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The international section of this year’s book exhibition was especially admirable. The Hong Kong Literature section successfully sold 52 contemporary titles on the opening day of the exhibition. Starting from June 3rd, they were able to earn approximately USD 2,000 dollars every day. For small publishing houses that took part in the book exhibition for the first time, the results were impressive. Hong Kong author Tang Siu Wa, who organized the Hong Kong Literature section, expressed: “Taipei International Book Exhibition is, among all the major book exhibitions in Asia's Mandarin-speaking world, the most complete and organized one so far…within the chaos around the world, where lockdowns are still happening and restrictions are being imposed, what I’m feeling is exactly the meaningful determination, insistence, and accomplishments.”

Germany, a country with a vibrant publishing industry, had Frankfurter Buchmesse GmbH organize their section this year. The themes they included were: queer, race, transgender, subcultures, self-recognition, graphic novels, psychology, and professional intellectual titles. Bookseller Sunny Books also collaborated in an exhibition of winners of Germany’s three major literary awards: World’s Most Beautiful Book Awards, The Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, and The German Book Prize. The German Literature section exhibited nearly 600 titles, and Goethe-Institut Taipei organized panels on cultural equity, historical memories, and Artificial Intelligence. All these vibrant scenes showed that the amount of publications are still increasing during the post-pandemic period.

German Section

In response to international events, Taipei International Book Exhibition, alongside book fairs in Frankfurt, London, Bologna, Guadalajara, and more, all expressed their deep regrets and sorrow toward the Ukrainian war that started in February this year. To condemn war and advocate for peace, the Taipei International Book Exhibition organized a Ukraine section in the exhibition, using Stand with Ukraine as its motto, including a collaboration with Ukraine’s Pictoric illustrators: carefully selected 15 artworks depicting scenes of Ukrainian refugees looking for a way out, the war destroying their homes, and Ukrainian citizens’ loss and grief, hoping to create a global conversation through art in pursuit of eventual peace. Valentina Butenko, the visiting book-selling manager of Ukraine’s YAKABOO platform, narrated the details of Ukraine’s history and its connection to the world, and also emphasized the importance of Ukraine’s languages and the deep meanings of recognition of a country. What was even more worth mentioning is that the “Peace Book Exhibition,” specially designed by Taipei Book Fair Foundation, attracted many audiences and professionals to browse and read, reflecting on the value and truth of peace.

Ukraine Section: Stand with Ukraine
(c) Taipei Book Fair Foundation

The 2022 Taipei International Book Exhibition, apart from highlighting the promotion of publications, also hoped to connect to global publishing houses that specialize in children’s picture books and graphic novels, to provide new perspectives. This year, there was a special invitation curated by visual artist Page Tsou, designing “Visual Fanzine – Illustrated Landscape of the Encounters of Taiwanese Artists” beside the conventional book exhibition space. This other space exhibited artworks and books from 23 illustrators who had recently been awarded national prizes or had successfully sold their titles to foreign publishers. Illustrators such as the internationally-acclaimed Jimmy Liao; Inca Pan, the very first Taiwanese artist who went on the New York Times and had created discussions from his NFT artworks; Gao Yan, the cover designer and illustrator of the well-known Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s prose collection Abandoning a Cat; Cho Pei-Hsin, the winner of Bologna's 2021 International Award for Illustration, and more.

Looking ahead to the 2023 Taipei International Book Exhibition, the planning for the guest of honor is ready to be launched. Poland, a country that deeply values history, music, science, education, and children’s rights, houses five winners for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and they will be advocating national literary awards winning works as well as children’s picture books that are brimming with poetic aesthetics. Under the solid tradition of documentary reportage, they will be introducing established literary works and their authors, hoping to establish more meaningful connections with Taiwanese readers, as well as publishing professionals in Asia. From January 31st to February 5th, 2023, publishing friends and readers from all over the world are welcome to visit! 

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The above three novelists are all deeply influenced by Taiwanese literature. With initial observation, we can tell that the earliest Taiwanese queer novels are modernist writings that are, at the same time, partly-autobiographical and confessional (take Qiu Miaojin (邱妙津) as an example) and they have been staying afloat in Taiwanese literature and history. The influence of Taiwanese queer novels has gone beyond coming-of-age stories and romance novels, and have entered a more diverse realm where social conversations take place. Writings from queer writers who were born past the ’70s, such as Ghost Town (鬼地方) from Kevin Chen (陳思宏), a story based on Yongjing, the author’s birthplace, and Kan Yao-Ming’s (甘耀明) Becoming Bunun (成為真正的人) can both be perceived as a reflection of this new phenomenon.

Besides the titles mentioned above, since the “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times” movement, a considerable amount of writings from Hong Kong writers has begun to appear in Taiwan. Some of these authors studied abroad in Taiwan, and some have settled on the island. Although “Hong Kong’s fate” is the most distinctive theme, the key element in so many stellar writings is the excellence of these authors’ skills. What these writings address aren’t limited to historical trauma. In this trend, a musician from Hong Kong, Wang He-Ping (王和平), who had studied in Hualien, has written That’s the Hormones Speaking (色情白噪音). Just like the title, the author intends to let hormones, who exist without a language, speak out. In her work, queerness is filled with both piercing, sensory strength and the overthrowing of established rhetorics.

Last but not least, the upcoming short story collection from Tetsuya Terao (寺尾哲也), Bullets Are the Remaining Life (子彈是餘生), is worth mentioning. Once a resident of San Francisco and a former Google software engineer, the author perfectly presents the landscapes of this professional field, as well as the background of Taiwanese nationals who reside in the States. There are three other elements that bring attention to this author’s writing: first is his style – he writes in a cold, piercing, yet concise and moving way, making the reading experience fast and pleasurable; secondly, in contrast to general assumptions, queer people who work in engineering and earn high salaries, don’t necessarily have easy lives. They might feel lonely in this elite environment with such high pressure. Scenes of queer people who died by suicide, who had suicidal thoughts, and who lived with the memories of other queer people who died by suicide appear frequently. The sense of despair isn’t to overly evoke emotions, but to be understood as “a state of mourning”, which gives it an even more profound meaning. Third is the profound existence of queer desire, and how it is never strengthened despite any positive feedback and experiences. Sexual enlightenment or sexual awakening, despite bearing the nature of humility, setback, and void, is still a part of the desire. Therefore, the queer community that is brought out by Tetsuya Terao, also joined the literary tradition that never gives up on “individuals who fell apart”.

Looking at the genre, Taiwanese queer poetry is gaining force; as for fiction, there is no shortage of great works; as for essays about coming out of the closet, they picked up the rhythm slightly later – the queer essay collection Thorns and Waves (刺與浪) didn’t get published until 2022. Scripts started with Tian Chi-Yuan (田啟元), with some established styles, and Chien Li-Ying (簡莉穎) is one of the most compelling authors. In addition, the photography book Hand in Hand, Together  (拉拉手，在一起) incorporates photography and many queer communities’ personal statements. In the same genre of works that focus on this social movement and its course of development to strive for the equal marriage rights between 2016 and 2019, is The Calm After the Storm (雨過天青). Movie director Huang Hui-Chen’s (黃惠偵) The Priestess Walks Alone (我和我的T媽媽) bears significant importance: it is a moving confession from an adult daughter whose mother identifies herself as lesbian. In the following report, I have selected a few queer novels to focus on:

Starting from 1997, Taiwan began to establish a university major in Taiwanese literature. This development was perceived as a means to preserve Taiwan’s languages and history, but was thought of less as being related to creative works, or even to advocacy for queer writings. If one wanted to learn more about queer culture, after the ‘90s – majoring in English, American Literature, or other Foreign Language Literature was the primary option.

After 2017, new changes and literary phenomena made us look back to the turning points in 1997. First of all, Yang Shuang-Zi’s (楊双子) two novels, Seasons of Bloom (花開時節) and Taiwan Travelogue (台灣漫遊錄), are about the female queer stories that took place during the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan. The author had a firm grasp of Taiwanese history, causing queer literature, which is oftentimes introspective, to suddenly gain a unique sense of space. Lin Hsin Hui’s (林新惠) short story collection, Human Glitches (瑕疵人型), is interwoven with horror, bringing in objects and sci-fi writing to deconstruct the established gender disciplines. One of the stories in the collection, “Cover Up” (虛掩), was selected as a main source text for adaptation for the 2020 Taipei Golden Horse Film Academy’s final presentation. Ho Wen-Jin’s (何玟珒) That Day, We Searched Our Ways Behind a Chicken Butt (那一天我們跟在雞屁股後面尋路), on the other hand, is a work without any reservation, which embraces the queerness and the interactive dialectics of Taiwanese literature and history. The tradition of “換斗 changing stars” (a ceremony performance in which people change the gender of a fetus) is compared with transgender surgery: the former is the changing of gender under others’ expectations, while the latter is a personal decision – showing an excellent ability for criticism. Besides all this, the author has solid comedy skills. The sharpest section of this novel was the part that precisely reveals under which circumstances will queer memories be erased.

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GPT is set up by The Ministry of Culture to encourage the publication of Taiwanese works in translation overseas, to raise the international visibility of Taiwanese cultural content, and to help Taiwan's publishing industry expand into non-Chinese international markets.

Applicant Eligibility: Foreign publishing houses (legal persons) legally registered in accordance with the laws and regulations of their respective countries.

Conditions:

1. The so-called Taiwanese works must meet the following requirements:

A. Use traditional characters
B. Written by a natural person holding an R.O.C. identity card
C. Has been assigned an ISBN in Taiwan
i.e., the author is a native of Taiwan, and the first 6 digits of the book's ISBN are 978-957-XXX-XXX-X, 978-986-XXX-XXX-X, or 978-626-XXX-XXX-X.

2. Applications must include documents certifying that the copyright holder of the Taiwanese works consents to its translation and foreign publication (no restriction on its format).

3. A translation sample of the Taiwanese work is required (no restriction on its format and length).

4. The translated work must be published within two years, after the first day of the relevant application period.

Grant Items:

1. The maximum grant available for each project is NT$600,000, which covers:

A. Licensing fees (going to the copyright holder of the Taiwanese works)
B. Translation fees
C. Marketing and promotion fees (limited to economy class air tickets for the R.O.C. writer to participate in overseas promotional activities related to the project)
D. Book production-oriented fees
E. Tax (20% of the total award amount)
F. Remittance-related handling fees

2. Priority consideration is given to books that have received the Golden Tripod Award, the Golden Comic Award, or the Taiwan Literature Award.

3. The grant will be given all at once after the grant recipients submit the following written documents to the Ministry within one month of publication:

A. Receipt (format given along with the Ministry's formal announcement);
B. A detailed list of expenditures;
C. 10 print copies of the final work published abroad (if the work is published in an e-book format, grant recipients shall instead provide purchase authorizations for 10 persons);
D. An electronic file with aforementioned documents in PDF.

Application Period: Twice every year. The MOC reserves the right to change the application periods, and will announce said changes separately.

Announcement of successful applications: Winners will be announced within three months of the end of the application period.

Application Method: Please visit the Ministry’s official website (https://grants.moc.gov.tw/Web_ENG/), and use the online application system.

For full details of the GPT, please visit https://grants.moc.gov.tw/Web_ENG/PointDetail.jsp?__viewstate=oRWyc5VpG+PNII1HENWzEl8qiFfwAwJw7oJCOHz4L408lIe/efs7z+WTtc3mBJBkYvZhpy/Mg9Q=

Or contact: books@moc.gov.tw

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Children’s Book Markets by Country: The Proportion of Local vs Foreign Titles

At the moment it seems like most children’s books in Taiwan are translated titles, but Su Shin also wanted to note that in the last five years there has been a steady increase in the number of local children’s book authors and illustrators. In 2019, nine Taiwanese illustrators were selected to display their work at the Illustrator’s Exhibition at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, which was a new record for Taiwan. This year, Lin Lian-En’s picture book Home won the 2021 Bologna Ragazzi Award for Fiction, and Animo Chen’s picture book Love Letter which was written in Taiwanese received a special mention for the 2021 Bologna Ragazzi Award for Poetry. These internationally recognised awards are not only a boost for Taiwanese creators but also bring increased visibility and publishing opportunities. Su Shin also candidly acknowledges that in reality these awards might not necessarily translate into sales: “Ultimately, is it more important for a book to be a bestseller or to be publicly lauded? Even at this stage, we still can’t avoid that struggle between critical acclaim and book sales.”

In Thailand and Vietnam, the majority of children’s titles are translated books. “The proportion of original Vietnamese books is about 20-30%, with translated books accounting for nearly 70% of the market. The main reason is that it’s hard to find professional Vietnamese children’s writers.” Take picture books for example, the author has to co-create with an illustrator but since most illustrators in Vietnam work part-time or are moonlighting: “It takes a long time to create children’s books and it doesn’t generate much income.” Therefore, most children’s books in Vietnam tend to be translations of foreign titles. The same is true in Thailand, where over 80% of children’s books are translated titles. In the past, they have been published in co-edition with European publishers which not only reduced production costs but also served as professional guidance for Thai publishers by giving them the chance to collaborate with a lot of highly-skilled children’s book printing specialists.

By contrast, translated books account for a smaller proportion of Indonesia’s publishing market, and the number of translated children’s titles is even smaller still. “Many local authors are very keen to interact with fans on the internet which makes marketing and publicising their books relatively easy, whereas translated works are never quite as effective at achieving this as their local counterparts.” Editors at Indonesian publishing houses often find picture book creators who have already a certain number of fans on social media and invite them to publish a physical book. Generally speaking, the market response is pretty good. Adapting books for the screen and selling the rights to streaming platforms is one of the ways they can promote local Indonesian books. “We actively contact domestic production companies as well as trying to sell international translation rights, but for the most part we tend to sell them to domestic production teams.” Filming brings the text to life on screen, making it more vivid with new layers of storytelling. In addition to Netflix, there are local Indonesian streaming platforms that bring great stories to readers.

The children’s publishing market in South Korea is also dominated by local books. “In the past, domestic and foreign titles used to be a 50/50 or 60/40 split, but recently over 90% of books have been written by local authors.” There are two South Korean organisations that are investing resources in local authors, in particular the Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea (KPIPA) is there to assist translators, plan book fairs, and contact foreign publishing houses. They are one of the most important advocates for selling South Korean works overseas, and readers from neighbouring countries such as Japan, Taiwan, China and Vietnam are all very fond of Korean children’s books. Within South Korean children’s books, young adult novels have sold especially well and in recent years there has also been a significant increase in sales of Japanese books about economics targeted at middle school students. “Soaring stock prices, Bitcoin and so on have become hot topics in the last few years which has made parents hope that their children can learn how to use money from an early age.” It might seem unfathomable that middle school students would be studying economics but financial investment has been a popular subject in general over the last few years. For example, 25% of the books on Taiwan’s bestseller charts last year were related to personal finance.

How Do You Detect Trends and Decide When to Follow Them?

By chance, all eight publishers agreed that social trends and readers’ needs were their main points of reference when publishing a book. “Often, readers are hoping that a book will help them solve their problems, so it’s absolutely crucial to understand the difficulties people are facing.” For example, at the beginning of this year Thai publishers found that popular science books were doing very well. Meanwhile in Vietnam, publishers feel that the “loneliness economy” is an area that can developed further given that industry has already seen readers gravitate towards loneliness-related books about managing moods and healing anxiety. Brick-and-mortar bookshops, book reviews and the fluctuations of online bestseller lists are all equally important observation points, while social media is a crucial tool for grasping popular societal trends. As the various forms of book promotion become more and more diverse, “It’s imperative that publishers keep observing trends, and that they create new trends of their own.”

At the end of the roundtable discussion, the publishers couldn’t help reminiscing about the warmth of talking in-person at physical book fairs. In particular, Taiwan and Indonesia both felt as though they lacked a unified central platform like South Korea’s which serves as a channel for fielding inquiries. For many of the local children’s books that have already been translated, it feels like the only way for people to find out about them is at or around the book fairs, and a lot of books are difficult to promote without physical book fairs. For the Summer Edition of this year’s Taipei Rights Workshop, The Grayhawk Agency used Gather Town to build a virtual space which international delegates could “visit”. Some of the publishers candidly stated that it was much easier to use and far more interesting than Frankfurt Book Fair’s digital rights portal, but it’s only natural that as publishers around the world continue to solider through this pandemic with no end in sight, we still look forward to a future where we can meet in person to listen and talk about all the great stories that deserve to be read.

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3. The Endless Possibilities of Comics

This year’s shortlist revealed once again just how unlimited the possibilities are for comics. New opportunities are brought about by changes in the media landscape, for example San Ri Juan Zi’s self-published comic Hi, Grandpa! Being Together and Then Saying Goodbye has a lot of traits that are common in today’s web comics, such as the way it uses sincere feelings that are true to life, like those stories you read on the internet that suddenly leave you teary-eyed and heartbroken. This multimedia approach is also reflected in the nominees for Best Cross-media Application: Tong Li Publishing Co’s work on The Monster of Memory: Destiny; and Secret Whispers which was a joint venture between Chimney Animation and Fish Wang, an illustrator, animator and director who won Best Animated Short Film at the 2019 Golden Horse Awards for Gold Fish.

The Monster of Memory was originally a comic by author-illustrator Mae and featured an ingeniously designed setting as well as a truly mind-blowing plot that was filled with metaphors of real-world relationships. It’s the sort of story that is perfectly suited to being adapted into a game as a more immersive way for readers to experience the world of the book. Fish Wang meanwhile, is known as a great all-rounder in Taiwanese comics and Secret Whispers can be seen as an “original multimedia work” because from the outset he uses different types of media to portray the teenagers’ “secrets” through different perspectives as the tension rises between them. In the future, the work might be seen as an important reference point in the development of Taiwanese comics, not just because it was set up as a cross-media project from the beginning but also because of the way it was a joint creative venture in the studio.

In addition to the possibilities brought about by other media, a lot of graphic novels have emerged among Taiwanese comics in recent years. The term “graphic novel” has been adopted from the West and encompasses works that are deeply experimental and avant-garde. A lot of readers who have been familiar with Japanese manga from a young age can’t help but flip through graphic novels and wonder uncertainly “Is this book really a comic?” This completely new experience and the excitement it provokes are precisely what makes graphic novels so fascinating.

A Trip to the Asylum by Pam Pam Liu was the most provocative, nerve-wracking book of the year. A fictional story about mental illness and a psychiatric hospital, the comic is an all-out sprint that thrusts you straight into the darkness of the subconscious where you have no defences and there are no taboos. Reading it is like being in a comic book version of a Lou Reed song.

A Trip to the Asylum by Pam Pam Liu

It is hard to think of a comic more different from A Trip to the Asylum than the nonfiction series Son of Formosa. The series is based on the life of Tsai Kun-lin, a political victim of the White Terror who published comics despite the authoritarian environment in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987. He won the Special Contribution Award at the 2018 Golden Comic Awards for his courage and perseverance in fostering the development of Taiwan’s publishing sector. For the Son of Formosa series, author Yu Peiyun conducted extensive research when writing the text and illustrator Zhou Jianxin used a range of visual methods to convey the myriad of twists and turns that Tsai Kun-lin experienced over the course of his life. It doesn’t just relay the facts but the images invite the reader to extend their imagination and in doing so the comic conveys a level of empathy that goes beyond the words of the text. Son of Formosa is a graphic novel that can be cherished as a classic both in Taiwan and internationally.  

Son of Formosa by Yu Peiyun and Zhou Jianxin

In this new era of comics, even the older forms of comics that followed a reliable, clear-cut path are no longer restrained by the same rigid set of standards as they once were. In addition to graphic novels, works like Illustrated Taiwan Keywords: A Hand-Drawn History of 1940-2020 by Chiou Hsien-Hsin which look like picture books or nonfiction books centred around infographics will also have an impact on what are stereotypically considered to be “comics” in the future. There is an almost unlimited number of paths an image can take, so rather than holding onto outdated beliefs of what a comic should be, both comic creators and readers alike should adopt a more open-minded approach and embrace the endless possibilities comics have to offer.

Summary

These three points are just my suggested highlights for anyone looking at the online exhibition of this year’s Golden Comic Awards. As with any exhibition, each visitor should use their personal interests and preferences to unearth their own understanding and appreciation of the exhibits. It is also important to acknowledge the work done by editors to help bring these visual adaptations of literature and history to life. Lin Yi-Chun (Managing Editor at Locus Publishing Company) won this year’s Best Editor Award for her work on The Ren Zheng-hua Collection: Drawn to Life + The Human Bun and on Secret Whispers; while the shortlisted editors included Huang Pei-Shan and Ho Szu-Ying (Editor-in-Chief and Editor at Slowork Publishing respectively) for their work on Son of Formosa, and Tan Shun-Hsin (Editor) for her work on Fantastic Tales of Splendid Blossoms. These exhibits are all undoubtedly great works of art which deserve to be poured over by visitors. However, there are physical limitations with all exhibitions and this was no exception. With a total of 226 works registered this year it was inevitable that some talent would go unrecognised, so this exhibition should only be seen as a starting point and readers should take their initial interest a step further because there are just too many beautiful Taiwanese comics out there waiting to be read.

Comics are a medium where stories are told through images and by using different themes or illustration styles what you are ultimately trying to achieve is a great story. Over the last few years, Taiwanese comics have produced countless great stories regardless of whether they are shortlisted for the Golden Comic Awards or not. These are stories that will make you laugh, make you cry, and at some point they might even accidentally become something that saves your life, and this, more than anything, is what I want you to know about the Golden Comic Awards and the corresponding exhibition, not just this year but in all the years to come.