Indeed, the island republic’s publishing industry appeared to be in its element with a steady stream of people from around the globe pouring into its huge pavilion at the fair, the world’s largest publishing industry event.
Visitors evinced keen interest in Taiwan’s publishers, particularly in using their services to publish texts in Chinese, the growing popularity of which is benefiting Taiwan.
According to Paulina Lin, director of the Taipei Book Fair Foundation, the Frankfurt fair provided an excellent platform for Taiwan to showcase its wide array of products and publishing services.
Lin pointed out that Taiwan’s 23 million people love reading, supporting over 9,000 registered publishing houses, 2,000 bookstores and 40,000 titles each year.
Annual turnover for the publishing industry is estimated at around US$1.6 billion, while US$11.6 billion worth of foreign books are imported.
“With its geographical proximity to East and Southeast Asia, Taiwan assumes the role of a gateway to other Asian markets, and its official language of Mandarin Chinese, combined with quality publishers, makes it a trendsetter for the greater Chinese-language publishing world,” Lin told Taiwan Today in Frankfurt.
The runaway popularity of the Chinese language, creating a burgeoning demand for language-learning tools and attracting students to both mainland China and Taiwan, has greatly benefited Taiwanese publishers.
There are some 30 million people learning Chinese annually, according to the TBFF. As the most important preserver of traditional Chinese language and culture, Taiwan has produced a diversity of Chinese-learning publications.
Wang Jung-wen, TBFF chairman, is a veteran of the Frankfurt fair. He said Taiwan was exhibiting mostly Chinese-language publications because the market for them is huge. He discerned an incredible surge in interest in the West to learn Chinese.
“When Westerners learn Chinese, it helps Taiwan and enables it to expand its market outreach,” he said. “We hope that someday in the future Chinese will be the world’s medium of communication just as English is today,” he added.
Another important market consists of native Chinese readers interested in Western publications. “The governments of both Taiwan and China encourage translation of English-language books into Chinese,” Wang said.
“Taiwan also has a gigantic market in mainland China. Western companies should use Taiwan as an intermediary to do business with China. Some 90 percent of China’s literary agencies are, in any case, managed by Taiwan’s literary agencies, according to the International Publishers’ Union. Japanese publishers have also used Taiwan to do business with China,” Wang maintained.
Exhibitors showcasing their books at the Taiwan Pavilion were seen doing brisk business with buyers, many of whom had come from outside Germany. The pavilion provided a roof to 37 Taiwanese firms, including 16 publishers of conventional books, 14 digital publishers and seven publishers of children's books and comics.
Most of the Taiwanese exhibitors, who shared Wang’s perception of the business generated by the Western interest in learning Chinese, felt that they had a natural competitive edge over other countries because they understood the Chinese business culture better than anyone else.
“After all, Taiwan’s businesspeople were among the first to venture to the mainland to explore opportunities,” said one Taipei-based publisher who has had many of his titles printed in mainland China.
Some companies at the fair were expanding in other directions, too. Lu Ning-chen, international sales manager of Live ABC of Taipei, said she was looking for business partners in Europe to publish her company’s products on a license basis in German, Italian and other European languages.
“We have been licensing our content to McGraw-Hill publishers and have produced a Chinese illustrated dictionary,” Lu said.
Live ABC, according to Lu, had received orders from Germany as well as solid business enquiries from countries like India, Iran and the Netherlands.
Another bullish exhibitor was Liu Wen-ching, marketing manager of Taipei-based Dah Hsin Publishing Group.
“We are showcasing Japanese textbooks and self-learning books. We also have books in Korean, English and Chinese,” Liu said.
Asked whether Taiwan’s book prices could compete with the much lower mainland Chinese prices, Liu said Taiwan produces quality products with value-added attributes.
“China puts out mainly low-end products that are cheaper than those of many other countries,” he added.
Dah Hsin is also taking advantage of Taiwan’s technological prowess. Liu proudly displayed their “talking pen,” a device that reads aloud from a book when brought in contact with the printed words on the page. It enables learners of Chinese to understand the phonetics of the language, and helps in correcting their pronunciation.
Describing Europe as a traditionally slow market, Liu said there had been a good response for the talking pen in many Asian markets, including China, Hong Kong and Japan. Here again was an example of a publisher utilizing the worldwide craze for learning Chinese. (THN)
—Manik Mehta is a freelance writer based in New York. Copyright@2010 by Manik Mehta
Write to Taiwan Today at ttonline@mail.gio.gov.tw