With about 60 million users, their content is available on a host of smartphones, tablets and PCs.
Tong Zhilei, CEO of E-publisher "Chinese-all", said, "At the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2009, experts predicted that e-books sales will overtake paperbacks globally by 2018. Next year, the US's Weekly World News will end their print publication, to focus online content. That's the sign of the times."
Tong says the price for e-books can be as low as 2 yuan. And users can spend 30 yuan to freely browse all the website's content.
But industry insiders say piracy is the main obstacle standing in the way of the development of e-books. It's a fight that "Chinese all" is engaged in.
Tong said, "After 12 years, we've been stepping up our fight with piracy. We are cooperating with hundreds of publishers and writers to fight piracy. We use a combination of technology and legal means."
Nearly all major publishing houses in China have dabbed into e-publishing. The Publishing House of Traditional Chinese medicine is one of them. Their first project is to digitize 200 of their books.
Wang Guochen, director of Publishing Housing of TCM, said, "It's a blow to traditional publishing. Technology is changing people's reading habits. In our circumstance, our books on popular science have seen the effects. But we're still not sure what impact it will have in later years.
But it seems some publishers are taking a wait and see approach before expanding their e-book businesses, until technology and laws can better protect the infant industry.
Reporter: "China has a burgeoning e-book market. Young people are the early adopters. And publishers are branching into this field. It's still too early to predict whether e-books will overtake, or even eventually replace paperbooks someday. There's one thing for sure, the e-book market can only be mature if the digital copyright can be adequately protected."
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