Readers leafing through books at zhongshuge Yangzhou Zhenyuan store, Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China. Credit: Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
In the summer of 2019, American publishers started noticing that their books — everything from children’s picture books to historical biographies — weren’t making it to the shelves in China. The Chinese government, which strictly controls the publishing industry, has not explicitly banned American authors, but a dozen writers, agents, literary scouts, and publishers who work in both the Chinese and American publishing industries say that, for more than a year now, the Chinese government has delayed or denied most American authors from publishing their books in China — a change that has hurt publishers in both countries.
“This whole year has been really fraught,” says Kelly Farber, a literary scout who works to match American authors with international publishers, adding that the publishing slowdown as a result of Covid-19 compounded the existing issues for American authors. “The combination of those two things has cratered what was, in the past few years, a rea
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