Marketing Chinese Children's Books: Paratext and the Politics of Authorship

An exploration of the strategies used by Chinese children's publishers to package and promote their authors, Marketing Chinese Children's Books situates these approaches within their historical, social and cultural contexts and considers what implications this may have for publishers looking to market Chinese children's books to global audiences.
Focusing on the abundant paratextual elements of many contemporary Chinese children's books, including prefaces, interviews, book covers and author photographs, this study reveals the various constraints on the self-fashioning of popular children's authors in the People's Republic of China today. Spotlighting some of China's best-selling children's authors - Cao Wenxuan (the first Chinese recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award), Yang Hongying, Shen Shixi and Gerelchimeg Black Crane - Frances Weightman considers how the marketing of these authors constructs and presents them variously as academic and political authorities; friends and confidantes; or trusted guides and gatekeepers of the natural world.
This is a timely study of the construction of Chinese children's authorship coinciding with the rapid expansion of children's literature publishing in China and its reception on the world stage.