It has taken more than 70 years, but Penguin has finally arrived in China. The British publisher has announced that classics such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist, Crime and Punishment and Moby Dick will be translated into Mandarin and sold under the Penguin 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 British firm marketing Chinese literature and the works of Marx and Engels to a population of 1,3-billion people.
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 Penguin 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, Dostoyevksy and Melville are well known in China, though they are less popular than domestic classics such as The Dream of Red Chambers, 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 $300-million a year. Industry sources say 400 new titles are launched every day, though only 6% are translations. Reflecting the mood of a country in a hurry to get ahead, almost half of all publications sold are textbooks.
At the opening of the recent annual Beijing International Book Fair, Yu Yongzhan, deputy administrator of the government’s press and publications administration, said the country’s 573 publishing houses produced 6,4-billion books last year, including 128 578 new titles. With the addition of newspapers and magazines, he estimated the value of the publishing market in 2003 at $25-billion.
But, despite more than 25 years of reforms that have transformed other parts of the economy, China’s publishing sector has been slow to open to outside competition.
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 ($2,75) each, the revenue will hardly make an impact on the global balance sheet, but Penguin chairperson 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.”
Rampant copyright piracy has deterred many foreign firms amid estimates that 50% to 90% of book sales are from fakes. But Penguin said its ”black classic” series would be less vulnerable than big hits such as Harry Potter because they sold more slowly. — Â