Guest contributor Toby Eady is a London-based literary agent who represented Jung Chang (Wild Swans) and Xinran Xue (The Good Women of China).
Chinese Authors – beware when fools rush in
I have a Chinese author whose work I and everyone at my agency all admire tremendously. Over the course of four years, after countless rejections from commercial publishers, we persuaded a respected university press in the US to buy the book and pay for a top translator. That process took meetings in New York, Frankfurt and in Beijing with the author. On the back of this, Penguin US bought the paperback rights and will distribute throughout the world. The book had recently sold to a very good publisher in France and Italy. We were beginning to get the right sort of reviews, attention and interest. And then I found out the author had been approached by a new literary agency based in Hong Kong and persuaded to sign a contract with them to represent his new novel.
From having worked with Chinese authors for the last twenty years, I know that publishing culture is different in China. It is a sign of success to have five different publishers and of failure to have one. In China there are many different cities with their own publishing house. In the West, the most important thing is continuity; an author who is shopping around, changing publishers, agents is either a “celebrity” or an author who will soon be without a publisher.
For a publisher in the west to make a success of a Chinese author they have to find the right translator – not all translators are suitable for an author’s style. To edit a translation takes time – at least 6-8 months, in many cases years – and a fine eye and ear and the time to use them. There are very few corporate publishers who can offer that. To most Western publisher – and agents- all of this time, travel and energy would not be worthwhile. So a Chinese author has to find an agent who has the experience to give your book that attention, put that work in: find you a top translator and a publisher who believes in continuity and understands how to publish Chinese authors and there are precious few of those about, with honourable exceptions. Always remember, it is a relatively small market: translation makes up 5% of most publisher’s lists. Most translations into English sell more copies in Australia, Canada than England and certainly more than the US, with certain high-profile exceptions.
The major boundary is still language. For example the reason Indian novelists have reached such prominence is that almost all of the most successful Indian authors write in English. Editors take risks but usually when they can read the mss in its original language. With Mandarin, there are very few editors able to do that.
Publishing in the west – like driving – can be frustratingly slow for the Chinese. But if you are translated properly, published intelligently you can sell in up to thirty languages, earn money over years from royalties that you never imagined. If not, you will sink with little trace.
I have to admit to a bias here. I have been agenting Chinese authors since long before China became the fashion. I have worked hard to develop contacts, get a sense of which publishers know how to make which books work. I’ve walked Book Fair after Book Fair, had editors tell me that no one was interested in China. Now that people are interested as never before, I worry for Chinese authors.
The new agent of the author rejected my polite suggestion that having two agents representing one author might cause confusion. This makes me worry a great deal for the future of authors who sign up with these new agencies that have sprung up. Their attitude is evidence of dangerous clash of publishing cultures. Most of us publishing in the west know each other and know the dangers I’ve outlined. No publisher wants, or is happy to buy and give their time to an author who is being shopped around by different agents. What they want is continuity and authors would be wise to want it too.