More Chinese to Pay for E-books with Kindle's Arrival

Chinese publishing industry insiders said Saturday that with the official entrance of Amazon Kindle products into the country, more Chinese will start paying for e-books.

Huang Lei, senior manager of the Chinese branch of Amazon.com, said that the Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Fire HD e-readers were officially launched in China on Friday. ( While many netizens have praised the arrival of the products, others have complained about their prices, which are higher than in some other countries.

Yu Dianli, general manager of Commercial Press, a major Chinese publishing house, said Kindle products will bring more choices for Chinese readers.

"Although a large number of domestic readers are not used to paying for e-books, growing demand and the guidance of relevant policies and regulations will help foster the habit," said Yu.

In early June, Commercial Press published dictionaries for minority languages in both digital and paper forms so as to meet different readers' needs.

According to a 2012 survey of 18,619 people in 28 provincial-level regions, Chinese people read 4.39 books, 77.20 newspapers, 6.56 magazines and 2.35 e-books on average, with the latter increasing by the most, 65.5 percent, year on year.

The survey, carried out by the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication, also showed that 40.1 percent of respondents who have read e-books before would be willing to pay for the books, down 1.7 percent year on year.