During the five-day Beijing International Book Fair which wound up last Sunday, talked to John Makinson, chairman and CEO of the Penguin Group, Gabrielle Coyne, CEO of Penguin Group Asia Pacific, and Jo Lusby, managing director of Penguin China, about the publisher's China operations and publishing trends on the mainland.
We already had a presence on the mainland in 2005 when Jo established the business here. But up to that point we were mainly acting as a sales and distribution office, making sure Penguin books were available in major foreign-language bookstores in Beijing and other cities. When Jo arrived, we began to think differently. We acquired the world rights outside China to Wolf Totem (by Jiang Rong), a high-profile acquisition, and that established our reputation here.
We're now more active in the domestic Chinese publishing market. This year, for example, we published the memoirs of tennis player Li Na in partnership with [state-owned investment company] Citic. Other Chinese-language titles are to follow. Some of the content we are acquiring here is just for publication in China, but a lot is for publication in English around the world. Paul French's Midnight in Peking was originally published by Penguin China in English for the Asia region. It became a local best-seller and we are now publishing it internationally.
About 80 per cent of our imported English books are read by Chinese, many of whom want to improve their English. So we came up with a bilingual series to tap that market, allowing people to read quality books and learn English at the same time. Most of [our] books for children are also bilingual.