Beijing bookworm Yang Yalian takes great pleasure in collecting autographed copies of best-selling books. "Buying the right books is as hard as making friends with the right people," Yang said. "Once I hit upon a delicately made book that not only arrests my eyes but also wins my heart, I develop an emotional attachment with it and its author.

"The book, the signature and the intimate encounter with the author will be long kept as part of my personal history." 

Among her favorites are Yi Zhongtian, a Chinese language professor who re-interprets, in a fun-provoking fashion, the classical Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms (San Guo Zhi); Huang Jianxiang, a former China Central Television sports anchor who reveals insiders' sports stories, and Yi Nengjing, a singer/actress from Taiwan and mother of a 4-year-old boy, who sells her "beauty formulas".

The IT company clerk is willing to sacrifice weekends queuing up in the cold for hours to get autographs, and if she is lucky enough, a photo with the celebrity-authors.

Yang is one of the millions of Chinese readers who are turning authors into overnight millionaires, Xu Shengguo, a publishing industry researcher, said.

Hooked on history

Last year's book market was dominated by works written by celebrities or non-professional authors, alongside the translated works by some famed international authors. This trend is expected to continue this year, Xu said.

Probably the most conspicuous phenomenon has been the success of books about Chinese history, particularly about influential figures and treacherous power fights, said Cang Song, a Beijing-based publisher.

Books about modern Chinese events and characters were also favored by readers, said Bu Changwei, a book critic with the Beijing Times.

One example is Wang Shuzeng's Long March, which coincided with the 70th anniversary of the Red Army's successful completion of the strategic diversion of forces in the 1930s.

Wang spent six years writing the book, researching military archives and interviewing more than 100 Red Army veterans who survived the Long March. "Among the many books similar in topic, Wang's stands out for its first-hand material, vivid descriptions and fresh perspectives," said Gui Jie, a book critic with China Youth Daily.

Another example is culture critic Zha Jianying's The 1980s, a nostalgic recount of the era through interviews with 12 people who are considered cultural activists of the 1980s but later disappeared almost entirely from the cultural scene.

Paperback writer

The year 2006 also brought the rise of amateur authors thanks to the interaction among movies, TV shows and the publishing industry.

Nowadays, most Chinese blockbuster films, such as Curse of the Golden Flower, are packaged with promotional products including books based on the film script, said Zhao Mingyu, a book critic with Beijing Star Daily. Some popular TV drama series have also yielded spin-off books, she said.

The best examples are books by Professor Yi Zhongtian and Yu Dan. Yu is a media scholar at Beijing Normal University.

Yu Dan's Understanding of The Analects has sold 900,000 copies. Since its release last July in Shanghai, Yi Zhongtian Appreciates The Three Kingdoms has sold at least 600,000 copies.

These books' popularity comes directly from the Lecture Room, a top-rated daily show on CCTV 10, which Yu helped design to cater to people's interest in history.

However, these TV shows have also had negative impacts on the book market, said Yan Dong, a researcher with China Book Business News.

"The popularity of TV show-related books have actually blocked readers' access to a large number of lesser-known but better-written books," Yan said.

"The books by celebrity professors showing up at the Lecture Show are nothing but leftovers of the popular TV program," he said

Profits have driven some publishers to sacrifice diversity, which is needed for the healthy growth of the market, he said.

"Unlike TV and the Internet, which are very aggressive, books maintain an equal, casual and intimate relationship with the reader," he said

"Reading books plays a key role in nurturing people's inner world and this cannot be substituted with TV shows."

Taking advantage of the weak domestic fiction sector, a roster of foreign books, both fictional and non-fictional, have sold well in the Chinese book market, said Sun Shunlin, a publisher with People's Literature Publishing House.

Foreign titles topping the book charts across the country in 2006 include Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, My Name is Red by Nobel Prize laureate Orhan Pamuk, and The World is Flat by three-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Thomas L. Friedman.

One of the best-selling books at the Beijing Book Mansion, a major bookstore in the capital, was the Snoopy diary, which contains snippets from the Peanuts character.

More Chinese were trying to better understand the modern world, inflated by new technological advancements and economic globalization, said Sun Songjun, a Beijing-based publisher.

"Most Chinese readers today can hardly finish reading original English books or books in other languages. Reading translated novels and non-fiction has so far been their best choice," said Sun.

(China Daily January 16, 2007)