With a potential readership of 1 billion people, China's book publishing industry is one of the last untapped frontiers of business.
But a one-party state that still jealously guards the flow of information for fear of provoking social disunity has in the past been considered an insurmountable barrier to the expansion of literary ambitions.
For example, Prisoner of the State, the memoirs of ousted party chief Zhao Ziyang, is selling like hot cakes in Hong Kong but is based on tapes that had to be smuggled out of the mainland.
This tight control has also repeatedly quashed any ambitions by international publication giants to crack the mainland market even after China entered the World Trade Organisation in 2001.
But there is a glimmer of hope as Beijing moves from its previous hard focus on manufacturing to create a more creative force in the world's third-largest economy. As part of a broad reform on book publishing, top officials have signalled plans to ease funding restrictions on private sector publishers and give them official approval.
Liu Binjie, the head of the General Administration of Press and Publication (Gapp), last month announced a long-awaited blueprint for a 'breakthrough reform and restructuring' of the sector.
Under the plan, the country's fragmented publishing sector will be consolidated into six to seven dominant publishers. And, for the first time, private publishers would acquire legitimate status and be able to attract much-needed capital, Gapp said. Private publishers have survived in a grey area over the past 20 years, not officially recognised but delivering most of the best-selling titles in the market, including the thriller Code of Tibet and Tales from the Ming Dynasty, a historical account.
