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Reading in Transformation

Quick LIt

As e-books gain popularity in China, digital literature providers face an appealing challenge: how best to exploit the nation’s rekindled love of reading?

December 2011 Issue | by Yang Zhenglian, Yuan Ye

Though she works with thousands of books every day, Yu Jing hardly ever has time to read any of them. The 35-year-old general manger of Chineseall.com, one of the largest distributors of digital publications in China, only ever reads on her mobile phone during her morning and afternoon commute to kill time during the boring half-an-hour trip. On business trips, she uses her e-reader, and sometimes her iPad, for reading.

Yu Jing is not alone. According to the eighth National Reading Survey released this April, 32.8 percent of regular readers in China be­tween 18 and 70 in 2010 preferred digital to print media, nearly a 33 percent increase on the previous year. More than 80 percent of these readers stated they would give up buying the print version of what they had read on digital devices.

Digital reading in China is done mainly on PCs, cellphones and e-readers, with cellphone reading now reigning supreme. Figures from the China Book Business Report, a weekly indus­try periodical, indicated a threefold increase in the use of cellphones for digital reading, from 10.7 percent in 2009 to 34.8 percent in 2010. While the public turns to this cheap, simple book format in droves, companies like Chine­seall.com are remaining cautiously optimistic about the future.

Quality in Need

Despite the new wave of digital media, a lack of high-quality content has aroused concerns within the industry. “High quality cellphone content is seriously scarce, and it is difficult for those producing it to stand out in the market,” said Hao Zhensheng, president of the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication, at the fourth Chinese Digital Publishing Exposition held in early July.

Digital publishers’ output is largely defined by technology, Chineseall.com’s Yu Jing pointed out: “Technology determines the platform. The platform determines what kind of users we have. And the users determine the content.”

The majority of those reading on their cell phones are young people with low incomes and modest educational backgrounds. A re­port released in June by Iimedia Research, an independent consulting institution specializ­ing in the mobile Internet, indicated that 72.4 percent of people who read on their cellphone were aged between 15 and 25, with 35.1 per­cent having only a high school-level education. The eighth National Reading Survey indicated that more than 80 percent of cell phone readers had a monthly income of less than 3,000 yuan (US$470).

The industry’s output is heavily skewed towards the specific demands of this demo­graphic. “Because the majority of the reader­ship is very young, about 83.3 percent of our mobile content is made up of novels. Books on economics, management and life skills take up only 11.1 percent,” said Zhang Yi, chairman of the board of Iimedia Research.

While they hardly make a dent in the pa­per book market, novels centering on romance, urban life and kung fu make up three quarters of all the novels available on the digital market, with fantasy and thrillers not far behind. Much of this commercial content is churned out in large quantities by online writers, with the em­phasis placed firmly on quantity over quality.

“Mostly, people read on their commute to work, during their lunch break, or before bed,” said Yu Jing. “Long, complex reading material is not necessarily suitable for these situations.”

Yet Chineseall.com has grand designs for the industry’s future. Founded in 2000, it has acquired digital copyrights from some 300 publishers, 1,000 established writers and more than 20,000 online writers, and is able to pro­duce 70,000 to 10,000 digital books each year. Mobile operators are also catching up with this trend – China Mobile, the biggest cellular op­erator in China, has started co-operation with more than 120 publishing houses and content providers, and has assembled 210,000 e-books ready for release.

Waiting for Growth

Due largely to the technological edge of Ama­zon’s Kindle, dedicated e-book devices have gained increasing popularity among China’s e-readership. According to the eighth National Reading Survey, the percentage of Chinese us­ing e-book readers in the age group between 18 and 70 jumped from 1.3 percent in 2009 to 3.9 percent in 2010, though the figure paled in comparison with the number of people reading on cellphones.

Sadly, Kindle’s Chinese counterparts have not enjoyed similar prosperity. After a period of initial success with its own e-reader in 2008, Chinese digital reading and writing technology company Hanvon saw its sales nosedive by 50 percent in the first quarter of 2011, and sus­tained a loss of 46 million yuan (US$7.2 mil­lion) due in large part to the advent of tablet computers, particularly Apple’s all-conquering iPad.

“The development of hardware is also very important. Currently, most devices fail to offer a user-friendly reading experience,” said Hao Sijia, executive general manager of Founder Apabi Technology, a leading digital publishing technology and service provider in China. Even the iPad, which can perform similar e-reading functions to Amazon’s Kindle, is only used as an e-reader by about 20 percent of its total users in China. Hao believed that if e-reader develop­ers could make their devices more similar to real paper books by making them foldable and less tiring on the eyes, people might be more willing to embrace digital reading.

Still, many in the industry believe that it is simply a matter of time before electronic con­tent dominates the entire market for the de­livery of literature. Yu Jing is quietly confident about the future; she said that while numbers remain modest, people have certainly begun reading more complex, long-form content on digital devices lately, and the industry needs to be patient. “People who demand this material still don’t necessarily know much about e-read­ing. Also it may take a few years for the younger, more tech-savvy generation to shift their read­ing habits towards more serious content. After a few years in the world of work, they may feel the urge to expand their knowledge and im­prove themselves,” she said.

While demand may not be a problem, the market faces various other challenges. Piracy, for one, causes deep concern. “Of course, the piracy problem also exists in the paper book market, but in the digital publishing sector, it is much more of a threat,” said Hao Sijia. “Gen­erally, publishers are reluctant to enter digital publishing.”

The reluctance can be seen in the lag be­tween the publication time of a paper title and its corresponding e-book, which can be any­thing from a few months to a year. Hao told our reporter that only 20 to 30 percent of the paper books published after January 1, 2011 in China have had digital versions released.

Anti-piracy law and its implementation need to catch up with the technological leaps being made in the industry, said Hao Zhensheng, president of the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication. “The existing laws are clearly lag­ging behind the pace of digital publishing. Revi­sions and improvement of these laws are greatly needed. At the same time, copyright licensing needs to be better regulated, so as to provide a basic protection of the interests of both the copyright owners and publishers.”

While the digital reading industry still has one or two practical glitches to work out, the pace of technological innovation remains one step ahead of the consumer, and looks poised to exploit the huge potential on the horizon. With distributors lining up to give consumers exactly what they want in whatever format they demand, China’s digital bookworms may find themselves spoiled for choice before long.

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