The Beijing 2007 Book Ordering Fair is considered a market barometer for the coming year. It ended last weekend, drawing about 1,800 book companies and thousands of distributors. The fair garnered 2.45 billion yuan ($314 million) in trade volume, slightly up from the 2.39 billion yuan ($306 million) last January.

However, it was still far less than the record-high of 3 billion yuan ($385 million) in 2005.

"2007 is another tough year for the publishing sector," predicted Qiu Hengming, a book critic with Financial Digest.

Some 10,000 titles of newly published Chinese books are rising sharply in quantity but many are copying from each other, he said.

"Engulfed by piles and piles of look-alike books, in terms of both design and content, readers are struggling to find the right ones to read."

Sun Qingguo, deputy director of the Beijing Kaijuan Book Market Research Institute, China's leading book market monitoring body, agreed.

Sun said slow book distribution delayed many new titles, and the lifespan of most Chinese books had been shortened to less than a year.

Three months after the release of a new book, it had to be taken off the bookstalls to make way for new titles, and this made it hard for most books to make profits, Sun explained.

"While the number of new titles is soaring, the profits for the book business have largely been diluted," he said.

Last year, only about 11 books from six Chinese publishers sold more than 200,000 copies per title.

In contrast, in 2006, the US book market had at least six books that reached more than 1 million copies per title, while another 28 books or book series sold more than 500,000 copies per title.

"China, a nation with the largest population in the world, has great potential to grow in terms of book sales volume and production of best-selling books, if things are viewed from a positive angle," Sun said.

In 2006, fiction accounted for less than 7.5 percent of market share, much less than that of more mature book markets. In the United States, fiction made up 41.8 percent of the market, and 31.5 percent in Germany, 36.8 percent in France and 31.4 percent in the UK in 2006. "I believe fiction will have huge space to grow in coming years," Sun said.

According to Liu Si'en, a Beijing-based book critic, non-fiction books, which sell well, are mostly about history, Chinese classics or celebrities from China and overseas.

A survey released by Kaijuan Book Market Research Institute at the book fair showed the majority of the readers of Chinese books are young people.

The reading ratio for the age group 19-24 is 46.27 percent. For people aged between 25-35 it is 30.2 percent, and for 45 and above, the ratio is a diminutive 3.8 percent.

Those who write book reviews for print media are in their 30s, 40s or even older, posing an incongruity with the younger reading population, Sun said.

Book piracy was another grave concern, analysts say.

Last year, China launched a series of crackdowns. Copyright law enforcement departments have reportedly confiscated at least 28.3 million items of audio-video products, soft ware and books in 370 legal cases.

The war against piracy is expected to continue in coming years.

While best-selling author Yu Dan was making speech last Friday at the Copyright Trade & Forum, part of the Beijing 2007 Book Order-placing Meeting, Liu Huaping, an editor with Arts Review, spotted vendors selling pirated books of Yu's book outside the meeting. Some publishers of pirated books even sneaked into the book fair to get samples of new books, local media reported.

Statistics from the organizing committee indicate that more than 100 sample books disappeared per day during the book fair.

"This is a great threat to the interests of the publishers, and in the long run, to the readers," said Liu Lan, of the organizing committee.

But there is good news for the book market. New media, such as the Internet, are fuelling the enthusiasm for reading the print edition of history and fantasy novels previously posted on the websites and blogs for young netizens, pointed out Ran Maojin, book editor with Literary and Art News.

Ran cited such best-selling fantasy books as Killing the Celestials (Zhuxian) and Ghost Blows off the Light (Gui Chui Deng).

(Source: China Daily January 16, 2007)