I'm still in Delhi where excitement levels are building for the upcoming world cup of cricket. The front page of yesterday's Times of India review had a photo of Rahul Dravid holding a copy of Tony Crozier's excellent Wisden History of the Cricket World Cup with his deep assessment of the work: 'I love the pictures in this book', exclaimed Dravid, promising to say more after he had read it.
I imagine the Times Literary Supplement will be keen to publish his final and decisive verdict.
It's coming up to five years since we launched Pan Macmillan Asia under the leadership of Dan Watts. It is now an established part of the Asian book trade and of Macmillan. Here is Dan's history of the adventure.
May 2007 marks five years since Pan Macmillan first opened offices in Hong Kong. It’s been quite a journey and the time has flown by more quickly than I could have imagined. Looking back we’ve enjoyed some significant milestones. The Asian markets and our business have changed since the late nineties when I covered the region as an export rep out of London. Indeed, the prospects for trade publishing and English language sales in Asia are looking brighter that ever. It seems timely therefore to take a moment to reflect on the journey that’s brought us this far and what lies ahead for Pan Macmillan in Asia.
I began my foray into bookselling in Asia in 1999 after relocating to London from Pan Macmillan in Melbourne. At that time I was responsible for Pan Macmillan UK’s export sales to The Middle East, The Indian Subcontinent and Asia Pacific. India represented the biggest sales territory and was certainly perceived to be strategically the most important area for our English language sales and most efforts were focussed here accordingly.
At the time two thirds of our sales were accounted for by Singapore/Malaysia. Otherwise HK, Thailand and Japan represented other significant territories. We had no export sales to China, Korea or Vietnam and negligible sales to The Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia. Most British publishers still referred to Asia Pacific as ‘The Far East’ and the sales efforts were largely channelled through single market distributors in the countries with strong colonial histories.
Macmillan Childrens Books represented a mere 10% - 15% of our sales at this time compared to over 50% today. The English language children’s book boom was still far from being anticipated. China’s recent economic growth was just starting to make waves in the west although it was still thought to be many years before we’d be selling any English language trade books there. Little optimism prevailed with regards to HK which had sunk into gloom in the wake of the hand back to China two years prior. Korea was only just beginning its drive for international competitiveness and Japan was barely starting to show signs of shrugging off its decade long recession. Political tensions between Taiwan and China were at their height and Singapore was looking at a recession as it watched its electronics manufacturing industry slowing disappear to cheaper labour markets like China. Generally the region had been heavily shaken by the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis.
Despite the prevailing negative mood, we were approaching the end of the century and times were changing. The ‘dot com’ bubble was starting and the world was facing an information technology revolution from which Asia Pacific would be one of the biggest beneficiaries.
Pan Macmillan’s export sales doubled in 18 months through a combination of opening up new markets, and breaking down old distributor arrangements in existing territories. We started to realise the cross over potential of children’s books through the educational sales channels and the wider economic recovery had begun. Potential for English book sales outside the non-commonwealth territories was becoming apparent. The positive growth trends continued steadfastly and East Asia soon came to represent around 2/3 of our revenue from greater Asian territories.
In 2002 we made the decision to take advantage of Macmillan’s infrastructure in Hong Kong by adding a small Pan Macmillan sales office to the existing production and publishing offices. I relocated to Hong Kong in May of that year and hired an assistant sales manager and a marketing assistant in addition to our Japan rep, Shino Yasuda. The aim was to provide a better service to our growing database of customers, expand sales into emerging markets through local skills and service combined with the unique ability of providing regional marketing and publicity services.
In the same year, Holtzbrinck Publishers were reviewing their existing arrangements for export sales into Asia from the USA. Considering Macmillan’s new local position they soon changed their representation arrangements from a third party sales agent to use the services provided Pan Macmillan. The combination of Pan Macmillan and Holtzbrinck Trade sales made Pan Macmillan in Asia a formidable presence for general books in the regional markets.
In 2003 Hong Kong, and many other countries in the region, were hit with the terrifying phenomenon of the SARS outbreak. Air travel, tourism, the hotel industry, the restaurant industry all practically ground to a complete halt. Could this spell the beginning of another Asian Economic crisis? Our business was hit hard, as was our lifestyles. (Can you imagine commuting to work every day wearing a surgical mask?) Paranoia completely swept the region.
Despite the sudden impact of the SARS outbreak we did manage to grow the business over the next two years. UK and USA sales continued to flourish. We began representing a growing number of third party publishers such as Granta, Rodale and Walker Books on a commission basis. We started selling Pan Macmillan Australia books into the region and managed a number of regional, high profile author tours including Wilbur Smith, Daniel Mason, Matthew Reilly, John Banville and Alan Hollinghurst. We were generating regional publicity and promotion in a way that had never been done by any of our competitors. Janet Chan and Jade Lui who had joined me with the initial move to HK had now developed a mature approach to the business and had become invaluable members of the team.
In 2005, as a result of Richard Nathan’s strategic review of the Holtzbrinck Group’s business in Asia, it was decided that Pan Macmillan Asia would cease to become a sales branch of the UK instead to become a stand alone, commission based, business centre. Assuming responsibility for our own profit and loss provided the incentive to take the business beyond simply a rep office towards a local publishing operation.
It was fortuitous that year that the well known literary agent and sinologist, Toby Eady approached David North with the idea of partnering with Pan Macmillan to create an Asian focussed publishing program. Thus, the idea of Picador Asia was formed. Toby’s experience with oriental writers such as Jung Chang and his contacts in China provided us with a wealth of publishing opportunities within China and the greater region. The aim was to acquire Asian literary talent from our offices in Hong Kong for publication locally and within the group around the world.
A year later we published our first title, February Flowers, by Fan Wu and have consequently slowly put together program of Asian writers through Toby and from within the resources of the group to bring about a schedule of around 6 – 8 new titles a year from 2007.
The books have not only been successful in the English language but have also proved popular internationally as well. February Flowers has now been sold in 13 different languages and Picador Asia’s second title The Eye of Jade in 15 languages included a $250,000 deal with Simon and Schuster in the USA as part of a two book deal.
In this time the export sales business continued to grow so did the team with an increasingly diverse international flavour. Keren Cheung switched allegiances from Macmillan Education to join the Pan Macmillan team. Claudia Buzzoni left Macmillan Australia for a stint in Hong Kong and Ilangoh Thanabalan left our Singapore Distributor, Pansing to work with us in Hong Kong.
We also continued to expand through acquisition of further third party sales agency contracts including Lonely Planet, Houghton Mifflin, Kingfisher, and Guinness World Records to mention a few. A weak US dollar provided a boost to our US business resulting in a 50% increase in export sales in 2006.
Our marketing efforts have also intensified. More author tours of more big names gained even better exposure for our titles. Lord Jeffrey Archer completed a hugely successful tour of Singapore, Andy Griffiths toured the region and completed a marathon of school visits and next month we’ll host a four city tour for Julia Donaldson. We’re regularly securing interviews with CNN, The International Herald Tribune, The Asian Wall Street Journal as well as a larger number of local publications. We’ve developed our unique website as a bookseller resource and producing our own unique quarterly catalogue.
In April this year we’ll open a new sales office in Beijing in order to capitalise on both the growing export sales opportunities in Greater China but also to develop co-publishing ventures in the mainland. We have plans to launch a direct sales channel in China in the form of a Book Club and are discussing a possible joint venture with FLTRP in Beijing to launch a Chinese Language Children’s books program under Macmillan Children’s Books China.
Other plans under development include a possible partnership to manage some limited local distribution of our locally published titles. We’re looking to expand our copyright activity and facilitate further local production, direct deliveries and printing.
The Chinese Economic phenomenon continues with full force and is driving aggressive optimism throughout the region. Japan is firmly bouncing back from its economic woes and the Korean Children’s Book boom is back in full swing. With the Beijing Olympics just on the horizon regional confidence has not been stronger. The spread of the internet is facilitating the spread of the English language and with that is coming a seemingly endless increase in demand for English language books of all varieties. We’ve achieved quite a lot in five years but there’s still so much more that can be done. I hope that in another five years I’ll be able to report much more than I have today.