As its stock price tumbles, the online publishing subsidiary of China’s Tencent Holdings is hitting the brakes on an ambitious program to purchase rights for foreign works.
Interview with Edward Nawotka
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When China Literature, China’s largest online publishing and ebook website, went public on the Hong Kong stock market nearly two years ago, share prices doubled on the first day of trading. Today, the stock is trading at close to its 52-week low and has lost more than two-thirds in value since its November 2017 debut.
For Chinese readers, the result is a more limited choice of books, especially novels with adult themes. For foreign publishers and authors, the door to a promising new market may be closing.
Ed Nawotka, Publishers Weekly international editor, reported recently on China Literature’s decline in fiscal fortunes and its fall from prominence as a market for foreign rights sales. Nawotka tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally that the likely underlying cause is a caution over content.
“The official line [in China] is that there is no censorship. The unofficial line is that, yes, you can publish whatever you want, and it is tolerated up until the point where it becomes popular in any way, shape, or form. Once there are people paying attention to it, that is when you are going to fall under scrutiny,” he explains.
“The fact that the government has decided to pay a lot more attention to [online content at China Literature] certainly cooled people’s ardor about the stock, but it’s also just the latest manifestation of a general cooling of the government’s attitude towards Western publishing,” Nawotka says.
