Since it dived into the country’s English-language market five years ago, the publisher’s business has been swimmingly successful. Chitralekha Basu reports

Jo Lusby launched Penguin Books’ start-up in China in her Beijing apartment’s anteroom in 2005.

At that point, she wasn’t sure how long it would take the international publishing giant to register its presence in a culture in which people read voraciously, but not that much in English.

Five years later, Penguin China’s activities have gone far beyond putting together a substantial China list. With the international publication and translation rights of more than 30 contemporary and classic titles from China already in its kitty, Penguin has launched a full-on campaign to woo the Chinese reader.

The publicity blitzkrieg includes in-store promotions, contests, circulation of low-priced editions, and literary lunches at which noted authors such as Hong Ying and the historian Jonathan Fenby will talk about their favorite Penguin classic.

“Our sales in China are increasing by around 15 percent year-on-year, which is very good news at a time when the book industry in other more developed markets is best described as flat,” Lusby points out.

Even as its business grows, Penguin is doing its bit to bridge the gulf between the current crop of Chinese writers and the international market. In June, it took the four winners of the Next contest – a high-profile competition to spot young Chinese writing talent, which this year received more than 60,000 entries – on a tour of literary London, led by the colorful and controversial writing sensation Guo Jingming.

The Chinese-English Literary Translation (CELT) course was launched in 2008 by Penguin in partnership with the General Administration of Press and Publications, Arts Council of England, and the Australian Council for the Arts. It aims to train literary translators working in both Chinese and English, and is already beginning to show results.

The two titles by Chinese authors picked by Penguin for publication in 2011 – The Civil Servant’s Notebook (by Wang Xiaofang), which gives an insider’s perspective of the functioning of a local government, and Blood Crimes (by He Jiahong), a gripping sleuth story set in post-reforms China – are both translated by CELT program graduates.

CELT didn’t exactly get off to a flying start. Lusby recalls spending much of the time at the first translators’ retreat in Moganshan, Zhejiang province, with 40 early and mid-career translators, both Chinese and native-English speakers, huddled around antediluvian space heaters in the freezing cold.

“As the ancient heating in the bedrooms began to kick into action, Biblical plagues of insects started to hatch, swarming out of the air vents and crawling in the newly warmed-up rooms, forcing translators to run in the middle of the night,” she recalls.

Somewhat perversely, but delightfully, the adversity resulted in instant bonding. Friendships were formed and professional communities established.

“Working with young literary translators at a very early stage in their careers when they are not even sure it is something they can do was a real privilege,” Lusby says.

Eight of the translators on that course have either published full-length works or have been commissioned by publishers, she says.

One of the participants on that course, Eric Abrahamsen, who has translated the soon-to-be-published The Civil Servant’s Notebook, is already a well-known name on the translators’ circuit. He is a PEN translation award-winner and one of the brains behind the online translators’ network, Paper Republic.

“What’s special about the Penguin commission is that I know they are invested in China and Chinese literature – they are here for the long haul,” Abrahamsen says.

“That means they put a lot of thought into the books they pick.”

Indeed, the list is as eclectic as it is strong in popular appeal and lasting value. The leader among the pick of the lot is Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem (translated by Howard Goldblatt), which has “sold more copies than any other Chinese novel in translation”, Penguin Chairman and CEO John Makinson says.

Another gem is Julia Lovell’s sparkling, updated translation of Lu Xun’s 1920s classic novella, The True Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales. And there is also a lavishly mounted pictorial history of Shanghai, compiled by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Liu Heung Shing and renowned art historian Karen Smith.

“The new translation of Lu Xun was long overdue and should help the English-speaking world appreciate this great author,” Ian Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer based in Beijing, says. These are important titles for anyone remotely interested in China.

“We have worked hard over the last five years to reach out to readers – particularly Chinese readers – and begun a conversation about books and publishing that we expect to continue over the following years,” Makinson says.

Even as his staff across the world work hard to develop the full range of their products, “in whatever format readers demand – print or digital” – Makinson has high hopes of making an impact on China’s growing digital market.

“The important thing for China’s digital industry now is that copyright protection, pricing, digital rights management and platform access issues are resolved in a way that creates a healthy business environment where authors and publishers as well as digital service providers are compensated for their work and talent,” he says.

“Assuming that will be the case, we see the Chinese digital market as exciting as, if not more so than, the market in the US,” he says.

Some of the Chinese publishers with whom Penguin has collaborated and those who monitor the pulse of the country’s publishing industry have mixed views about Penguin’s role in bridging the linguistic gap for English-language readers.

But the authors they have published seem jubilant about the partnership.

Hong Ying, whose K: The Art of Love and The Concubine of Shanghai have been chosen for publication, was ecstatic when shown the cover images.

“They are very beautiful and (are an) accurate representation of the books’ themes,” she says, adding that she also likes the “touching introductions”.

“To me, the publication of these two books marks a fresh, new beginning of my works being published in the English-speaking world,” she says.

Historian Fenby says he had written 12 books before publishing with Penguin, including four on China.

“But the History of Modern China (a best-seller, published in both hardback and paperback) was the most ambitious and made a big difference to me in enabling me to deal in depth – and at length – with my fascination with a period which, I think, is essential to understanding today’s China.”

Lusby now feels Penguin stepped into the Chinese market at the right time.

“Readers in China are hungry for more information from publishers and are keen to have publishers engage with them in a way they were not used to seeing before,” she says.

So Penguin’s strategy is to develop a reader-intensive program – “develop a conversation with readers present and future to see what they want to read, how they want to read it and how much they are prepared to pay”.

China looks like a market worth putting a publisher’s money on.