China’s 2017 book sales continue upward curve

China’s printed book sales in the first half of 2017 have showed revenue growth year on year of “above 10%”, according to book-sales data company OpenBook, which released the figure at the Beijing International Book Fair (23rd–27th August).

OpenBook does not give precise figures until the year end, but China’s book sales total for 2016 stood at ¥70.1bn (£8.25bn), a rise of 12.3% on 2015’s figure (¥62.4bn, or £7.34bn). Totals are calculated on list price, as OpenBook does not measure discounting.

Yuval Noah Harari has been a big hit in the first half of 2017, with the Chinese edition of Homo Deus (CITIC Publishing House) the top-selling non-fiction title and Sapiens (also CITIC) the third-bestselling. Sandwiched between the two is Gao Ming’s long-term hit Genius on the Left, Lunatic on the Right (Wu Han University Press), a study of what the world looks like to the mentally ill.

In 2017’s first-half fiction bestseller list, Japanese mystery writer Higashino Keigo occupies several chart positions, and his Miracles of the Namiya General Store (Kadokawa) tops it. Translations of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (Shanghai Translation Publishing House) and Claire McFall’s fantasy novel Ferryman (Baihuazhou Literature & Art Publishing House) are also in the top 10.

The children’s first-half chart is led by the latest episode in The Diary of a Smiling Cat series, The Secret of Cherry Lane, by “China’s J K Rowling” Yang Hongying (Tomorrow Publishing House); meanwhile Grass House by Hans Christian Andersen Award-winner Cao Wenxuan (Beijing Education Press) is at number four. The top UK-originated titles in the list are E B White’s classic Charlotte’s Web (Shanghai Translation Publishing House), in eighth, and J K Rowling and Jack Thorne’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (People’s Literature Publishing House) at number 10.

Books written by authors from the US and UK dominate among the foreign titles selling in China’s market in the first half of 2017, according to OpenBook. US-authored titles make up 35% of titles by value (list price), and UK titles 24%. Next up is books by Japanese authors at 13%, French authors (8%), German (4%) and Korean (3%).

OpenBook’s statistics also show that while the number of new titles remains relatively stable (210,300 in 2016), list prices are increasing. The average list price of a new title in 2016, across all categories of general and education/academic publishing, was ¥72.7 (£8.56), up from ¥52.33 (£6.16) in 2012.

OpenBook general manager Jiang Yanping told The Bookseller: “The average cost of a book here is significantly less than outside China, but we are seeing a rise in price. The reasons are firstly the discounting from online bookstores, which is pushing publishers to put the list price up; secondly the rise in the middle class [with the disposable cash to pay more for books]; and thirdly, that publishers are now producing very well-designed, beautiful books [to maintain print sales despite the rise of e-books].”

OpenBook’s figures cover printed book sales only, and are based on representative data from 3,115 physical bookshops including the Xinhua and CITIC chains, and more than 20 online booksellers, including J D and Alibaba’s Tmall, representing 40%–50% of China’s total book sales. Revenue totals are calculated from that base to cover the entire market.

Jiang Yanping told The Bookseller that 2016 had seen accelerating growth in China’s online book retailers, and it was the first year in which total sales of printed books through online channels had exceeded sales of them through bricks-and-mortar stores.