Turning the page on the digital divide

Paper vs pixels

Amazon announced in May 2011 that its e-book sales had surpassed those of paperbacks and hard covers combined, but it will be a while before Chinese publishers can make such a declaration.

However, traditional domestic publishers are evaluating the situation and bottlenecks, General Administration of Press and Publication head Liu Binjie says.

Renmin University Press' president He Yaomin told the recent China Book International's Foreign Consultants Seminar in Beijing: "I wasn't thinking about e-publishing three years ago. But with powerful change happening so rapidly, I'm willing to make changes to capitalize on early opportunities."

The barrier Chinese publishers reference most is the lack of a sound e-publishing business model.

Jo Lusby, who has worked in the publishing industry in China for years, says: "I don't think the problem is the readiness of Chinese publishers. I think the key is there need to be platforms offering a range of consumer-facing e-book titles for sale.

"For that to happen, publishers need to be assured that revenue splits, file security and e-book price levels will all be sufficient to create a viable e-book economy."

Lusby is optimistic about the existing platforms. "China has a range of platforms — both Chinese and foreign-owned — that could very quickly become central players in the e-book market," she says.

But Phoenix Publishing Group's Liu Feng says the country doesn't have an Amazon equivalent. "We are developing our own," Liu says. "Otherwise, we have to cooperate with foreign ones."He suggests government initiatives should establish platforms with e-publishing professionals from home and abroad.

As the main content owners, traditional publishers have been at odds with the country's e-book retailers. Both 360buy.com and Dangdang recently started selling e-books.

Renmin University's He suggests publishers form a union to gain more negotiation power. He says copyright protection is e-business' core.

Writer Murong Xuecun, who earned little from his works' digital copyrights, agrees and hopes the problems will be handled at the administrative level.

Chinese officials know well about the necessity and potential of promoting e-publishing. So, they're including the e-business in publishing industry guidelines and plans.

Printed books' future:

Fine books will continue, and may be physical collections, or for niche areas of publishing where high-quality printed images are important, like in medicine and fine arts. --Stephen Bourne, chief executive of Cambridge University Press.

Textbooks, children's books and how-to books will survive for longer in paper form. It's a trend that people born after the 1970s get bored with e-books and return to physical books.-- Luo Li, deputy general manager of an online literature website.

Among our Chinese readers of English, we see a great enthusiasm for beautiful formats — the handmade feeling of quality printing, special formats like the Penguin Threads or the Deluxe Clothbound Classics. It seems that as people embrace digital reading, they are also looking for beautiful things to have and to hold. -- Jo Lusby, managing director of Penguin China.

I joke with my colleagues in the design department that if their designs aren't used for books in the future, they'll become antiques sought by collectors. -- Liu Feng, director of Phoenix Publishing &Media, Inc's international business development department.

The future of digital books:

E-books will definitely become the mainstream, because they're convenient, economical and green. -- Murong Xuecun, writer.

Where things really get interesting, though, is for our color publishing. For areas like DK, for example, we have a wide range of very exciting e-books and apps that take our reference publishing into a new realm. Likewise, across our children's publishing range, we are able to use our content in interactive digital forms that reach out to young readers in an entirely new way. -- Jo Lusby, managing director of Penguin China.

We're introducing e-books that interact with satellites. For books like Encyclopedia of Peoples of China, which will be released at the London Book Fair in April, we'll show how a simple click on the e-book will present instant and simultaneous pictures of the places satellites are pointed at. -- Liu Feng, director of Phoenix Publishing &Media, Inc's international business development department.

E-books can be really different from printed books, because you have sound, images and videos at your fingertips. Imagine you're reading a horror story and when it comes to the climax of tension, a paragraph actually disappears from the screen. -- A reader.