Big Trouble in Literary China

Readers might have gotten a kick out of this morning’s Red Rockers video, posted in honor of the delegation of American booksellers going to the Beijing Book Fair next month, but, says Matthew Patin of the Greenleaf Book Group, “I don’t think there will be much New Wave singing and dancing when the BEA delegation comes face to face with these less lofty topics of discussion: a 10 percent—and rising—increase in paper prices, the dismantlement of smaller Chinese paper mills, and Chinese kids having to place Harry Potter back on the shelf because it’s become twice as expensive.”

Yep, things are that bad in China, and, according to the Associated Press, “experts say that if the trend is unchecked, publishers worldwide could find themselves paying higher costs—and consumers facing higher book prices.”

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