Two-thirds of Chinese e-book readers willing to pay for online publications: report

A recent report on China's digital reading market shows that a total of 432 million Chinese people read digital publications in 2018, and over 60 percent of them would pay for reading digital materials including e-books, e-magazines and e-papers.

A man reads a Kindle e-book in Beijing, November 23, 2018. [File Photo: VCG]

According to a white paper released by China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, Chinese readers of all age groups actually paid more than what they'd initially intended to pay, which means people are open to paying more than what they had expected to pay for digital publications that interest them.

The white paper also says that the overall interest to pay for digital publications among readers in China has reached 66.4 percent. The intention to pay for good e-books has become a new opportunity for traditional reading market.

In Western countries, some senior media giants, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Times, have all set up a subscription system. In China, however, most of the content that the readers are interested in paying for is authoritative and professional media products.

With the value of digital reading market hitting nearly 25.5 billion yuan (about 3.6 billion US dollars) in 2018, an increasing number of traditional media outlets in China are eager to transform their business models and launch subscription systems.

Taking People's Daily as an example, the Chinese mainstream media agency has been in the pay-reading market since July. Each of its subscribers needs to pay an annual subscription fee of 388 yuan (about 55 US dollars) to access its digital content. For other Chinese media, Caixin Media launched its payment system at the end of 2017, while Southern Weekly launched the system in August last year. China Business Network launched a similar system at the beginning of this year.