Comics redrawing reading habits

Hua Juan, supervisor of comic books at Xiron, says that the domestic comic books on the lists are popular not only for their stories but also for their themes of traditional Chinese culture.

For example, the best-selling comic book, Those Happenings of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), is adapted from an extremely successful book of the same title that discusses events in this historical period in an entertaining way.

Two other best-sellers on the list, Fei Ren Zai (Non-Human), and, You Shou Yan (Fabulous Beasts), are about the daily lives of the immortals and mythical creatures from ancient times living in modern times.

"They are very imaginative and interesting, and because they are rooted in traditional Chinese culture, Chinese readers can easily resonate with them. Only domestic comics can provide such a reading experience," Hua says.

The Bu Baichi series by Xiron also focuses on traditional Chinese culture and has also been popular among readers.

"They present complicated information in an approachable manner and are popular among young people, especially students, who are most interested in learning, but also care about personalized reading," says Zhang Zheng, a manager in charge of the Bu Baichi series at Xiron.

In 2021, Xiron started a campaign to attract young Chinese to traditional culture through books.

"Now, the popularity of domestic comics has demonstrated this trend," Hua says.

However, she says that even though comic books can easily attract attention and go viral online, they don't actually perform so well in terms of sales.

"Some top comic books can sell more than 1 million copies each, but most comic book editors still do the job out of love, since the books they work on are more complex and costly than common books but sell at lower prices," she says.

She points to the comic books from Xiron as examples. Comics account for less than 10 percent of the total number of book titles, and account for less than 5 percent of sales.

According to Beijing Openbook, between January and November 2023, sales of comic books for adults accounted for 0.53 percent of the market, and kids comics for 0.34 percent.

However, she says there's still huge potential for both domestic market proportion and sales.

"Over the past decade, we can see that the development of comics in China can be attributed to the persistence and efforts of excellent authors, such as Xia Da and Xiao Xinyu. Both of their reader bases have been continuously expanding," she says.

"What we need to do is to better serve these creators, presenting and promoting their great content in a market-oriented way, and providing them with better space for creation."