The story gets better for publishers

The key to change

When Li Xueqian, president of China Children's Press and Publication Group attempted to reform the company, he was weighed down by the burdens of tradition and the conservative mindset.

"I soon realized the key to turning things around was that all my colleagues unanimously believed that we had to and ought to change, but hadn't been told to change," Li said.

He started to educate the senior staff, who thought they were above market operations, reformed the human resources system and encouraged creativity by instigating performance evaluations.

By September, CCPP had published 5 million copies of its best-selling children's series, based on the game Plants vs Zombies, which has now achieved legendary status in the Chinese book market.

After gaining authorization to use images from Popcap Games, the game's creator, the group quickly planned a series of storybooks, 3D jigsaw puzzles and exercise books.

In a previous interview with China Daily, James Gwertzman, general manager of PopCap Asia-Pacific, said the company's US headquarters is interested in a Chinese recreation of the game and is considering global publication of the books.

In the past, senior editors were sent to international book fairs as a perk of the job. "Now we only send young staff members and assign them serious tasks, asking them to discover exactly what's going on and what's in on the global book scene," Li said. "And they once return, they report, formulate new plans and execute them."

"In this way, we become sensitive to trends and become open to crossovers with other cultural areas and that's how we became aware of the game's popularity," said Lin Dong, one of the key planners of the series.

The global future

Chinese publishers operated 459 overseas branches and companies in 2011, according to the GAPP, and the number may have risen since those statistics were compiled.

Among the overseas operations, 20 are organized by China International Publishing Group, which has more than 60 years experience of introducing Chinese publications to foreign audiences.

The group relies on three main strategies — going global, branding and talent — according to Zhou, who is a delegate to this week's Party congress.

"Over the years, we found literature, traditional Chinese culture and the language are the three aspects overseas readers like to read the most," he said. "But we're still running hard just to keep up with the increased demand."

One of the group's latest representative books, Why and How the CPC Works in China, caters to this demand. It answers 13 key questions, explaining how the Party has managed to bring prosperity and development to the country.

"The book throws away the cliches about the Party's history. It's cleverly structured and revolves around the questions foreign readers are most likely to ask," said Li Shujuan, the book's editor.

The English version of the book has sold 6,000 copies worldwide, while the Chinese version sold 500,000, said Li.

Meanwhile, the globalization of Chinese books has resulted in two-way traffic.

"We understand the world better, the world accepts our publications better, and in the process of going global, we understand ourselves better and then we produce better books," said Zhou.

He said that although China has amazing contemporary stories to share with the world, "we also value the similarities that Chinese civilization has with global culture."

As the second phase of publishing reform begins, the GAPP's Liu hoped publishers will become more powerful in terms of global competition, will perfect the system and embrace the ties between new technology and publishing.

"Publishing and press will remain the major force in the culture industry," he said, adding that total business is set to increase by 19.2 percent and generate income of 3 trillion yuan by 2015.

"The Chinese market is huge. It's vibrant and is becoming increasingly important to world publishers," said Markus Dohle, chairman and CEO of Random House, who paid his first visit to China last month.

"It was a coincidence, but I was happy because it was the right time to visit China as Mo's win has stirred huge interest in Chinese literature both in and outside the country," he said.

Contact the authors at meijia@chinadaily.com.cn and wangkaihao@chinadaily.com.cn

Song Wenwei contributed to this story.