The China Daily article quoted in that link can be found directly here.
The key quote seems to be, "The average price of e-books in the United States is 5 percent to 30 percent lower than paper books, but the e-books selling in China are 75 percent lower than the paper copies."
True, that discount (and factoring in the distributor's cut on top of that) is probably not going to convince too many publishers to push out same-day electronic editions of their new releases, but I think there really could be a market for out-of-print titles that might not be cost-effective to bring back in new paper editions. The other day I noticed that 360buy listed 天涯近 by 东紫 as being in-stock. It's from one of those small print run series put out annually by the Writers' Association, the kind of thing that gets no distribution and vanishes immediately. It turned out to be an ebook, and not a bad deal at 7.40 yuan. The DRM scheme requires a special app to display it (so it won't work on my Bambook), but it's still more convenient and considerably cheaper than paying a book-finding service to photocopy a library edition for me.
Comments
The China Daily article quoted in that link can be found directly here.
The key quote seems to be, "The average price of e-books in the United States is 5 percent to 30 percent lower than paper books, but the e-books selling in China are 75 percent lower than the paper copies."
True, that discount (and factoring in the distributor's cut on top of that) is probably not going to convince too many publishers to push out same-day electronic editions of their new releases, but I think there really could be a market for out-of-print titles that might not be cost-effective to bring back in new paper editions. The other day I noticed that 360buy listed 天涯近 by 东紫 as being in-stock. It's from one of those small print run series put out annually by the Writers' Association, the kind of thing that gets no distribution and vanishes immediately. It turned out to be an ebook, and not a bad deal at 7.40 yuan. The DRM scheme requires a special app to display it (so it won't work on my Bambook), but it's still more convenient and considerably cheaper than paying a book-finding service to photocopy a library edition for me.
jdmartinsen, April 6, 2012, 2:53p.m.
If other readers (like me) haven't heard of the Bambook, take a look at http://paper-republic.org/news/newsitems/148/
Helen Wang, April 7, 2012, 9:38p.m.