eReading is Really Big in China 3 comments
Judging by the ever-growing number of ereaders continuously being released in China, it should come as no surprise that ereading is probably more popular there than anywhere else on the planet.
The Independent reports that in 2009 the value of digital publishing surpassed that of traditional publishing in China – this according to China’s General Administration of Press and Publication.
Most of the ereading in China seems to be done on mobile phones. According to Research and Markets almost a half million dedicated ereaders have been sold there in the first half of 2010 – up from just over a quarter million in all of last year.
Will the iPad be going to China any time soon? No official word from Apple, but the iPad has just received a safety certification from the Chinese government – a necessary first step before the iPad can be released there.
And what of the Kindle? The Kindle 3 will support the Chinese language (both Simple and Traditional) along with several other new languages. There have been recent rumors that Amazon might be planning to launch the Kindle ereader in China in the near future – rumors fueled in part by a job opening posted briefly on Amazon.cn for a “Sr. Product Manager, Amazon Kindle.”
Sony announced in May that it would be releasing its ereader in China this year as well. There are an estimated 200 to 300 million book readers in China, so it could prove to be the most lucrative market for ereaders, especially as Chinese readers seem to be wholeheartedly embracing digital reading. On the other hand, rampant piracy may make it a much more challenging market for selling ebooks than the West.
I’m wondering if the Kindle Store here in the US will start carrying ebooks in the newly supported languages once the Kindle 3 is shipping? There seem to be very few Chinese or Korean Kindle books at the moment. There are more books in Japanese, but most of these seem to be Japanese public domain classics (did you know that Genji Monogatari, written in the eleventh century, is usually considered to be the world’s first novel?). There also do not yet seem to be many books that would use the Cyrillic character set offered by the Kindle 3.
Currently, the only non-English content that you can easily search
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3 Responses to 'eReading is Really Big in China'
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Well, you said that «Currently, the only non-English content that you can easily searchfor in the US Kindle Store are: French (1,910 titles), German (3,447 titles) and Spanish (4,241 titles). Hopefully the Kindle Store will be adding more content for the newly supported languages.»
The reason is simple: Apple does not yet (Dec 2010) allow other non-English authors to publish eBooks in its store. See this article:
http://lindipendente.splinder.com/post/23796740/no-ebooks -
Since this post was written Amazon has also added sections for Portuguese and Italian language Kindle books. The Italian section lists about 1,300 titles, though many appear to be public domain.
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