Taiwan literature a tough sell abroad

"It is rather daft that nowadays, when Taiwanese literature is more developed and very different from that of China, people still cannot differentiate between the two."

The Washington University collection is still available. But while it is no longer the sole Taiwanese literature collection on the market, and Taiwan's quasi-independent status is recognized by much of the world, it remains published under the same title.

"It's too late to change it now," Ko said. "If we did, nobody would know what publication we were talking about or selling."

Problems at home

Academics may point to the turbulent and confused history of Taiwanese literature to explain its lukewarm reception abroad. But others feel that the roots of the problem lay not with overseas readers concepts and ideas of what Taiwan is, but, instead, with the changing face of local reading habits.

At the annual Kingstone (金石堂) "Most Influential Books of the Year" awards, considered by many in the publishing industry to be the most significant indicator of the nation's reading habits, local literature often plays second fiddle to foreign works.

From 2001 to 2003, British author JK Rowling took top honors for her Harry Potter books, with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix racking up sales of over 200,000 copies in Taiwan. This year, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code stole the show with sales of over 300,000 copies.

Sales of works by local authors pale in comparison. Ang Li's The Visible Ghosts (看得見的鬼), considered a huge hit by Unitas, sold a mere 3,000 copies in its first few months of publication.

"It makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to promote local literature overseas when even in Taiwan, sales of works by local authors are dwarfed by those of international writers," said Juno Wang, of Unitas, with a shrug of her shoulders.