Books
Tuesday, 12 January 2010 03:01
Written by JFK Miller

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The famous book publisher is betting its future in China on locals reading English

China may not have saved the world from economic Armageddon, but it has helped one of the world’s oldest publishers maintain a steady growth rate in China over the last year.

British publisher Penguin has ridden out the economic downturn and consequent diminished buying habits among expats thanks to the strength of its market among local Chinese readers of English.

“We’ve seen a lot of our expat accounts shrink this year,” says Jo Lusby, head of Penguin China. “But our sales have continued to grow and I put that down entirely to our outreach to Chinese readers in English.”

When Penguin first entered China five years ago, 80 percent of its books were being bought by foreign nationals. Now, says Lusby, their market is about 55 percent expat, 45 percent Chinese.

Starting next year, Lusby says Penguin China will pioneer a new push by marketing exclusively to local Chinese readers of English. But the new strategy is a gamble. An imported English-language book costs four times more than a comparable Chinese-language one. However, Lusby believes local readers won’t mind paying more because of the status which reading an imported book gives them.

“We have found that if someone’s English is good enough to read a novel or a non-fiction book in English, they can afford it and they don’t actually mind paying more,” says Lusby. “It’s almost like being seen reading a black Penguin classic on the subway. You kind of almost want to be seen reading this nice edition, imported from overseas with a nice jacket and nice binding.”

Among the authors being pushed to Chinese readers are chick-lit pioneer Marian Keyes who, Lusby admits, is unknown in China.

“Nobody has heard of her, nobody knows about her, which is a challenge for us. This is why we want to focus on marketing her next year,” says Lusby.

Lusby has faith in Keyes’ appeal to young Chinese women.

“We think they will absolutely fall in love with her,” she says. “Marian’s writing style and the subjects she covers and the way she covers them strikes an instant chord with all the Chinese women who have read her that I know. She’s a very human writer. A lot of the London and New York-based writing is too remote, people can’t develop a relationship with it. Marian doesn’t write Carrie Bradshaw-type characters. Her characters are slightly exotic, but she clearly speaks to a generation of young, urban working women in their mid-20s to mid-30s.”

To market Keyes, Penguin China will begin a broad Internet-based viral campaign to try to create buzz among its target readership – young women who work in big companies who speak decent English and who will recognize Keyes’ characters in themselves.

Another author Penguin China is pushing to local readers is Colm Toibin, the Irish author writer of Brooklyn, which was longlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize.

“Colm’s writing style is very spare,” says Lusby. “His language is very accessible, but incredibly evocative, very beautiful, very literary, but very simple. So the language is not a barrier. It’s not a difficult read. Linguistically, it’s very straightforward.”

“The story he writes in Brooklyn is about someone stuck in a village in 1950s Ireland who feels like they’re not moving on, nothing’s happening, it’s boring, and life and opportunity exist in America. So they get on a boat and go halfway around the world and meet an entirely different society, and they meet someone and fall in love. And then mum back home gets sick and the siblings phone and say, ‘Come back home, you’ve got to come now, your mum needs you.’”

Lusby says the theme of Brooklyn made it an obvious choice to include on Penguin China’s list for local readers – the idea of someone moving from a secondary city to a big city, or from somewhere in China to the US or UK.

Says Lusby, “The idea of moving from where life is not moving on, to this perception of opportunity and growth, either right on the doorstep or halfway around the world, and then how you reconcile these two worlds that are completely apart from each other. Are you being selfish by pursuing life on your own in a different place? Is your obligation to go back home? Even Blind Freddy on a galloping horse can see the similarities between this story and contemporary China.”

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