Back in 2017, PW stated that describing the Chinese children’s book market is “as easy as A, B, C (amazing, booming, crowded).” Fast forward to 2025, the “booming” part has suffered somewhat due to the pandemic and post-lockdown funk, but the overall market remains very strong (with 285.8 million Chinese people under age 18, according to the latest data from UNICEF) and crowded (with around 550 children’s book presses). The market is also disruptive and e-commerce-driven, adding the letters D and E to the list.
According to Beijing-based OpenBook, a clearinghouse for publishing statistics, the overall Chinese book retail market hit ¥111.9 billion (approximately $15.4 billion) in 2024, a decrease of around 1.52% year-on-year. The children’s book segment constitutes the biggest chunk of the pie, occupying around 28%, up slightly by 0.92% compared to 2023.
“The proportion of children’s books in the retail market is increasing, but its growth rate has shrunk in recent years,” says Bai Bing, general manager and senior editor-in-chief at Jieli Publishing House. “Firstly, the pandemic has caused uncertainties in the overall economy, affecting household incomes and consumption levels, and thus book purchases. Secondly, the rise of short-form video e-commerce has shifted the market paradigm, impacting sales of traditional channels and the pricing system, thereby introducing more uncertainties to the market. Thirdly, in order to minimize risks, many publishing houses opted to reduce the publication of new titles, resulting in a continuous decline in the overall number of titles in the market in recent years. Unfortunately, that is not a good situation for readers who are constantly looking for new titles to buy.”
Then there is the declining birth rate. China may have ended its one-child policy back in 2016, allowing couples to have two, or, more recently, three children to combat an aging population, but its birthrate remains low at around 6.77 per 1,000 people. Last year, 9.54 million babies were born, the first increase in births in seven years, but this is largely seen as an anomaly because 2024 was the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac, which is considered lucky for having children. But the government is leaving nothing to chance: last October, it unveiled a comprehensive birth-friendly policy to boost the birth rate, with childcare subsidies, extended maternity leave, free pregnancy check-ups, and tax benefits for families with multiple children.
Meanwhile, the declining birth rate has many children’s book publishers and industry players concerned. Bai, of Jieli, however, looks at the issue pragmatically: “Given China’s rising middle class and higher household incomes, parents have been paying more attention and investing more in their children’s education,” Bai says. “So their allocation of income to books and various learning materials will increase accordingly. As long as publishers focus on producing good books and quality products—aside from adhering to the normal pricing system and resisting the heavy discounting practice—they will grow healthily and sustainably.”
Adapting to shifting market demands
In recent months, traditional Chinese culture has received more attention on the international stage. Record numbers of foreign visitors, taking advantage of visa-free travel policies, have also boosted cultural exchanges and interest in China.
“The addition of the 7.8-kilometer Beijing Central Axis to the UNESCO World Heritage list and the successes of the video game Black Myth: Wukong and animated feature Ne Zha 2 reflect the influence of traditional Chinese culture,” says Bai, whose team at Jieli is set to launch a comic series featuring a feline protagonist that leads readers through the Forbidden City to experience century-old changes to the imperial palace complex.
At Aurora Publishing House, adjusting its publishing program to meet market demands and preferences is an ongoing mission. The pop science trend, for instance, has resulted in the development and publication of the Nature is Wonderful series, a five-title set that combines nature, pop science, humanities, and history. “The latest volume, Exploring Nature at Night, was included in the recommended booklist of the National Children’s Library for winter 2023, and was among the list of excellent pop sci titles selected by the Ministry of Science and Technology last year,” says company president Yang Xuheng.
Pop sci, which represented 18.49% of China’s children’s book market in 2019, has since climbed to more than 27% last year. The children’s literature segment, which has been rather stable throughout the years, usually holds the second spot, sandwiched between pop sci titles and picture books. Together, these three categories commanded more than 60% of the total children’s book market.
Naturally, Yang and his team have been busy cultivating young homegrown authors for Aurora’s children’s literature program. “We have published more than 10 titles in the past six months, including Guo Jiangyan’s Little Crab, Come and Help and Gu Ying’s The Elf Grocery Store. These titles have sold upwards of 10,000 copies.” The Aurora team also launched The Wind of the Mountains series by illustrator Li Yao, who was one of the finalists for the Silent Book Contest–Gianni De Conno Award at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2020. The five-title series, which revolves around a child’s journey of self-discovery, took the author three years to develop.
Demand is also rising for children’s titles in Chinese studies, poetry, and maps. “Books on these topics are not only loved by children but also welcomed by parents and educators,” says Sally Yan, founder and editor-in-chief of Beijing Dandelion Children’s Book House, pointing to bestsellers such as Chinese History for Children (Guizhou Education) and This is the Twenty-Four Solar Terms (Dolphin) as examples.
Beijing Dandelion, which will celebrate its 19th anniversary this December, is “becoming an adult,” says Yan. “Just like our namesake, we are hardy, highly adaptable, and tenacious, and our goal is to publish books that will take root in the heart of every child and provide them with hope and inspiration—while making sure that we keep abreast of market trends and preferences.”
Expanding the distribution and promotional reach
While the Chinese children’s book industry has faced headwinds in recent years—down from the double-digit growth that it enjoyed pre-2020—Beijing Dandelion managed to attain growth of nearly 20% in 2024.
Yan attributes this positive result to adjustments in the company’s publishing plan: “Given the uncertainties wrought by the pandemic, we have postponed the release of many new titles and focused instead on reprinting and selling our existing list. We also set out to explore new publishing models such as e-books and audiobooks, as well as adopting new online sales and marketing strategies. Live-streaming and short video e-commerce are two novel ways for us to promote and sell our books.” Currently, about 30% of Beijing Dandelion’s sales come from bricks-and-mortar bookstores with the rest from online retailers and platforms.
But the information provided through social media platforms is too fragmented, while the traffic distribution follows the Matthew effect, Yan says. “Purchases through such platforms tend to be homogenized,” she says. “This means that new and good books will have a tough time breaking through to be discovered, much less becoming long-selling titles. Even those that sold well in the past are now facing the problem of insufficient online exposure and declining sales. It creates a ripple effect: excellent writers may feel less motivated to create new works, leading to fewer great quality titles, while readers have difficulties finding high-quality books, and so it will negatively impact the entire children’s book publishing ecosystem in the longer term.”
Overseas publishers visiting or exhibiting at the Beijing International Book Fair or Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair in recent years, particularly post-pandemic, would have seen firsthand the massive onsite presence of livestreaming and vlogging activities. Such shifts to the distribution, marketing, and sales channels have ushered in a transition period of adjustments and transformation, especially in the Chinese children’s book market over the past three years.
“The ubiquity of mobile devices, the popularity of online shopping, and the restrictions due to the pandemic have seen major e-commerce sites—Dangdang, Taobao, and JD.com, for instance—and social media platforms such as WeChat and Weibo becoming critical channels for promoting and selling children’s books,” says Yan. “The convenience of online shopping, speedy delivery, and the breadth and effectiveness of the digital reach are irrefutable.”
Take Beijing Dandelion’s promotional campaign of Jakob Martin Strid’s The Fantastic Bus—within two hours, five thousand copies were preordered. The oversized 212-page hardcover picture book—at 380 mm by 295 mm and weighing around three kilograms—was priced at ¥358 (approximately $49). It was introduced to readers on March 2024 via the livestreaming room of Wang Fang, a former TV host and now a major promoter of local books and authors.
“We went back to print three times after that and have sold nearly 17,000 copies to date,” Yan says, adding that the popularity of e-commerce and livestreaming has made it possible to widely publicize and sell such pricey children’s book. “The author spent 15 years creating this title, which requires a complex production and binding process, and we are just so happy to introduce such a high-quality and unique title to Chinese children.”
Livestreaming and short-form video platforms are new marketing tools and channels that Aurora is also using to promote its titles. Young writer Xiao Yunfeng’s coming-of-age novel Keep Running, Beile about a teenager overcoming psychological barriers and excelling in sports competitions, for instance, was recently introduced to readers via livestreaming by Wang Fang. This title has since sold over 25,000 copies.
“We have to move with the times and embrace emerging distribution and promotional methods and new ways of operations,” says Yang of Aurora. Their team has also developed its knowledge service platform Xiaoetong, which has over 500,000 subscribers, digitized its original titles, introduced audio and AR-based products, and provided value-added services for its paper-based publishing program. “This is all about product integration and enrichment through digitization and AI tools to better serve our reading community.”
The rapid rise of short-form video content e-commerce platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu “has changed consumption and reading habits, which resulted in the further fragmentation of book-buying channels,” says Bai, of Jieli. The publisher is famed for its original series such as Leon Image’s Monster Master and Cao Wenxuan’s The King Book, as well as for translating bestselling series such as Bear Grylls’s Mission Survival, Goosebumps, and I Spy. (Bai himself is an author, having written many titles, including picture books Elephant That Ate the Night and Umbrella Tree.)
The power and reach of platforms such as Xiaohongshu is undeniable. In 2022, the Jieli team, which was working on a unique picture book series that offers panoramic scenes of various towns—in Germany, for instance—decided to launch its pre-publication marketing on the platform. “We provided updates on the progress of the series and essentially invited the community to participate in the editorial and development process,” Bai says. “Pre-sale figures of The Busy Town series exceeded 30,000 copies and as of this February, a total of 682,000 copies of this eight-title set have been sold.”
Book marketing “has shifted from people looking for goods to goods looking for people, with algorithms playing in the background,” Bai says. Book-buying logic has also changed. Presently, many readers look at discounts as the first criteria to consider when buying books, ignoring the fact that books are cultural products with unique cultural values.”
Not discounting book discounts
E-commerce currently accounts for well over 75% of book sales in China, and as such, big tech companies hold enormous power in the nation’s publishing industry. But their use of aggressive pricing policies—a nicer phrase for “heavy discounts”—to push book sales is facing severe backlash.
For publishers, discounts of more than 60% are a losing proposition regardless of the potential sales volume such promotional activity may generate. Last year, those concerns led several dozen publishers to boycott JD.com’s 618 Shopping Festival, which ran June 1–18 and offered discounts of up to 80%. It was the second-largest shopping event in China after Singles Day, which was started by Alibaba, in November. Online influencers have also been the subject of resentment over their extreme promotional practices, ranging from selling titles below ¥10 (around $1.37) to giving away books at just ¥1 (13 cents).
Heavy discounting in the Chinese book industry has become normalized, and that is a worrying trend for Yan, of Beijing Dandelion. “Different discounts from different sellers lead to a chaotic book pricing system that undermines the trust between publishers and readers,” Yan says. “This affects the publishers’ profit margins, which will impact their operations and development. Readers may reap the benefits of paying less. But at what price? Consumption habits that feed on discounts make readers get used to the low prices and make them unwilling to pay the normal price when there is no discount. Furthermore, discounting tends to lower the perceived quality of the brand and product, which is detrimental in the long run and will affect the health and development of the entire industry.”
So Yan and her team have been educating the reading community about the value of books and the destructive costs of discounts. “We spend a lot of effort in various channels to control the prices of our titles and minimize discount practices as much as possible,” Yan says. “However, maintaining a healthy discount ecosystem requires the effort of each one of our publishing counterparts.”
Rapid and continuous transformation of marketing channels has definitely brought about shifting marketing models. “Low-price dumping and heavy discounting have led to unhealthy market competition while causing a sharp decline in profits in the publishing industry,” says Bai, of Jieli, adding that low-cost books and copycat titles have also flooded the book retail market. Last year, 63% of Jieli’s sales came from traditional e-commerce channels, with 18.7% from bricks-and-mortar stores, and the rest from new online/media and short-form video channels.
Cutting prices in exchange for higher sales volume is suicidal in the long run, and is something that Bai is determined not to be a part of. “We have always resisted vicious competition and low-price dumping, and refused to participate in platforms that promote heavy discounting practice to drive up sales,
Bay says. “We may opt to participate in some shopping festivals or major retail platforms’ big promotional activities. But our participation is about reaching out to readers on various channels and venues and promoting good books from Jieli, and not for the sake of hitting certain sales numbers.”
Going beyond sales and bestsellers
Over the years, rights sales of original publications from Chinese children’s publishing houses have been rising, buoyed by growing interests in Chinese culture and stories. Chinese publishers and homegrown talents (as well as those brought in from overseas) are collaborating and experimenting, blending the old—from myths, legends, or historical facts, of which China has plenty to draw from its 5,000-year existence—with the new and realistic, addressing current issues such as sibling rivalries, special needs, and social-emotional learning.
Authors and illustrators are busy trawling through ancient crafts and traditional Chinese art styles including calligraphy,Chinese opera, paper cutting, and shadow puppets, for instance, to tell stories unique to the country and novel to the rest of the world. It is about choosing techniques and themes that resonate with local kids while at the same time appealing to those from different cultures.
Aurora, for instance, signed a contract with Belgian house Clavis in June 2024 to export several picture books, including Huang Xiaoming’s Scarecrow’s Wish, to European countries. “We have also exported titles from series such as Little Bugu and The Elf Fairy Tales to Canada,” says Yang, adding that his team is working with many homegrown talents to publish high-quality titles not just for the local market, but also for international rights sales and direct export.
But Chinese children’s publishers are not just focused on selling books and rights. They are also determined to get books to children in rural and remote areas of China—and there are plenty such areas in the vast country. Fortunately, the ever-widening mobile networks enabling book sales via online channels have helped to address the issue. Publishers big and small, including Beijing Dandelion and Jieli, have been involved in organizing reading campaigns and donating books to children and schools in rural areas and smaller cities for years. For them, this is as much about supporting the reading habits of rural communities as it is about ensuring the distribution of quality content to those readers.
Since 2012, Aurora has worked closely with various provincial government departments to jointly carry out reading campaigns at primary and secondary schools. “We have annual on-campus cultural activities where we invite well-known children’s literature authors from across the country to offer reading and writing events and lectures,” says Yang, adding that such events have been held at more than 100 primary school campuses thus far. “This is just one of our main CSR programs, which is focused on getting children interested in reading and helping them to cultivate a lifelong learning habit.”
Given that Aurora is located in Yunnan province, where there are at least 25 minority groups, the team has also translated selected titles from its catalog into many minority languages in various formats, including audio and video. “Last year, following the successful launch of Shu Huibo’s Hearing the Light, about a blind violin virtuoso, we collaborated with China Braille Publishing House and Yunnan Provincial Disabled Persons’ Federation to launch braille, large print, audio, and digital editions of the book,” Yang says. “We want more visually impaired readers to access this excellent work and be empowered by its story—and thus help us to achieve our reading promotion goal of ‘leaving no-one behind.’”
Last year, Aurora also participated in poverty alleviation and public welfare services programs through book donation campaigns as well as cash donations. But the company is not just focused on its own province. It also donated around 800 books to schools and bookstores in Inner Mongolia.
Changes and regulations affecting the industry
In 2020, China rolled out its latest education reform that encompasses not just free compulsory education up to grade nine, but significant changes to its learning and teaching approaches (less rote learning and more problem-solving) as well as increasing physical activity (to combat obesity and near-sightedness) and improving students’ mental health. The efforts focus on equity and literacy across the board.
Take the 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 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. However, there has been an easing of the regulatory pressure on private tutoring in recent months.
As for the August 2021 restrictions on online gaming for children—no play time on weekdays and a one-hour limit per day on weekends and public holidays—these were imposed to curb gaming addiction and address growing public concerns on gaming’s impact on health, social, and academic performances. Early this year, Chinese regulators limited game playing time for children to no more than 16 hours during the month-long winter school break. However, there is no limit for time spent on short videos and other online entertainment. For publishers, the hope is that such online gaming restrictions will turn children to books and more reading, and therefore more book sales. But here too sees a softening stance, especially after the popularity of Black Myth: Wukong, which is based on Chinese culture.
The Chinese government has continued to tweak its education sector reforms to reduce homework and standardized exams, increase reading for pleasure and general knowledge (as opposed to passing exams), add more sporting and artistic activities, and improve classroom teaching and after-class services.
The reform presents not just a reset for the Chinese educational system, but also opens up new opportunities for its children’s book publishing industry. It has contributed to the growth of segments such as picture books, middle-grade fiction (including bilingual Chinese-English editions), heavily illustrated STEM series, social-emotional learning books, and YA titles.
While translations have been brought in to pick up the slack in these segments and others over the years, Chinese publishers, writers, and illustrators have been working overtime to create original works that are quintessentially Chinese and yet universal and contemporary. The three publishing houses profiled in this feature—Aurora, Beijing Dandelion, and Jieli—represent the best of the breed and will be exhibiting at the Bologna Book Fair at the end of this month. Make sure you pay them a visit and check out their unique titles.
