Communicating across cultures is big business and for one Chinese media company keeping up eastern and western relations is happening one book at a time.
China Daily reports on Sinomedia International, a media enterprise that generates cross-cultural news, publications, entertainment and networking opportunities between the English-speaking communities and China related topics.
Sinomedia International focuses on the informational platform between the East and the West. Currently, Sinomedia operates China Books and Long River Press – with a combined history of 60 years in book and periodical publishing and distribution – and the online news portal Web On China.
“We see now as the best time ever as interest in China is soaring,“ said Wang Xin, Sinomedia’s US president. . “We are finding an ever-growing and increasingly diverse audience of scholars, students, travelers, universities, libraries, governments and businesses.“
The task of bridging the informational gap is not easy. American reading habits, writers’ styles, Industry rules and regulations have created only a modest and sluggish start to Sinomedia’s current operation founded in 2011.
“It’s not an easy job,“ said Wang, who reported for duty in San Francisco three years ago from Beijing. According to Wang, who has 30 years of publishing industry expertise, there have been three defining defining moments in the history of China’s cross-cultural publishing and distribution in the US.
1. When Cypress Books was founded in New Jersey – China’s first International Publishing Group (1986).
2. When Cypress Books acquired San Francisco-based China Books & Periodicals, an established publisher and distributor specializing in China-related books and magazines.
3. When they started using local talent. – Wang localizes Sinomedia’s operation by hiring native-speaking editors and marketing pros to fill the ranks of its workforce in San Francisco. “Let the locals choose topics the locals will have interest in reading; and let the locals sell books in the US using methods appealing to the locals,” he purported.
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