difficulties in publishing plays

[路达]

Yes, it's quite important to publish plays. I think this is also true in China. But perhaps you don't know how difficult to publish a play in China. The most difficult part is the cost barrier.As you know, every book must have an ISBN,right? But publishers will usually charge the author about 2000 US$ for that number (it's not cheap in China). Together with some other charges like 'editing fee(700 us$)', printing fee(starting from mim of 2000 copies in general so of 2700-3000 us$), the total publishing fee for a play of 200,000 words will reach up to 5400-6000 us$). Probably the publisher will say 'This kind of stuff will not sell well in the market and so you will almost publish yourself--, that is, you pay all the fee. I feel sad about this. 
 
You may ask "Why could not you get support from the government? from the university?
Well, that seems to be a good idea. But not in China. If you know how many routines you have to go through and how many people you have to beg for a drop of water, you will mostly just give up trying!
 
And I am not adding royalties here.!!
 
How much does it cost to publish a play in Canada?
 
If I can solve this problem, I will be more willing to translate and introduce Canadian plays to China....
 
 
 
Dachuan Lu
School of Foreign Languages
Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
100083, Beijing
dclu at yeah.net
 
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