How to sell books? Using a localization device to create a market for picture books in China

When new markets are created for foreign cultural products, cultural intermediaries need to convince potential consumers of their value. To understand this process, this paper bridges cultural globalization literature with market studies in economic sociology, and investigates children’s picture books in China, where they were recently introduced in a socio-cultural environment not conductive to appreciating them. It argues that editors add so-called ‘reading guides’ to the books, which act as what I have termed a ‘localization device.’ This localization device helps close the distance between a foreign product and local consumers by constructing this genre’s value in order to create a new market locally. This paper relies on in-depth interviews with Chinese publishing professionals, including editors, foreign rights managers, and literary agents, conducted during an extensive 10-month period of fieldwork in China’s book publishing industry, and on the analysis of the texts of reading guides. It contributes to sociological market studies by launching the concept of localization devices and by showing how market devices are embedded in and shaped by local socio-cultural contexts. It contributes to studies of cultural globalization as it draws attention to the practices and material objects through which cultural intermediaries carry out localization, and to dynamics other than those of the ‘periphery’ resisting the powerful ‘center.’