The trends in translated books highlight broader shifts in reader tastes. The waxing and waning in popularity of various genres on the one hand reflects changing public tastes, but at the same time points to the vitality of the industry's marketing campaigns. Books have become yet another parcel of popular culture.
Taiwan's translated book market began to emerge in the 1980s. At that time most of the imported titles pertained to business management, career advancement, and other concerns of the workplace. Later on, books on personal finance and self-motivation became popular.
The motivational books are still around, but their content has changed a bit from the tender aphorisms of Chicken Soup for the Soul (Morning Star Publishing Inc., 1970) to the empowering rhetoric of titles like The Secret and Law of Attraction (both published in 2007 by Fine Press Publishing Co. Ltd.), or A Complaint Free World (China Times Publishing Company, 2008)
Chen Yu-Shiuan observes that novels have always had a core contingent of readers, but as the market has continued to mature, that number continues to expand. People are turning to foreign books for different reasons than before; whereas in the past it was primarily to obtain some sort of practical insight, nowadays the focus is on literary quality and pure reading pleasure.
So, which books do Taiwanese readers like the most?
"The tearjerkers, of course!" says Gray Tan. Emily Chuang finds that observation amusing as well as accurate, but she does offer the qualification that they can't be abject tragedies-it's best for them to serve up a little sweetness along with the pain "or else readers won't be able to bring themselves to recommend them to their friends, and that affects sales!"
Wang Ruolan feels that the global novel craze has begun to cool a bit from the feverish pitch of 2004. The market has become oversaturated by the glut of lengthy books that hit the press every year, and reader fatigue has manifested itself in declining sales figures.
For instance, Ecus Publishing House's 2007 translated titles The Book Thief, The Thirteenth Tale, and A Thousand Splendid Suns all sold in the hundreds of thousands. The best books put out by the competition recorded sales of 40-50,000. In the last few years, however, a book that sells 20,000 copies in a year is deemed a bestseller. Is there another refreshing tale waiting out there to rekindle the imaginations of the readers? Or is it time to leave the novel behind and set sights on something else? These are the questions that all publishers face at the present.
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