The contract on the copyright of The DaVinci Code, a new world best seller work of fiction, was signed when it had just moved into the best seller list. Shi Hongjun noted that when reading Eastern and Western fictions, there are big cultural discrepancies. “What is popular in the West may not be sold well in China. When investing in The DaVinci Code, we were taking risks. This year, we have imported a similar work of fiction-The Dante Club, sales of which have been satisfactory. It seems that suspense thrillers with Western history or culture as backgrounds does have a market in China,” Shi said.

“Overseas demand for Chinese books is still not that big. No market means more investing risks. Especially, when there are no good sales channels, it will be difficult to deliver books to target readers. So we are now attaching more importance to copyright import,” continued Shi.

There are also individual book dealers rushing to exploit the market themselves. Wang Ming used to work with a publishing company, and got to know many people in the book industry. After retirement, he relied on his knowledge of the market and planned a set of books on finance. After negotiating with the author, Wang first sold the draft of the books to the publishing company he had worked for, and proposed that he himself would have exclusive selling rights on some of the books. After the books were sold, Wang made a small fortune from the intermediary fee.

Furthermore, some world-renowned copyright agencies also consider the Chinese market promising. Andrew Nurnberg Associates Ltd., one of the three leading literary agencies in the United Kingdom, formally set up a representative office in Beijing in 2002. The Shin Won Agency Co., the largest literary agency in the Republic of Korea, opened an office in Beijing in 2003. The Soko Information Technology Co., invested together by the Japan-based Mitsubishi Corp. and Shufunotomo Co. Ltd., was also quietly set up in Shanghai on April 26, 2004.

Tokuda Hitoshi, General Manager of the Soko Information Technology Co., said that the Asian information market has been developing rapidly toward an integral and comprehensive market. The Soko Information Technology Co., based in Japan and China, and using the whole of Asia as its market, is becoming a comprehensive information company. It is also engaged in spreading modern “Japanese Cool” to China.

The Shufunotomo Co. Ltd., the second largest shareholder of the Soko Information Technology Co., accessed the Chinese market in 1994. Ray and ef, under its authorization and cooperation with the China Light Industry Press, have become the first and second in sales volume among vogue magazines in the Chinese market. Latest statistics show that Ray, 20 yuan ($2.42) per copy, has a monthly circulation of 610,000 copies and ef’s monthly circulation now sits at 510,000 copies. Circulation of similar magazines is often less than half of theirs.

With the opening up of the publishing industry, competition among energetic private and foreign capital and state-owned publishing companies has already begun and copyright licenses are set to remain an important part of the publishing business.