TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘china’ Category

By Paul Biba

According the The Bookseller the China Written Works Copyright Society is urging writers to oppose the Google book settlement. You can find their website, in Chinese, here. The Society has said that it would fight for the authors with legal action if necessary.

According to the Society, 18,000 books from 570 Chinese writers have been scanned and included in the Google archive without permission and it is calling for China’s National Copyright Administration to push the US government on the issue.

By Paul Biba

That’s what an article by Paul Harper in Seeking Alpha says. Of course we’ve seen that Chinese “me too” ereaders are becoming commonplace (no need even to report on them any more), but China Mobile has cut a few deals with manufacturers to make units with wireless connectivity. According to the article the company expects to sell half a million units in China this year at retail price of $430. The government is also looking at distributing 165 million ereaders to students in place of textbooks.

However, as the article points out the problem of piracy is major. That’s why there is probably little opportunity, in my opinion, for Western publishers to take advantage of the Chinese ebook boom. When i was traveling in China, and this was years ago, you could find any US book you wanted for just a few cents, and it has gotten way worse since then. I could have bought the most recent copy of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for $5, albeit printed on lousy paper. (And I did pick up a couple of books by Winston Churchill which were long out of print int he West.) Given the Chinese government’s lack of interest in protecting intellectual property it will probably be years before any western publisher makes any real money out of the ebook market.

By Paul Biba

The Financial Times is reporting that the iPhone will go on sale from China Unicom on October 1. WiFi will be disabled on the device at the insistence of the Chinese government.

We already know that ereading apps are some of the highest sellers and most downloaded on the App Store. It will be interesting to see how many Chinese apps show up

By Paul Biba

E-Ink-Info is reporting that:

“The AirPaper50T is an e-book reader that is subsidized by China Mobile. You can buy books from their mobile store (for 3 to 5 yuan, which is about 0.4$ to 1$). It uses the GSM and TD-SCDMA networks. The reader has a USB interface and a SIM card slot, no other details yet. 6″ (800 x 600) e ink display up top and a 2nd 3.7″ display for navigation”

By Paul Biba

This is a report from The Industry Standard. Thanks to Resource Shelf for the link.  For more info on China and ebooks see Tiffany Wong’s article here.

A Chinese company is developing an e-reader it hopes will emulate the success of the Amazon Kindle and may market the device outside China.

Hanwang Technology is aiming for an October launch of the e-reader, which will have a 6-inch screen and support China’s homegrown 3G mobile standard, said Lu Jianying, a product manager in Hanwang’s international business section. …

But one obstacle for Hanwang is the large volume of free reading material Chinese consumers can find online, including pirated books, said Frances Guan, an analyst at In-Stat China. Competition from free content makes it more difficult to earn revenue by selling e-books in China, Guan said.

Books, like computer software and DVDs, are widely pirated and sold at subway entrances and indoor bazaars in China. Pirated copies of everything from the Harry Potter series to self-help books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People are peddled on street corners in major cities, sometimes for little more than $1.

Many Chinese consumers already download reading material to their mobile phones, but that content is sometimes pirated as well and usually free. Beijing commuters often stand lined in subway cars with their heads lowered toward text-filled screens on a mobile phone or Sony PSP.

By Tiffany Wong

Welcome to Tiffany Wong, our latest contributor, a co-founder of Aldiko Limited, developer of an Android e-reader!  Her bio is at the end. Also see E-books in China: Develop and Use, by Liu Zheng and Sun Tan—a PDF to which Gary Price kindly pointed us. On relevant trade matters, check out a helpful WTO ruling and news that China may appeal it.

Many people think: Digital arena + Chinese market = great opportunity and growth.

China’s digital publishing industry, in fact, has grown steadily.

According to the statistics released last month for the Third Chinese Digital Publishing Expo, the overall income of the nation’s digital publishing industry realized a year-over-year growth of 46 percent in 2008. Overall income is expected to continue to grow at a rate of 40 percent in 2009.

Most of the publishing houses have spent effort to devise strategies and prepare roadmaps toward their digital transition; 90 percent of the 578 publishing houses in China have started to offer digital products and services.

810,000 e-book titles and 79 million readers in China in ‘08

Looking at the e-book segment in particular, as of 2008, there were 810,000 e-book titles available in China,  23-percent growth compared to 2007. The number of copies of e-books sold nationwide increased 15 percent, and the amount of revenue grew 24 percent. Science-fiction and non-fiction books still made up a large part of the e-book market, and the most popular genres among readers are fantasy and health.

There were 79 million readers of digital books in 2008, or 34-percent growth compared to 2007. An interesting trend is how e-books appeal in particular to young people. Readers below 24 accounted for almost 50 percent of the group. Unlike reading printed books, reading e-books is seen by the younger generation as a modern and fashionable activity.

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By David Rothman

E-books in China is the topic of a forthcoming TeleRead post from our latest contributor, Tiffany Wong—cofounder of Aldiko, the developer of an e-reader app for Android smart phones. Is China the next big market for digital publishers? Quick preview:

There were 79 million readers of digital books in 2008, a 34% growth compared to 2007. An interesting trend is how e-books appeal in particular to young people. Readers below 24 accounted for almost 50% of the group. Unlike reading printed books, reading e-books is seen by the younger generation as a modern and fashionable activity. In cities like Shanghai, wherever you go, you can see people reading with devices such as PSPs, mobile phones, portable media players (PMP), etc. In contrast, the proportion of older-ages is relatively small as this population of people are used to reading physical books.

Delay your comments until Tiffany’s actual post appears—but as you can see, there’s plenty to consider here. For years I’ve been saying that China is or will be E-Book Central. Here’s more evidence, as I see it, just going by sheer numbers.