It appears that Random House, which has bought the rights to the US market for Chris Patten's book on Asian economies from the original UK publisher, HarperCollins, rather jumped the gun with its announcement of July publication to coincide with the first anniversary of the handover.
Not only will the book not be out until the autumn, Mr Patten had not approved the title as given in the Random House summer catalogue - Asia Unbound: the last British Governor of Hong Kong on the new order of East and West. According to HarperCollins, the title will be East and West, possibly with a subtitle about 'peace, freedom and the future'.
We understand Mr Patten was none too pleased, though we have to say that neither title seems Earth-shattering to us. More interesting was Random House's supposed cover illustration - one lone Chinese character. We wonder whether anyone told Mr Patten what our colleagues tell us: that the character is made up. It means nothing.
The Taipei International Book Exhibition runs from February 19 to 24, where rights for Taiwan and China, mostly Chinese-language, will be a hot topic. Foreign book publishers are watching the see-sawing economies of Asia with trepidation: various US company representatives visiting Hong Kong in the past few weeks say talk among regional booksellers is all-gloom as the fall in currency values means book prices have soared.
John Wiley told Publishers Weekly that the next few years would be tough but the firm still believed increasing use of English books meant Asia was a good bet in the long term.
