his life outside of advertising—from growing flowers and planting trees to long-distance cycling—is even more remarkable. Lin was general manager at a financial holding company, but in another capacity he climbed mountains. From an original focus on reaching summits, he turned toward looking to “find a path”—and ultimately a story—in the mountains around Yilan’s Nan’ao. The two authors will forever be much loved and respected.
“The reverence in which fans hold them in fact represents the fans’ expectations about their own lives,” says Shen Yuncong. “What kind of lives are we leading? Apart from earning a livelihood, will we be able to ignite our passions and realize our dreams of changing the world?”
Books published in 2011 in the “realizing one’s dreams” genre twinkle like stars in the sky. But what these dreamers want isn’t the health, wealth and happiness of ordinary folk.
In This Is the Way Home, Song Ruixiang describes joining Doctors Without Borders and practicing medicine in Liberia and Yemen, where he learned to humbly confront suffering. In The Courage of 40 Below, Chen Yanbo describes how he signed a waiver of liability for death in order to run a marathon in the Arctic.
By pondering the state of the book market, one can—by recognizing people’s efforts to reorganize their lives and activate their dreams—advance toward the future with great hope.