China book market shrinks

China’s retail book market started 2026 with another decline, falling 3.75 percent year over year in the first quarter. (publishingperspectives.com) Publishing Perspectives cited data from Beijing OpenBook, the market-tracking company widely used in China’s publishing trade. The report was published on April 13, 2026, in Carlo Carrenho’s weekly international roundup. (publishingperspectives.com) (openbook.com.cn) The new drop follows a weaker 2025, when China’s book retail market declined 2.24 percent to 110.4 billion yuan, or about $15.4 billion. In that same 2025 snapshot, content-driven electronic commerce reached a 40.53 percent market share after rising 30.43 percent year over year. (publishingperspectives.com) That shift means more books are being sold through short-video and livestream platforms such as Douyin, known internationally as TikTok, and fewer through shelves, whether in stores or standard online marketplaces. Platform electronic commerce players including JD.com and Dangdang saw sales fall 22.67 percent in the 2025 data cited by Publishing Perspectives, while physical bookstores fell 4.63 percent. (publishingperspectives.com) China’s publishing trade had already been warning that the rebound after the pandemic was uneven. A Publishing Perspectives report in October 2024 said the market grew 4.72 percent in 2023 to 91.2 billion yuan, then fell 6.2 percent year over year in the first half of 2024. (publishingperspectives.com) The pressure is not spread evenly across categories. Phoenix Publishing and Media said in March 2026 that science and nature books held roughly 29 percent of China’s children’s book market in 2025, showing that some niches are still expanding even as the broader retail market softens. (publishingperspectives.com) The timing matters for rights sellers because the slowdown is landing in the middle of the spring fair season, when publishers buy translation rights and test demand for imported titles. The London Book Fair’s International Rights Centre describes itself as the hub for rights deals, and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair opened April 13 and runs through April 16, 2026. (londonbookfair.co.uk) (bolognachildrensbookfair.com) Bologna has grown into a large marketplace for those conversations. Publishing Perspectives reported that the 2025 fair drew 33,318 publishing professionals and 1,577 exhibitors from 95 countries, while the 2026 edition is again pairing children’s publishing with rights, licensing, television, film, and games business areas. (publishingperspectives.com) (bolognafiere.it) Translation is part of the same squeeze. Publishing Perspectives reported from the London Book Fair on March 12 that the fair’s 16-year-old Literary Translation Center was focused on translators’ pay, contracts, and visibility, as publishers reassess costs and sales prospects across markets. (publishingperspectives.com) For now, the China story is two numbers moving in opposite directions: total retail sales down, algorithm-led discovery up. That leaves publishers heading from London to Bologna trying to judge whether weaker consumer demand will cut rights buying, or simply push more of it toward books that travel well on fast-moving digital platforms. (publishingperspectives.com 1) (publishingperspectives.com 2)