Writing in ... China

       Via Paper Republic I learn about Lara Farrar's piece at CNN on China's weird and wildly popular world of workplace novels.
       Unanswered: the question why no 职场小说 has been published in English yet -- I 'd love to see some of this stuff (sounds more fun than the old Chinese workplace novels (i.e. the Soviet-era/style ones ...), which were also ... 'popular' (?) (and weird).

       Meanwhile, in China Daily Lu Nan reports on Chinese literature Searching for the limelight abroad. (Problem number one: wrong target.)
       Lots of wonderful quotes to pick from -- it's always great to hear representatives from one culture diagnose other cultures ... -- including stuff like:

The difference in reading preferences of Chinese and Western readers often plays a huge role.

One example is the preferred length of a novel. The Chinese are used to reading long novels of more than 500,000 words and believe that's the way to explore a topic to a full extent. But in the West a literary work would normally be restricted to less than 300,000 words.

       (I'm pretty sure something got lost in translation here -- maybe 500K (Chinese) characters, rather than words ? A 500,000 word novel -- that's easily fifteen hundred pages. The vast majority of Chinese novels are not anywhere near that length (and while there's no Western limit on length, at 300,000 words a novel probably clocks in at at least 800 pages ...)
       The marketplace itself also continues to make for complications:

Many of the problems for the industry came about due to the limited market for Chinese literature in overseas markets. As such it was rare that publishers would get enquiries for books from outside the East Asia economic circle, and even when such offers did materialize, the remuneration amounts were abysmally low, around $500 (390 euros) to $1,500 for a full length novel.

Since this hardly provided any financial recourse, many writers and publishers also did not feel the urge to actively promote their books and rather decided to wait for a lucrative offer.

       I'm not familiar with what foreign rights go for -- and admittedly English is by far the largest foreign rights market -- but $1,500 sounds just fine as an advance for a run-of-the-mill novel (as long as there are royalties to be had if it does turn out to sell any copies). Surely gaining a foothold in the market -- by being present in the market -- is more sensible than holding out for a "lucrative offer" that, chances are, will never come.

       Finally, in The Los Angeles Times Barbara Demick now reports that China politics boost book industry, but not in mainland China.