Last October, Liu Chengzhong, an employee of the China International Publishing Group, attended the Frankfurt Book Fair. During his visit, he and his colleagues were swept off their feet, most notably in securing many contracts on copyright licensing.

In recent years, the copyright licensing business has flourished in the Chinese book market, as born out by the importation of best sellers like Who Moved My Cheese?, Jack: Straight From the Gut, and the Harry Potter series.

In May 2004, the State Council abolished the regulation of examining and approving the establishment of copyright agencies, which brought fierce competition between publishing companies, private book sellers, foreign publishing institutions and a host of companies conceptualizing and writing books in the imported book market.

At present, large domestic publishing companies have paid more attention to long and stable cooperation, while controlling the total volume of copyright licensing trade.

Domestic and foreign publishing companies are also cooperating with each other, with Chinese publishing companies inviting foreign authors to give lectures or hold symposiums in China. Cooperation between the Thomson Corp. and the People’s Education Press has brought a market of 7.2 million books with not only considerable profits but also famous brands.

According to Shi Hongjun, General Manager of the Beijing Central Horizon Culture and Communication Co., his company has three channels to source information on book imports: the Internet, foreign publishers and copyright agencies.

“We pay timely attention to the best seller list of foreign books and the trend of the best sellers. In addition, dozens of foreign book agents will feed us the latest book information. Even when some books are still being written, we will be notified,” said Shi.

The Beijing Central Horizon Culture and Communication Co., founded in June 2002, is a brand-new book and communication company, affiliated to the Shanghai Century Publishing Group. To introduce books of important academic thinking, the Beijing Central Horizon Culture and Communication Co. has set up a panel of academic advisors, regularly held academic exchanges and a decision making process on the best kind of books to import.

“Academic books that we import and then publish are ground breaking. Four or five years ago, we bought the copyright of nine books by Carl Schmitt, a German thinker on constitutions. At that time, it didn’t warrant much attention. But in the last two years, Carl Schmitt has become hot property. It’s much cheaper to buy copyrights earlier.”