The bookstores on Beijing's West Chang An Boulevard are packed on both working days and holidays. A petite Miss Wang is leafing through Separate Ways by the Taiwanese author Jimmy. She says that she lives in the suburbs and that it takes her an hour to get here, but that she comes every week to peruse the offerings: "It makes me feel that I'm not too far from a world of beauty."
"Jimmy's books will set you back RMB25 each-they're really too expensive-but I have collected several," says Wang, who also professes a fondness for inspirational books. When her spirits are low, she turns to Liu Yung's essays to help pick her up. She sells clothes in a shopping center and hopes to have her own boutique some day. These Taiwanese authors help motivate her to strive toward that dream.
Listening to Wang talk with confidence and composure, several college girls crowd around. Giggling and talking over each other, they say how much they like Wang Wenhua's Protein Girl: "The guys in it were like grown-up versions of the TV soap opera Meteor Garden starring [Taiwan singing group] F4," dreamily said a student named Chen. "I can't wait to start working so I can have romances like those."
The art of success
Taiwan's "urban literature," which reflects the constantly changing trends of the modern metropolis, has found a foothold with the mainland's fashion-happy bourgeoisie. Mainland readers can relate to Taipei, as opposed to Europe and America, and young readers can feel that similar romances are in their own futures two or three years down the road. It's that sense of possibility that readers find so alluring.
The success of Taiwanese career-minded inspirational books can be explained by the similar emphasis on success found in all Chinese societies. Yet Wu Hsing-wen, a longtime observer of the Chinese-language book market who represents Yuan Liou Publishing in Beijing, explains that sales growth for motivational books in mainland China has coincided with a decline in Taiwan.
"Several years ago, Taiwanese readers were indulging in these motivational books for comfort and drive," Wu recalls. "But in recent years, as Western self-help books of a more psychological nature have come into the market in a big way, readers have gradually got a handle on their own emotions and are less reliant on motivational literature." Nevertheless, Wu says that in step with rapid economic development on the mainland, books on the "art of success" have become very popular there. He thinks that motivational books professing to build ambition and heal psychological wounds quickly should be popular in the PRC for years to come.
Simultaneous publishing
Regardless of readers' likes-whether they be for urban fiction, illustrated books or works of inspiration-Taiwan's publishing industry has developed a bag of tricks for success based on its long experience with the free market. When these methods were transplanted to mainland China, they met with much faster results.
For writers who are charming speakers, such as Liu Yung and Lin Ching-hsuan, face-to-face contact with readers carries over to increased book sales. To promote his books in the mainland, Liu Yung goes on three-week lecture tours twice a year to promote his new releases. For his part, Lin Ching-hsuan has visited more than ten mainland cities and 100 universities. The two lecture in huge auditoriums, and sometimes the audiences are so large that there has to be increased security to maintain order.
But it's a model suitable only to authors willing to demean themselves. As a whole, mainland writers are either concerned with popular urban lit or more focused on their own high personal expectations about their work. Few are candidates to write popular motivational books, let alone take long tours around the country to publicize these books.
As opposed to authors' hitting the road to publicize motivational books, illustrated books and urban fiction rely more on commercial packaging. "The Chinese media have become more 'entertainment oriented' in recent years," says Wang Dong, a planner for Beijing's Alpha Books. "They have started to use the same models for promoting books as for publicizing film and television stars." Wang says that, by providing excerpts for newspaper literary supplements, writing adaptations for plays, holding book signings and being constantly alert to market reactions, the mainland publishing industry has already got a handle on what to do for "urban literature" and "youth literature."
While there exists a time lag for the popularity of literary works from Taiwan in the PRC, Taiwanese and Hong Kong stars have recently begun to release their photo albums in the mainland at the same time they come out at home. This can be attributed to the impact of the singing group F4. Last year F4 startled observers with their ability to capture the hearts of the Chinese-speaking world. Soon after Linking Publishing published a photo album for the group in Taiwan, the mainland publisher Bai Bing took an exchange trip to Taiwan. Taking advantage of this opportunity, as soon as he landed in Taiwan he immediately went to Linking to sign a contract for rights to publish the album in the mainland. Pointing out that there is no time lag for the popularity of singing stars in Taiwan and the mainland and that stars' photo albums are frequently pirated, Linking's assistant general manager Wang Cheng-hui says that the company is now publishing simultaneously in Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China. In fact, they have single printings of tens of thousands of copies on the mainland, whose market shows much greater potential.
Breaking up before dawn
Apart from books from Taiwan, a series of homegrown novels about teenage rebellion have also been very popular in the PRC. These novels reflect the rapid social change that has occurred on the mainland as a generation of only children has come of age. The works of Han Han are most representative of this genre and are very popular with younger readers.
When he was 16, Han Han became an overnight sensation with the publication of his novel Three Doors. Not academically inclined, he decided against attending Fudan University in Shanghai after graduating from high school. The rebellious nature of his books brings to mind Refusing to Take the Joint Entrance Exam, which was written by Wu Hsiang-hui in Taiwan two decades earlier. These books are regarded as books "by bad kids, for bad kids." There are numerous young writers on the mainland now attempting to gain a name for themselves by following Han Han's model. Han himself is rich and famous. Like Taiwan singing idol Lin Chih-ying, Han is fond of racing expensive cars.
Another salient feature of mainland publishing is a growing number of works that push the limits of government regulations about explicit sex. Shanghai Honey, an erotic novel by the female writer Wei Hui, stirred up a major controversy. Recently, true accounts of one-night stands have been all the rage. Once Breaking Up Before the Dawn hit the best-seller lists, it was quickly followed by Breaking Up Before the First Light of Day and Not Breaking Up After the Dawn. Each was more provocative than the last, and all sold well.
Shen Chang-wen, former general manager of Beijing's SDX Joint Publishing, says that there are currently two factors that the government uses to evaluate the heads of publishing houses: (1) political correctness and (2) sales record. Since works that push the limits on explicit sex have already come out, they pose little political risk and offer a proven path toward high profits. Hence, publishers are swarming like hornets to publish these kind of books.
New works by Jimmy?
The more the market for books thrives, the more it attracts pirated editions. The mainland media calls pirated editions an "incurable cancer" of the publishing industry there. If a book becomes a bestseller, it is sure to be pirated. Sun Qingguo, the vice general manager of the Open Book Market Consulting Center, points out that printing was one of the first industries for which the PRC implemented market liberalization. As a result, printing plants have sprung up like mushrooms after a downpour. The publishers (as an upstream segment of the publishing industry) are still subject to restrictions on how many books they can print, but the printers will print what customers bring them whether they're legal or not. And the more work the printers have the more tax revenues go to local governments, which consequently tend to turn a blind eye.
Insufficient understanding of copyrights is another reason for the rampant piracy. Recently, the Taiwanese author Jimmy and Taiwan's Locus Publishing initiated a lawsuit in the PRC. The mainland's Taihai Publishing had published a book which was a compendium directly cut and pasted from Jimmy's Smiling Fish, The Moon Forgets, and Turn Right, Turn Left. The book acknowledges Jimmy as the author and Taihai published it directly through legal channels. The case has caused a reassessment of respect for copyrights within the mainland publishing industry. "It has given the mainland publishing industry a chance to reflect and learn," says Shen Chang-wen.
Another problem involving mainland publishers and readers are "knockoffs." To use the example of Jimmy once again, beginning last year there appeared a variety of books written by authors whose names are written using Chinese characters that are either homonyms of Jimmy in Chinese or visually very similar. Since these don't directly infringe upon his copyrights, it is difficult to take legal action against them.
The mainland publishing market has only just begun to heat up. In a large market, full of temptation in the form of good profits to be made, some disorder is to be expected. But for the long run, one can't help but have high expectations about the potential for the mainland publishing industry and its writers' ability to produce great work.
Ngan Shun Kau, the vice general manager of Hong Kong's Cosmos Books, points out that there are relatively few periodicals in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and it's not common for the same work to be published in different publications. As a result, it's hard for writers to look at writing as their principal way of making a living, and this greatly impedes their ability to write. The situation is quite different in mainland China, where it is common for writers-both the famous and the unheralded-to have the same piece published some dozen times in publications large and small around the country. Relative to the cost of living, the writing fees there are quite ample, and writers who produce enough work should definitely be able to make a living off their writing.
Under the circumstances, the publishing industry has tremendous potential and should move in the direction of the European and American models.
