A record-high of 1,600 overseas exhibitors are attending the 26th Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) in Beijing this week, seeking opportunities via creative cooperation in the fast-developing Chinese book market.

"The BIBF provides an opportunity for overseas publishers, writers and sinologists to approach and know China, and also for domestic publishers to talk about Chinese stories and recommend Chinese books to foreigners," said Lin Liying, vice president of the China National Publications Import & Export (Group) Corporation (CNPIEC) and general director of the BIBF.

In the past, international cooperation was mainly about copyright trade, but now it has become creative, she said.

Shared concept and marketing

On the first day of the BIBF, Nick Wells, a UK publisher, presented a new logo to the audience – a phoenix in flame.

The logo combines the logo of his company, Flame Tree Publishing, and that of Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing based in Jiangsu, China, symbolizing long-term cooperation between the two with several book series on the way.

"It always takes a long time to understand how a market really works, particularly in China, because it is very different from the English language markets. It's not just a language barrier, but big cultural differences," said Wells, who attended the BIBF for the fifth year.

Sharing same interest in art and literature and advantage in book packaging, the first set of cooperated "Golden Books" titled classic English literature features original English text and annotation and artistic design of gold foil stamping and embossing.

"What I have found is that people are the same. We seem to have the same sense of humor and history, same appreciation of art and literature," said Wells, "That's made a huge difference and changed my attitude and my approach to how we should be working with China – not just trying to sell books in, but to work cooperatively with the people and the publishers in China."

"We have to cooperate with some excellent overseas publishers and some that have developed well in convergence media, by combining our and their concepts, creativity and content," said She Jiangtao, president of Phoenix Publishing and Media Inc, adding that the two will also share distribution in different markets.

"Books' content cannot be changed when it comes to copyright trade. But when we share content and marketing, our products are changed and improved," said She.

The global launch and distribution of classic English works of literature is just a start. Their cooperation is expected to launch an English version of the best Chinese contemporary poetry.

"Hopefully, we'll also be able to extend that with Chinese literature into the English language markets. So we have a true mediation between the two," said Wells.

"We really need to find the right way to remove politics from the whole picture, and focus on the culture, the people and the history that sits behind the culture and civilization," he added.

Chinese content attracts partners

The same idea was shared by DK, the world's top publisher of illustrated reference books for adults and children. DK first came to China in 1992, and now has more than 30 Chinese publishers as partners.

"We're also looking at working more closely with them. So doing books with them on China, we can work with them to make sure that we've got a really good view of both. What the UK thinks, what China thinks of Chinese history. And we've got a couple of books coming out next year based on Chinese history," said Caroline Purslow, the sales director for China and Southeast Asia at DK.

She refers to "China Through Time," a book series developed by Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, one of DK's earliest and most important partners. The series introduces some Chinese symbols, from the Grand Canal, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, to the Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road.

"The book series is planned by us and will be purchased by DK. DK usually does not import copyrights and mainly export copyrights. But they have started to import from us," said Liu Guohui, president of the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House.

The book series will be issued globally in January 2020 in dozens of languages. "It's truly how our books reach overseas markets," said Liu.

"I think we get a better understanding of what Chinese publishers want," said Kate Wilson, the managing director of Nosy Crow, an award-winning children's publishing company. "We will think about Chinese content for non-fiction."

She took out an early prototype of a book about ancient Egypt. "We will also do one about Ming Dynasty China," she said, "I think that children in the UK should know about Ming Dynasty China as well as about ancient Egypt. But the market here is bigger for Ming Dynasty China than it is for Egypt."

Although Nosy Crow was established in 2011, the company has sold hundreds of copyright to China in the last five years and made it its third-biggest market.

"At the beginning, when we came to China, we only brought finished copies. Now we bring books at a very early stage. They are not real books but prototypes," said Wilson, while opening up a prototype book.

"It is slightly more complicated than a straight copy right sale, but it's something that we're doing more and more for books like this," she said as she showed plastic sheets, fur and mirror embedded in one of the children’s books.

"We can work with Chinese publishers to put them together with our choice of Chinese printer," she said, adding that most of Nosy Crow's books are printed in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, even if they are for other markets all over the world.

"In the end, we publish books we love, we publish books we want to publish, and we hope that they will work throughout the world," she said.

Seeking online partners by embracing new technology

For Oxford University Press, which has entered the Chinese market for decades, unconventional partners pop up in the internet era.

"We have cooperated with some technology companies, such as Tencent, on internet education in China," said Ding Rui, China managing director of Oxford University Press, which is best known in China for its Oxford Dictionary and its presence in compiling authorized English textbooks for Chinese students.

"The cooperation helps to promote our textbooks nationwide, which enables children living in far areas to read our books," he added.

To let its educational content not only be reached by students in big cities but by those living in small towns and remote areas, it started to work with AI companies. "We hope learners can look at the teacher while studying, and this can be achieved by technology," said Ding.

And technology also benefits the content provider. "By cooperating with technology companies, we can get responses from our students, and in turn, we improve our content to better serve students," said Ding.

Director: Wu Yan

Video editor: Chen Shuxun

Filmed by Li Ang

Text by Wu Yan

Top image designer: Gao Hongmei