Publishing in the age of AI

The pressure comes from the declining time and attention people give to books in this era of an "attention" economy, where short videos, social media and video games are competing for people's limited time and money.

This pressure is clearly reflected in the market data. According to Centrin Ecloud, a publishing database, in the first half of 2025, the total retail sales of books nationwide decreased by 9.64 percent year-on-year. In terms of specific genres, the publishing industry consulting company Beijing OpenBook says that literature saw the biggest drop in sales, although lifestyle and psychology books experienced a sharp increase.

Statistics from Beijing OpenBook show that for the first half of 2025, the biggest growth in the book retail market came from lifestyle, computer and self-help/psychology titles, with increases of 39 percent, 38.4 percent and 22.8 percent, respectively. Computer books rose in sales thanks to the popularity of the artificial intelligence model DeepSeek.

The sales of self-help/psychology books have been rising in recent years as young people in particular seek to resolve the increasing pressures and challenges of modern life, according to a news report by the Yangtse Evening Post.

That explains why the comic book Daike De Muli Shi Daren De Xinzang (An Oyster With a Shell Is the Heart of an Adult) by Wang Manni, published in 2022, has sold over 1 million copies, making it a bestseller in recent years. On Douban, a review platform in China, more than 33,000 users rated the book 8.2 points out of 10, praising its heartwarming and humorous style.

The great success, however, has actually increased the author's anxiety, forcing her to reconsider her life and creativity.

"I used to live as if just to create, constantly looking for inspiration. But this led to anxiety because inspiration isn't always there. On days I didn't create, I felt like the day was wasted," she said at a festival forum about comic books.

Unlike the first book, Wang's second, Xiangzai Tianqi Haoshi Qu Haibian (I Want to Go to the Beach When the Weather Is Nice), is a long-form comic. It requires more time to develop and refine ideas, making the creative process longer and less predictable.

"You have to return to a very calm, creative state. You can't rush to constantly produce," she says.

"Instead, you need to find yourself through activities like walking, hiking, or sleeping. Once you rediscover who you are, you can better perceive life, your surroundings, and find inspiration," she says.

Through writing these two books, Wang says that she has learned to appreciate herself more as a person, not just as a tool.

"It's about living life fully as a human and letting go of some of the constraints that hold me back," she says.

This quest for meaning in creation resonates with other authors. For Chinese writer Guo Yujie, writing is about retrieving and reconstructing the past, and creating a continuous and complete narrative, which is especially important in a world flooded with fragmented information.

She quotes South Korean-born German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, saying that "we are now living in a world created by the internet, where we only have the present moment and information. This constant stream of information bombards us with fragments, and the present moment quickly passes, leading to the next".

"Han suggests that we have information but lack narrative. What is narrative? It is the process of connecting with the past to form a continuous story or logic, helping us understand how we arrived at the present," she says.