Marketing Counterfeits: A Primer
Sunday, 31. December 2006, 14:30:00
SO YOU ARE making one of your periodic pilgrimages to the local pirate bookstall to check out the latest arrivals. Not that you will purchase anything—that would not only be an ethical violation but an infringement on various domestic and international regulations as well. The thought is tempting, however, as you compare the list price on the back ("Forty-five yuan for a Mo Yan novel?") with the signs posted on the walls: Everything 5 yuan. A recorded voice repeats ad nauseum over a megaphone, "Everything 5 yuan. Choose what you want, take what you like. Just 5 yuan." And the proprietor, to erase any doubt, calls out every twenty seconds, "Choose them thick. Only 5 yuan." But you merely wish to discover what people are reading, in a setting removed from the language textbooks and glossy photobooks of the local mega-bookstore, so that when you finally decide what to purchase, you can make it in and out with no one getting hurt.
As you browse past the vernacular translations of Interpreting Dreams and The Book of Changes, the racks of nearly identical martial arts series, and the self-help fiction of Carnegie, Welch, and Hill, a familiar name catches your eye. "Wang Shuo's still writing?" you wonder, as a sense of anticipation starts to build, a feeling you thought would never return after he announced his (latest) retirement from the literary scene. The novel slides out from between Kafka on the Shore and Rousseau's Confessions (English/Chinese facing page edition volume 2). Titled Don't Want To Go To Bed, the cover image is a reclining woman in soft focus black and white. Suddenly you are struck with an unsettling dread—the promo text at the top reads "Dedicated to all single women weary of love." Has Wang Shuo lost it?
As you browse past the vernacular translations of Interpreting Dreams and The Book of Changes, the racks of nearly identical martial arts series, and the self-help fiction of Carnegie, Welch, and Hill, a familiar name catches your eye. "Wang Shuo's still writing?" you wonder, as a sense of anticipation starts to build, a feeling you thought would never return after he announced his (latest) retirement from the literary scene. The novel slides out from between Kafka on the Shore and Rousseau's Confessions (English/Chinese facing page edition volume 2). Titled Don't Want To Go To Bed, the cover image is a reclining woman in soft focus black and white. Suddenly you are struck with an unsettling dread—the promo text at the top reads "Dedicated to all single women weary of love." Has Wang Shuo lost it?
WIDGETIZE