A survey on what is selling in the market based on sales from brick-and-mortar operations and online portals plus a look at a dozen major publishers’ revenues have revealed some of the bestselling titles in 2016 in China. The bestselling original works include the following:
Charlie IX & Dodomo: The Troll at the Snow Mountain
Collection of Yang Hongying’s Fairy Tales (Pinyin edition)
Dream of Being a Wolf King
Monster Master
Naughty Ma Xiaotiao (comics edition)
Shen Shixi’s Animal Novels
The bestselling translated works include the following:
A Different Carmela
Disney Baby Story Box
Geronimo Stilton
The Magic School Bus (picture book edition)
Mission Survival
Peppa Pig
Multivolume series continue to be popular; the only single-volume title on the list is Shen Shixi’s Dream of Being a Wolf King.
School life and classroom antics continued to fascinate young readers, sending Yang Hongying’s Ma Xiaotiao (or Mo’s Mischief in the HarperCollins edition) back to the bestseller list last year with a brand new comic edition (from Anhui Children’s Publishing House).
Putting elementary schoolers through adventure-fantasy-mystery plots proved to be a winner for mystery author Leiou Huanxiang, whose nom de plume has been loosely translated as Leon Image. He authors not one but two hits, Monster Master (published by Jieli Publishing House) and Charlie IX & Dodomo (Zhejiang Juvenile & Children’s Publishing House). Shen Shixi, who is nationally renowned for his animal-themed fiction, is another author with two bestselling titles.
The list of bestselling original works also contains some of the longest-running series in China, with Ma Xiaotiao first came to the scene in 2003 while Charlie IX and Monster Master made their debut in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
But no matter how famous the above authors are, they sold far less than some of the major translations last year. A Different Carmela series (from Les P’tites Poules), for instance, sold 20 million copies, while originals such as Charlie IX, Monster Master, and Naughty Ma Xiaotiao sold only about two million, 3.1 million, and 3.2 million copies, respectively.
