Macmillan's 100k Chinese deal

Macmillan has paid £100,000‹a record breaking figure--for a Chinese bestseller which reinterprets Confucius for the modern age. The sum, twice the amount ever before paid for world English rights in a Chinese book, trumps the previous record-holder, Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem, which cost Penguin $100,000 in September 2005. The deal was struck by Toby Eady at Toby Eady Associates with Macmillan. Atria has US rights, and Eady has also sold foreign rights to Longanesi in Italy, Droemer in Germany, Belfond in France, and Balans in Holland.

Professor Yu Dan Explains the Analects is pitched by Eady as the Chinese Chicken Soup for the Soul, and is based on seven lectures that Yu Dan gave in 2006 on China Central Television's prime-time show "The Lecture Room". A bestselling if controversial study of Confucius, which applies his teachings to the world today, the book has sold over 10 million copies for Chinese publisher Zhonghua Publishing.

Macmillan plans to publish in the UK in the early summer of 2009, and Yu Danwill visit the UK for publication. The book is being translated by Esther Tyldesley. Yu Dan, 41, is a media scholar at Beijing Normal University.