February’s China Bestsellers: A Crime Drama Knockout

Catapulted to the top of February’s list just weeks after its show’s premiere, ‘The Knockout’ smacks down ‘The Three-Body Problem.’

A still from ‘The Knockout’ (season 1, episode 1), the television series that premiered in mid-January in China. Its tie-in book from Qingdao Publishing House has entered the OpenBook fiction bestsellers list at No. 1 in February. Image: CCTV-8/iQIYI

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

Higashino’s ‘Swans and Bats’ Enters the Chart at No. 21

In a change to the recent leadership of the key bestseller list in mainland China, the Beijing OpenBook fiction chart is being led by a crime-drama tie-in novel from a trio of authors.

‘Knockout’

The Knockout (Qingdao Publishing House)—by Zhu Junyi, Xu Jizhou, and Bai Wenjun—has vaulted to the No. 1 spot on the fiction list from no previous ranking, effectively blindsiding consumers and the industry.

The trilogy that The Knockout has shoved down to Nos. 2, 3, and 4 is the mighty “Three-Body Problem” series by Liu Cixin, which, as Publishing Perspectives readers know, has been surging to the tops of the monthly lists on the strength of both an animated and a live-action television adaptation.

True to form for the Chinese readership, The Knockout is—you guessed it—being fueled by the dynamic popularity of a new television series, itself.  Xu Jizhou directs this CCTV-8 and iQIYI series, which premiered on January 14 this year. Xu has written the adaptation along with Junyi Zhu, and Jijun Xue produces with a cast featuring Xi Zhang, Songwen Zhang, Gang Wu, Jianyi Li, and Danping Shen.

A show poster from organized-crime hit series ‘The Knockout’

The show is about a 20-year struggle by a police officer against an organized crime mob operating in Jinghai, which borders Hebei province and Beijing.

The popularity of the show “has been soaring since its launch,” OpenBook’s Wendy Pan says, having watched it gain traction in social media during the spring festival earlier in the year.

The book, a film tie-in edition, has leapt onto the February chart in the first month of its eligibility, those sales fueled by what’s described as “bizarre plot twists” in the television series. Qingdao Publishing has also used interactive elements to bond viewers and readers to the content, and has produced live events on various platforms, featuring actors from the cast.

Oriental Selection—one of the influential book-friendly shows we hear a lot about—is among shows used to raise the property’s visibility.

No need to cry for Liu Cixin and his “Three Body Problem” success—his work occupied seven slots on the February chart.

Meanwhile, another very consistent favorite in the Chinese market, the Japanese author Keigo Higashino, is back with a new hit, Swans and Bats, which ran away with sales in Tokyo and now is doing the same in China, in a translation from Nan Hai Publishing Company.

‘Swans and Bats’

After The Knockout, in fact, Higashino’s Swans and Bats is the second of just three new titles to find slots on the country’s February fiction list, the third arriving by a much more common route than such propulsive popularity: The Seventh Day from New Star Press is a re-issue of Yu Hua’s 2013 book.

Below, then, are OpenBook’s overall lists for February 2023 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, February 2023

OpenBook’s Nonfiction Bestsellers, February 2023

OpenBook’s Children’s Bestsellers, February 2023

Foreign Author Fiction Bestsellers, February 2023

Foreign Author Nonfiction Bestsellers, February 2023

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.

Jiang Boyan LLC advises authors and right’s holders on global intellectual property and investment opportunities.

As of December 1, 2020, OpenBook monitored more than 10,000 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 4,495 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 2019, OpenBook tracked around 71.72 billion RMB in sales (US$10.1 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, Jiang Boyan CEO James Bryant clarifies, 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 in one way or another 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.