China Bestsellers: May’s Television-Fueled Nonfiction Winner

On China’s nonfiction list in May, Fei Zhi’s army of ‘Cats’ books were held at bay by the TV-powered arrival of Li Juan’s ‘My Altay’ at No. 1.

In the Altay region of China’s enormous Xinjiang province. Image – Getty iStockphoto: Dandelion

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

Small Screens to Big Sales

In many cases, China’s book market has become almost a poster child for the connection between television, film, social media, and commercial publishing, and a couple of examples from our associates at Jiang Yanping’s Beijing OpenBook publishing research group in their May report reveal one such example you’ll find in the nonfiction rankings for last month—and another example that may be headed for these lists if the trend holds.

‘My Altay’

At the top of May’s nonfiction list, you’ll see My Altay by Li Juan, a soaring success that went straight to No. 1 in its first appearance on these lists, a release from Flower City Press. Altay is a county-level city in the Altay prefecture inside the Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture, a venue set in northern Xinjiang, near the Kelan River.

Those who know Li’s work will remember that My Altay is a 2010 release, hardly a new book, from this prolific essayist now in her 40s. As is the case of many stories of books’ sudden appearances on the slow-moving Chinese bestseller lists, what made the difference for My Altay was a televsion drama titled To the Wonder. That series, created by Yu Gong & Xiaohui Wang, became the first such television work to be selected for the Cannes International Series Festival’s seventh season (the division of Cannes often called CanneSeries).

Based on My Altay—typically for Li, a collection of essays—the book’s sales are of course running in two directions: attracting newcomers who hadn’t known of Li’s work or this particular collection until now, as well as readers who have known this collection for its 14 years and are picking up new copies to re-read. Two more titles from Li, The Corner of Altay and Winter Pasture, are also selling well.

‘I’ve Just Said’

And in the other instance, a book not on the bestseller list, but perhaps a useful test, is I’ve Just Said by Guo Degang.

Released in April by Writers Publishing House, the books’ visibility shot up when Guo made a live broadcast. Like many successful “influencers,” Guo is the type who can write and talk about bits of life that tend to many to sound profound and defining of society, the publisher’s promotional copy mentioning as Guo’s field, “The rules of life, the etiquette of dinner parties, the origin of midnight snacks, the secrets of love, the persistence of drama fans, the jargon of the industry, the small rivers and lakes of friends, the grievances and hatreds in the crosstalk world.”

His broadcast chops proven, and plenty of film and television experience behind him as a “crosstalk” comic, it seems likely that Guo’s Douyin account—Douyin is the ByteDance-owned Chinese edition of TikTok—are likely to see him onto a spot in June’s chart.

That being said, Guo, like anyone trying to battle his way onto the Chinese bestseller list this summer, will encounter the May list’s glut of the If History Were a Group of Cats series by Fei Zhi.

‘If History Were a Group of Cats,’ Three Kingdoms, Part 5

In May, these perplexingly popular short reads about various dynasties held slots 4 through 16 on the nonfiction list from Guangdong Travel and Tourism Press.

Our records indicate that at least some of the series’ entries were published as early as 2019, suggesting that Group of Cats fandom is hardly fading.

Below, then, are OpenBook’s overall lists from May 2024 of bestsellers in fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books, followed by its lists of bestselling fiction and nonfiction in China by authors from outside the country.

At the end of our article, as always, you’ll find notes on how the lists are constructed.

OpenBook’s Fiction Bestsellers, May 2024

OpenBook’s Nonfiction Bestsellers, May 2024

OpenBook’s Children’s Bestsellers, May 2024

Foreign Author Fiction Bestsellers, May 2024

Foreign Author Nonfiction Bestsellers, May 2024

Notes on the Charts

OpenBook is a privately owned industry-data research firm based in Beijing. It functions somewhat as Nielsen and NDP do from the West, and Nielsen Book Research International has worked with OpenBook in Asian operations. With authoritative data and information resources, OpenBook is able to deliver consulting service to partners who would like to explore the Chinese book market and identify suitable partners.

At last report, OpenBook monitored more than 18,000 online and offline bookstores.

The online channel includes digital retailers such as large self-operated online stores, platform stores, and small- and medium-sized stores. The offline channels include more than 4,800 bookstores. Coverage includes most of the state-owned and influential privately owned bookstores in 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet are not included in OpenBook’s system.

In 2022, OpenBook tracked around 76.21 billion RMB in sales (US$10.62 billion).

Retail outlets include:

• Traditional bookstores
• Supermarkets
• Campus bookstores
• “Professional” stores, said to be small stores with a specific industrial or trade focus
• Airport stores

In addition, OpenBook is drawing data from online bookstores of three main types:

• The “Tmall” stores of Alibaba (Tmall is described as a marketplace of companies that create storefronts online to sell products including books)
• The “JingDong” Stores of JD.com (similar to Tmall as a marketplace of both individual companies and bookstores operated by JD.com)
• Ten independent online bookselling retailers

China has 500 or more publishers in operation today. Most of them are government-owned. Private publishers are required to generate ISBNs for their titles from a publishing company that is government-owned—which, in other words, creates a system in which all ISBNs are registered through government channels. The government approves each book published in China.

More China bestseller reports from Publishing Perspectives are here, and more on the Chinese book publishing market is here.