PW Studio: Publishing in China 2026: Southern Publishing & Media
The debut appearance of SPM at #23 in the 2025 Global 50 Publishing Ranking speaks volumes about the group’s overall reform and innovation in its publishing initiatives.
“At the end of 2020, we restructured our operations and upped our competitiveness in the mass-market book segment,” says editor-in-chief Xiao Yanbing, adding that the publication of textbooks and supplementary materials—the bread-and- butter of SPM and many other Chinese publishing groups—was reconsolidated under Guangdong Education Publishing House, which is now one of the nation’s top three educational publishers, with net profits exceeding ¥300 million.
The past five years saw SPM and its 11 publishing houses releasing around 9,000 titles per annum. SPM launched several major projects, with a focus on promoting titles related to Lingnan culture. The Dictionary of Lingnan Culture, which took five years to compile and publish, for instance, comprises 412 titles and is regarded as one of the most comprehensive reference books on Lingnan culture. (“Lingnan” refers to the geographical region in southern China that covers present-day Guangdong, where SPM and its subsidiaries are based, as well as Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong, and Macau; it has a distinct subculture that embraces foreign exchanges, influences, and trade.)
One major brand that has expanded significantly after the reform is Gravitare. Established in 2018 by Guangdong People’s Publishing House, Gravitare focuses on making social science books with academic depth accessible to mass-market readers. “This brand offers both original works and translations on world history, Chinese history, overseas sinology, popular social science readings, and nonfiction documentary titles,” Xiao says. Representative Gravitare works include Manufacturing Consumers, Chernobyl: A Tragic History, Unceasing Torrent, and The Winter of Literature. As of August 2026, this brand, which has 112 titles, has sold 700,000 copies with revenues hitting ¥50 million.
Last year, Gravitare won the Annual Publishing Brand top prize at the Blade Book Awards, which was founded in 2021 by the Chinese media outlet Neweekly to highlight academic values, literary innovation, and contemporary works that resonate with younger generations. It also won the Annual Publishing Brand Award in the Academic and Professional category in 2024 and is currently ranked second in brand influence in the humanities and social sciences segment on Baidu search engine.
Flower City Li Juan Classics is another well-known SPM brand that focuses on literary and nonfiction series from Flower City Publishing House. Essayist Li Juan, the brand’s flagship author, has nine works in the series, including My Altay (which won the 2025 China Copyright Gold Award) and The Distant Sunflower Fields. Her titles are available in more than 20 languages, including Arabic, Czech, English, Kazakh, Korean, Russian, and Turkish.
“Li Juan’s journey from Xinjiang, where she was born, to the international stage perfectly embodies the brand-building prowess of Flower City Publishing House,” Xiao says. “The team was captivated by her unique writing style and observations of life right from the very start and was thoroughly invested in collecting and publishing her works.”
In 2024, the Chinese drama adaptation of My Altay aired during prime time on CCTV, indirectly boosting the sales across the brand. The series won major honors at Chinese television award ceremonies and was also broadcast on mainstream plat- forms in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries.
My Altay has gone into 23 printings, with a total print run in excess of two million copies. At its peak, daily sales hit 50,000 copies. “Flower City Publishing House went on to leverage the cultural and tourism resources of the Altay region of Xinjiang and collaborated with China Southern Airlines to offer exclusive Altay-themed flight activities, converting readers and TV viewers into actual tourists,” Xiao says. “The ongoing diversification of the Li Juan literary IP—including derivative products such as calendars and cultural merchandise—further extends the brand’s communication and publishing reach.”
But SPM and its publishing houses do not just focus on original works. SPM is the Chinese home of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (since 2009), David Szalay’s Flesh, and Sophie Marceau’s La Souterraine. “Our goal, aside from nurturing and promoting homegrown works, is to translate quality works from abroad to further enrich the horizons of domestic readers,” says Xiao, whose group has licensed more than 300 titles to overseas markets, 80% of which were bought by publishers in Belt and Road Initiative countries.
Visit them at Booth D147 in Hall 5.1 at the 2026 Frankfurt Book Fair.
