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It has taken more than 70 years, but Penguin has finally arrived
in China. The British publisher announced yesterday in Beijing that
classics such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights,
Oliver Twist, Crime and Punishment and Moby
Dick would be translated into Chinese and sold under its logo
in the world's fastest growing book market.
The first 10 novels will go on sale in November under a
licensing deal with a local partner that could eventually see the
UK firm marketing Chinese literature and the works of Marx and
Engels.
They are unlikely to hit the bestseller lists in a country
where, with the exception of Harry Potter, the most
popular publications are usually management guides, self-help books
and biographies of the rich and famous.
But the British firm is betting that the titles, which also
include Dante's Inferno, Victor Hugo's Hunchback of
Notre Dame and Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection, will have
a long shelf life and beat off competition through the quality of
their translations, expert introductions and copious footnotes.
Works by the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Dostoyevsky and
Melville are well known in China, though they are less popular than
domestic classics such as The Dream of Red Mansion, which
is enjoying a revival 200 years after it was written by Cao
Xueqin.
With the economy surging, all publications benefit from a market
that is growing by more than US$300 million a year. Industry
sources say 400 new titles are launched every day, though only 6
percent are translations.
At the opening of the Beijing International Book Fair, Yu
Yongzhan, deputy head of the government's press and publications
administration, said the country's 573 publishing houses produced
6.4 billion books, including 128,578 new titles, in 2005. With the
addition of newspapers and magazines, he estimated the value of the
publishing market in 2003 at 193.7 billion yuan (US$24.2
billion).
Penguin, which was founded in 1935, has previously sold the
rights to English-language titles, but this is its first venture
into the market under its own logo.
It is a cautious first step. Under an agreement with Chongqing
Publishing Group, the print run for the first 10 titles will be
just 10,000 copies. At 20 yuan (US$2.5) each, the revenue will
hardly make an impact on the global balance sheet, but Penguin's
chairman, John Makinson, said the company was looking at China as a
long-term market. "We want to establish the Penguin brand in the
Chinese market."
(China Daily August 31, 2006)
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