A Citic Press book stand advertises for the release of the Chinese version of Walter Isaacson’s new Elon Musk biography.<\/p>\n
CNBC | Evelyn Cheng<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
BEIJING \u2014 Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk hit the Chinese market Tuesday, several hours ahead of the U.S. release due to a time difference that puts Beijing 12 hours ahead of New York.<\/p>\n
A day earlier, publisher Citic Press Group raised the book’s selling price to 79 Chinese yuan ($10.84), up from 59 yuan previously, according to Chris Sun, lead translator of Isaacson’s book into Chinese.<\/p>\n
Citing conversations with the publisher, Sun said a rare, urgent additional printing was done during the pre-sale period and that the work was Citic Press’ “highest-level confidential project” of the year. That’s according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese comments.<\/p>\n
Citic did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment. The Shenzhen-listed company reported revenue from operations of 872.65 million yuan for the first half of the year, up 2.9% from a year ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/img><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sun said Citic was unable to provide sales figures of the new biography as of Tuesday.<\/p>\n On the online retailer JD.com’s app Tuesday, versions of the new Elon Musk biography in Chinese held the top three spots in the category of most popular finance and economics biographies.<\/p>\n In fourth place was Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs in Chinese.<\/p>\n About a decade ago, copies of the Jobs’ biography could be found at numerous street-side stands in China. They were almost always knockoffs, but the distinctive black-and-white cover stood out.<\/p>\n Sun pointed out that much has changed between the U.S. and China since then, as well as ordinary Chinese people’s awareness of such tech entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n When Jobs died in 2011, he was better known among China’s elites, while ordinary people were still learning about Apple’s products, Sun said.<\/p>\n Today, \u201cordinary people [in China] have a very high opinion of Musk,\u201d Sun said, noting some people are proud to be Tesla<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span> owners. Ashlee Vance’s earlier biography of Musk has been popular in China as well.<\/p>\n Read excerpts from Isaacson’s new Musk biography here:<\/p>\n Source: www.cnbc.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Citic Press book stand advertises for the release of the Chinese version of Walter Isaacson’s new Elon Musk biography. CNBC | Evelyn Cheng BEIJING \u2014 Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk hit the Chinese market Tuesday, several hours ahead of the U.S. release due to a time difference that puts Beijing 12 hours…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"WB4WB4WP_MODE":"","WB4WP_PAGE_SCRIPTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_STYLES":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FONTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_HEADER":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FOOTER":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance"],"yoast_head":"\n\n