The 11th edition of the China Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair ended its three-day run on November 17. Post-event statistics from co-organizer BolognaFiere showed that 41,262 attended the fair, including 17,081 professional visitors. A total of 353 professional events, book launches, and reading promotion activities were held. Exhibitor-wise, there were 497 coming from 32 countries/regions this year. Onsite book sales exceeded RMB 20 million (approximately $2.76 million) and more than 1,200 copyright negotiations were recorded.
Two unique exhibitions took center stage at CCBF this year. “Marco Polo: Traveler, Merchant, Storyteller” commemorated Polo’s 700th anniversary by offering 50 books on his famous journey to China and back to Italy. The other exhibit, “A Fabulous Wardrobe: Fashion, Clothing, and Threads in Children’s Picture Books,” curated 150 picture books from 21 countries that creatively combine art, literature, and fashion, and was intended to inspire children and adults alike.
As for one of CCBF’s staple events, the Golden Pinwheel Young Illustrators Competition, the Grand Award for book publishing in the China and International categories went to Heimi for Time Machine and Alexandra Mirzac from Romania for The Unexpected Guest, respectively. The three Special Mentions went to Wang Yingli’s Winter in the Old Town, Armando Fonseca’s The Animal That Lives in the Stone, and Parvin Heydarizadeh’s An Ominous Shadow on the Wheat Field. This year’s competition received 2,584 submissions—a 10.7% increase from the previous year—from 72 countries/territories.
For overseas visitors—first-timers and seasoned attendees, from major houses and indie publishers—a quick glance around the exhibition floor, especially where domestic publishers were located, revealed one big difference between CCBF (and other book events in China) and those held elsewhere, particularly in the West: the massive presence of live-streaming.
However, just a few years ago Belgium-based Clavis was the only company among the overseas exhibitors that was live-streaming from its booth, and it has proven so successful in driving direct sales of its English editions and building its social presence that publisher Philippe Werck now has a big warehouse near Shanghai. As Werck put it, “There are new ways of doing things and we need to react quickly to changes that often come fast and furious and grab the opportunities to get ahead.”
Change, of course, has been the status quo in the Chinese book industry over the past few years. Shifting consumer preferences, declining birth rates, new government regulations, the effects of the prolonged pandemic lockdown, and unique ways of distributing and marketing books have brought the industry into a transition period of adjustments and transformation.
Take the Chinese government’s double-reduction policy, aimed at reducing student workload and easing financial burdens on families, as an example. In July 2021, a sweeping clampdown on private tuition was instituted to regulate compulsory education (for grades one to nine) and make it illegal to offer Chinese, English, and math classes for profit. Major closure of tuition centers immediately followed. For some publishers, the drastic drop in sales of titles in these subjects to tuition centers was disastrous for their bottom lines.
As Yang Lei, executive VP at OpenBook, a clearinghouse for publishing statistics in China, stated during his keynote speech on the first day of the fair, the Chinese children’s book market had peaked in 2019. The decade-long double-digit growth came to a screeching halt when the pandemic hit.
The OpenBook presentation also indicated that sales from short video e-commerce—the top channel for book marketing and retail in the past three years—had dropped from 40.38% in the first 10 months of 2023 to 36.82% for the same period this year. In comparison, sales from both online platforms and bricks-and-mortar has shown slight increases. (One can only hope that the decision by several major domestic publishers to boycott shopping festivals and sales campaigns in protest of the heavy discounting practices deployed by influencers, short-video channels, and online retailers is finally working.)
The children’s segment currently accounted for 28.01% of the overall book market, slightly up from 26.96% during the same 10-month period in 2023. So it is still the biggest segment, underscoring its enormous potential to domestic and overseas publishers alike. The three major categories of pop-sci titles, children’s literature, and picture books combined commanded more than 60% of the total market. Pop-sci represented just 18.49% of the 2019 market but has since climbed to 27.43% during the first 10 months of this year. Titles on social and emotional learning and self-help/development as well as graphic novels continue to be popular with Chinese children, parents, and teachers.
The good news is that the Chinese children’s book market is getting back on track, albeit slowly. The same OpenBook presentation showed that during the January–October 2023 period, the market contracted about 12%. But then it went into positive territory and hit 5.13% during the same 10-month period this year.
Despite everything, the Chinese children’s book market remains a big draw for local and overseas publishers for its sheer size and potential with 370 million children and young adults. And CCBF, the largest event dedicated to books and content for children in Asia Pacific, will continue to host exhibitors from near and far and help to revitalize the industry. The 12th edition of CCBF will run from November 14 to 16, 2025.
