By Kristie Leung
One of the events leading up to each year’s Beijing International Book Fair is the Beijing International Publishing Forum. The theme for this year was Global Publishing Cooperation and China’s Market Opportunities. What made this year more special for us is that our president, John, was invited to speak at one of the three branch forums focusing on children’s books.
The morning started out as a few government officials delivered their speeches. The grand ballroom at the Beijing Radisson was filled with press and many others attending the book fair. Topics covered included everything from the direction Chinese publishing is heading to the hottest topics in digital content.
After lunch we broke into three different branch forums with special topics of interest: Trade, Children, and Science & Education. John was the first to speak, and together with guest speakers from China, Italy, UK, and Taiwan, he presented an overview of how the world of children’s book publishing and discussed how cooperation with the Chinese market comes in to play. The best part for us was that we had so many people coming up to our booth to check out our titles and, of course, compliment John on his speech.
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