This year’s Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) finished its five-day run on June 22 with a record 1,700 exhibitors in attendance signing some 2,800 business deals, according to fair organizers. Nearly 300,000 visitors attended the fair from 110 countries or regions.
As usual, BIBF featured insights on China’s market trends and statistics. From 2019 to 2024, the Chinese online literature market expanded steadily, according to Cheng Yan, director of product legal affairs at Douyin (TikTok), growing from ¥20.48 billion (or $2.85 billion) in 2019 to ¥43.06 billion (or $5.99 billion) in 2024—though grow rates have slowed from the 21% and 24% annual increases in 2019 and 2020. More than 72,000 intellectual properties were licensed between 2021 and 2023 for social media–distributed shortform video adaptations, representing a major shift towards shortform digital storytelling.
A recent report from the Chinese Literature Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that the number of overseas readers of Chinese online literature hit 352 million in 2024, with its market value estimated at ¥5 billion (or $695 million). The segment is fast becoming one of China’s major cultural exports.
Discussions on AI mostly centered around adopting and assimilating AI-enabled tools into the publishing workflow to increase productivity and reduce time to market, not as a replacement for human creativity. “We are in the midst of a tech transformation, but at its heart, this industry remains about its people," said Wu Shulin, president of the Publishers Association of China. "We need to tap new technological resources to create a better publishing industry with higher quality output.”
In her remarks during the opening of the Beijing International Publishing Forum, Gvantsa Jobava, president of the International Publishers Association, said that as publishing becomes more complex and metadata more important, “AI can play a role in marketing, proofreading, and production." But, she added, “technology has to respect creativity. So keep embracing technology and using it to make publishing more sustainable and better.”
At the forum, Melissa Fleming, the undersecretary-general for global communications at the U.N., addressed the problem of the constant stream of disinformation and misinformation that is eroding trust in facts, news, and science. The latest U.N. recommendations for a healthy and safe information ecosystem, she explained, state that “digital actors need to be held accountable to the information they publish and social media needs to promote facts. AI players need to respect copyright, licenses, and human rights.”
AI and technology aside, BIBF remains focused on authors, both domestic and overseas, and there were more than 100 authors participating in the fair this year, said to Lin Liying, president of of the China National Publications Import and Export Co., which organizes of BIBF). “The industry is moving towards rapid digitization and AI—with all of us grappling with the challenges and working out the opportunities—but in whichever format or segment, we need readers and we need them to continue reading,” Lin said. “Thus, we need quality content and good stories for the readers in order to grow the industry.”
Market shift
Sales of Chinese children’s book market saw sales increase 11.9% in the first quarter of 2025 over last year, according to Feng Xiaohui, senior research manager at OpenBook, the Beijing-based clearinghouse for publishing statistics. Sales of children’s titles through e-commerce channels rose by 61.7% through the same period, predominantly through shortform video e-commerce channels.
For Marco Rodino, of the eponymous rights agency, the children’s segment remains challenging in China—and mostly flat. The adult lifestyle book segment, on the other hand, is growing fast. “Health, psychology, self-help/improvement, and women’s empowerment and issues, for instance, are some of the hot topics,” said Rodino. “It’s as if Chinese adult readers are now spending more on themselves than on children."
Rodino was particularly concerned by the influence of shortform video e-commerce, particularly on TikTok, on the Chinese book industry. “The deep discounts—a race to the bottom, really, to sell more copies—risk destroying the whole industry and has already damaged the children’s book segment,” Rodino said. “While Douyin is a great marketing tool, publishers need to take back control and not allow influencers or personalities to drive the content or product. There is the saying: ‘If you want to go first, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.’ Influencers tend to go alone. So publishers need to get involved and band together to go further and construct a healthy industry.”
The BIBF will return to the China National Convention Center in the Beijing Olympic Park next June 17–21.
