The 25th National Book Expo held in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province. [Photo/chinanews.com]

Copyright-free public domain books are getting a makeover

Copyright-free public domain books, such as 300 Selected Poems of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Grimm's Fairytales, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway used to be the frequenters in Chinese book expos because of their cheap price. Nowadays, it's rare to find these types of books at the expo anymore.

According to Song Zhijun, vice director of Zhonghua Book Company, copyright-free public domain books are no longer competitive in the market directly due to the impact of free e-books. Publishing companies spend more time planning and designing such kinds of books.

"To publishing companies, it's not a good signal. Although copyright-free public domain books will not disappear from the market, we have to pay more attention on plans and designs. Without innovation or characteristics, we cannot make a profit from these books anymore," said Song.

This year's Expo saw most of the copyright-free public domain books on display featured new retranslations. Lu Zhizhou, a senior editor in Yilin Press Ltd., told Chinese media that the translation on the copyright-free public domain books is really important. Adding that some classic translations are outdated for today's reader.

"Several publishing companies published classic books like The Federalist Papers and Journal of the Federal Convention. While their translations are fine, the books still have abstruse content. So we invited noted translator Yin Xuan to retranslate the two books. Yin Xuan added annotations in some parts to meet our readers' needs,” said Lu.