China Bestsellers December: Legal-Issues Nonfiction

Normally slow-moving, bestseller charts in China highlighted nonfiction on legal issues in December.

In Shanghai, a storefront packed with Western Christmas holiday-style decor. China’s Spring Festival starts this year on the Lunar New Year, February 10. Image – Getty iStockphoto: Ninel Roshchina

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

Legal Perspectives and Policy Strategies

The bestseller charts put together by our associates at Beijing OpenBook for December showed even less movement in fiction than in other time frames, with 26 of the Top 30 coming over from November.

‘Details of Law’

In nonfiction, however, our analysts are seeing an interesting development. The nonfiction sector is For one thing, the Top 30 nonfiction chart was infused with no fewer than 10 new titles, a rare incursion of new material in a single month’s time in this slow-moving market. Those new titles include:

• Three Hundred Tang Poems: Detailed Analysis
• Behave With Propriety: The Underlying Logic That Transcends Social Circles
• Sima Yi: An Endurable Winner
• We All Live in Disparity
• Paradoxes In Law
• Sima Yi: From Obscurity To Final Winner
• Also Winter, Also Spring
• Winner’s Method: The Way Of Learning Through Capital
• The Book of Magic Answers
• History In Details

‘Paradoxes of Law’

As Publishing Perspectives readers know, the Chinese market for some time has shown a growing interest in self-development content, much of it following typical topical directions of interpersonal relationship and strategies for personal success. But in this case, content involving law and legal activity have bounded into view.

Author Luo Xiang, a professor of political science and law at China University of Political Science and Law, has drawn a large following for his public course on judicial examination.

And Paradoxes in Law, released on December 16, looks at 14 instances of “classic opposite cases” but is one of three charting books from two publishers.

‘The Faith as Premise of Freedom’

Despite those clean, white cover-art designs signal common concepts:

• Paradoxes in Law is  from Yunnan People’s Publishing House.
• The Faith as Premise of Freedom is from China Legal Publishing House.
• And Details of  History is, like the newer Paradoxes, a title from Yunnan People’s publishing House.

Also in the nonfiction field, OpenBook points to “social answers from traditional culture” as a trend to watch, represented by Sima Yi: An Endurable Winner and Sima Yi: From Obscurity To Final Winner based on the Wei Dynasty scholar, politician and strategist.

This is a case of two books again from two authors and houses, Liang Yue Man Tian at China Zhi Gong Press, and Zhang Yan at Baihua Literature & Art Publishing House.

‘Sima Yi: An Endurable Winner,’ left, and ‘Sima Yi: From Obscurity to Final Winner’

Below, then, are OpenBook’s overall lists from December 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, December 2023

OpenBook’s Nonfiction Bestsellers, December 2023

OpenBook’s Children’s Bestsellers, December 2023

Foreign Author Fiction Bestsellers, December 2023

Foreign Author Nonfiction Bestsellers, December 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.

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.