Looking Back on the Year in Books

Economic crises didn’t let up for a single day all year. The European debt crisis remained unsolved. The To­hoku earthquake hit Japan, causing a devastating tsunami and the nuclear disaster in Fu­ku­shima. The death of Steve Jobs took a real bite out of Apple. And ever-mutating type-B influenza wrought havoc as a silent killer.

But glimpsed from another angle, 2011 was also a year in which the people of Taiwan witnessed so many dreams attained: the International Flora Expo opened with great splendor, golfer ­Yani Tseng became the youngest women’s world champion in history, and You Are the Apple of My Eye by Giddens Ko shockingly surpassed Stephen Chow’s Kungfu Hustle as the highest-grossing Chinese-language film in Hong Kong’s history.

Fig. 1: Active publishers in Taiwan, 2004–2010/source: Ministry of Finance monthly statistics, Dec 2010

The publishing industry’s long-held dream—one it had long thirsted after but never really believed it would attain—was suddenly realized: Taiwan became a bastion of Chinese-language literature. As the sails of the domestic book industry filled, the story of advancing toward one’s dreams, with locally written books outshining translated ones, turned out to be the biggest surprise of Taiwan’s book market in 2011.

In November of 2011, Chen Fang-ming, author of A History of Modern Taiwanese Literature and chair of the Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature at National Chengchi University, pointed out that people in Taiwan are used to having a wide selection of books to purchase and read, but that they haven’t yet realized the book industry’s commercial strength and potential for exports. Gaining strength by the day, Taiwan has already become a center of the Chinese publishing industry. Authors writing in Chinese from Hong Kong, Malaysia, mainland China and all over the world are increasingly selecting Taiwan as where they publish their work. Authors such as Dong Qi­zhang and Li Zi­shu, for instance, have published their best work in Taiwan.

Mainland authors even publish first in Taiwan and then on the mainland. And there are always mainland writers competing for Taiwan’s big literary prizes.

What’s more, a bright new generation of authors has arrived to much fanfare. In “Memorandum on Taiwan’s Next Literary Boom,” the final chapter in A History of Modern Taiwanese Literature, Chen Fang-ming writes: “After a long evolution spanning 80 years, Taiwan’s literary achievements are equal to those of any other Asian nation. From the standpoint of content and technique, Taiwan’s literature has inner tension, demonstrates rich imagination, and boasts all manner of ever-changing techniques. In style and feel, Taiwan’s writers can go head to head with the writers of any other locale or era.”

The idea that the present is a golden age of literature in Taiwan is reflected in the China Times’ selection of the year’s best literary works. In 2011, 60% of the 54 books listed were originally written in Chinese. It was the first time in many years that Chinese originals surpassed translated works in both quantity and quality.

Fig. 2: New book titles published in Taiwan, 2004–2010/source: New Books: Recent Publications in Taiwan, ROC

Let’s start by looking at sales: the rising tide of Chinese-language literature was already apparent in 2010, with works by authors such as Matilda Tao, Kevin Tsai, Deng Hui­wen, Essay Liu, and Wu Nien-jen. That success among local authors continued in 2011.

In summing up the year, the Kingstone Bookstore chain stated: “Sales of translations saw a decline, but Taiwan-produced novels, comic books, health and wellness books, and biographies of luminaries all had outstanding years.” Among those various kinds of strong sellers, print editions of online “young adult” novels marketed to high-school students did particularly well.

The top five names on Kingstone’s bestseller list—Giddens Ko, Yuwo, Moren, Shui­quan, and Zhang­lian—are all writers of young adult fiction. Consequently, among all genres, Kingstone’s online bookstore has uniquely selected “young adult fiction” for a special marketing campaign and assigned a team to focus on it.

Taiwan’s biggest online bookstore, books.com.tw, had 4.3 million members, who purchased a total of 12.35 million books. That represented growth of 16% over 2010. But with a marked slowdown in the second half of the year, it was also the first time in many years that annual growth didn’t surpass 20%. Book consumption seems in step with the economy—which is to say that sales of books on the top 10 or top 100 list also declined about 10–20%.

At the same time that Taiwan has become a center of Chinese-language literature, the market for literary novels has declined. None of the China Times’ top 10 Chinese-language literary books was listed by books.com.tw among the top 100 sellers of the year.

In 2011 translated books weren’t as hot as in previous years. On the other hand, books by local authors sold well. The photo shows the Cité Bookstore.

Sales of translated literary novels were hit particularly hard. For several years, as a result of The Kite Runner’s unanticipated strong sales in 2005, there had been a surge of translated foreign literature, with rising prices for the Chinese-language rights to those books. Now the market for those books has cooled greatly. The riches proved illusory.

Industry analysts have proposed several reasons for the decline: First of all, the Kite Runner, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the Harry Potter series did not turn readers into dependable consumers of literature. Secondly, editors became too reliant on copyright agents, rather than cultivating good judgment of their own about books and learning how to communicate with readers.

Japanese books have proven to be the one exception among the generally poor showing for translated books. Japanese series of practical health and wellness books have maintained a stable position in Taiwan’s market, and every so often one becomes a huge hit. But now, hits among Japanese books are no longer confined to those practical books, or novels by Ha­ruki Mu­ra­kami. Since Confession became an overnight sensation, all of Mi­nato Ka­nae’s novels have sold well. In books.com.tw’s list of the 50 top-selling literary novels, Ka­nae has five. She has proven to be more of a commercial force than long-time stalwarts such as Mi­yabe Mi­yuki, Shu­ichi Yo­shida and ­Keigo Hi­ga­shino.

There were at least three months during 2011 when Japanese titles occupied half of books.com.tw’s bestseller list. What’s more, bestsellers from Europe and the United States don’t necessarily become hits in Taiwan, but Western books that are bestsellers in Japan or Korea—countries with similar cultural backgrounds to Taiwan—usually do sell well here. Michael Sandel’s Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? is an excellent example.

Fig. 3: Publishing industry revenue in Taiwan, 2004–2010/source: Ministry of Finance statistics, Dec 2010

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.

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.

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.

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.