Book sales stall for winner(2)

Mo Yan, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, met fans at the 20th Beijing International Book Fair in August 2013. Zou Hong / China Daily

Jia Zongpei, editor-in-chief of Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, thinks that in the era of the Internet, people have been drawn to many other diversions, and literary works no longer command the attention they did.

"We had published some best-selling literature works, such as Brothers by Yu Hua, but that was before the prevalence of social media," adds Jia.

However, more see the cooling of the "Mo Yan craze" as normal.

"Mo Yan's novels are not commercially popular works," says Hai Yan, a celebrated screenwriter. "It's just like how well-cooked dishes in restaurants cannot compete in amount with the sales of fast food."

Although Mo was considered to be among the first-tier writers of China even before he won the Nobel Prize, not all of his novels had attracted public interest.

Mo's most popular work remains Red Sorghum Clan, which acclaimed director Zhang Yimou adapted into a movie in 1987. It became the first Chinese film to win the Golden Bear Award in the Berlin International Film Festival in 1988.

Thanks to the Nobel Prize, the sales of Mo's works skyrocketed in 2012. "Mo became a cultural symbol as the world recognized Chinese literature," says Wang Hongtu, professor of Chinese literature at Fudan University.

"The prize will certainly draw people's attention to an author for a period of time. But it won't change people's taste in literature," adds Wang. "To appreciate Mo's works requires a sophisticated sense of aesthetic, and there are not many such sophisticated readers out there."

In recent years, although the publishing industry has seen an annual rise in total volume, the sales of serious literary works remain unpromising.

"Genre fiction is what will sell," says Li Ping, an expert on book marketing.

"For example, Mai Jia's espionage novels and Guo Jingming's youth stories have a loyal following. The more they write in their genres, the more they will keep their readers and acquire new ones," Li says.

Earlier this month, Mo revealed to a government website that he is preparing to write about the ills of corruption and the ongoing anti-graft efforts.