Finally, I can only cover instant noodles... Kindle China service has stopped! Why are e-book readers no longer popular?
On June 30, 2024, Kindle China e-bookstore will stop cloud download service, and e-books that have not been downloaded will not be available for download and reading. At the same time, Kindle customer service will also stop supporting. Many netizens lamented, "Now I can only cover my instant noodles."
The Kindle e-reader, which was launched in 2007, is considered one of Amazon's most successful hardware products. It officially entered China in 2013 and became synonymous with e-books, especially popular among literary and artistic young people.
Many people born in the 1970s and 1980s once owned a Kindle. However, with the development of hardware and changes in reading habits, the usage rate of Kindle has been getting lower and lower. In a survey of second-hand platforms, it was ranked at the top of the idle list along with treadmills and air fryers, and was ridiculed as a "noodle maker". Amazon also officially released an advertisement in which a Kindle was pressed on a box of instant noodles, with the slogan "Cover with Kindle, the noodles are more fragrant". The "self-deprecating" marketing resonated with many users and became one of the last highlights of Kindle.
On World Book Day 2019, Kindle officially launched the "Instant Noodle Incubator" gift box.
In fact, as early as June 2022, Amazon announced that the Kindle China e-bookstore would cease operations on June 30, 2023. After a transition period, the final farewell period was drawn on June 30 this year.
In June 2022, Amazon announced adjustments to its Kindle bookstore in China.
Is Kindle's exit from the market due to its inability to adapt to the local environment, or is it because e-book readers are no longer effective?
The 21st National Reading Survey Report released on April 23 this year showed that in 2023, the comprehensive reading rate of various media including books, newspapers, magazines and digital publications among Chinese adults was 81.9%, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from 81.8% in 2022.
The book reading rate is 59.8%, the same as 59.8% in 2022. The exposure rate of digital reading is 80.3%, an increase of 0.2 percentage points from 80.1% in 2022. However, in terms of e-books, the average number of e-books read by adult citizens in my country in 2023 is 3.40, higher than 3.33 in 2022. 12.3% of people read 10 or more paper books per year, while 9.9% read 10 or more e-books per year.
The "2023 Shanghai Citizens' Reading Status Survey" released by the Shanghai Municipal Press and Publication Bureau shows that in 2023, the digital reading rate of Shanghai citizens will reach 98.2%, an increase of more than 4.5% over 2022, and more than 60% of citizens will read digitally for more than half an hour every day. The survey also mentioned that Shanghai citizens have a clear trend of e-book reading for all ages. The proportion of e-book reading preferences in various age groups is 83.9% for minors, 88.4% for young people, 82.6% for middle-aged people, and 77.8% for the elderly, surpassing paper reading, audio reading, and video reading to become the highest proportion of reading.
The 2023 Shanghai Citizens Reading Status Survey released by the Shanghai Municipal Press and Publication Administration shows that e-reading is showing a trend among all ages
Digital reading is favored by citizens because of its fast and diverse features. 88.3% of citizens believe that e-books are convenient and can be read anytime and anywhere. 63.3% of citizens said that e-books have various ways of "reading" books, and the font size and background color can be adjusted according to personal preferences, providing a more personalized reading experience.
The survey also mentioned that lower cost is one of the reasons why Shanghai citizens choose digital reading.
Industry insiders analyzed that Kindle's withdrawal from the Chinese market is related to the gap between Amazon's operating strategy in the Chinese market and local Chinese demand. On the other hand, the Chinese e-book market is highly competitive, surrounded by strong local competitors, such as iReader and Yuewen. These local manufacturers and platforms understand the Chinese market better and can provide users with rich Chinese content resources. The more important reason is that with the popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices, coupled with China's developed 4G and 5G network coverage, domestic readers prefer to use multi-function devices to read e-books, and the market demand for dedicated e-book readers continues to decline. During Kindle's last sales peak, its demand as a business gift far exceeded personal purchases.
Who will fill the gap when Kindle is gone? After Amazon announced that the Kindle e-book store in China would cease operations, iReader immediately launched the "One-click Migration of Kindle e-books" service to facilitate the transfer of Kindle users. WeChat Reading, which attracted hundreds of millions of users with free reading, is regarded as the biggest beneficiary.
In August 2015, Tencent announced the launch of an independent reading app, WeChat Reading. At that time, mature e-reading apps on the market mainly promoted online literature, comics and other works first published on the Internet. The goal of WeChat Reading is serious and in-depth reading, which overlaps with paper books.
Backed by the WeChat user pool, WeChat Reading had more than 200 million registered users and more than 5 million daily active users by the end of 2019. Initially, WeChat Reading offered "free reading of all books"; in September 2018, WeChat Reading launched the "Unlimited Card" model for the first time. The "Unlimited Card" is a purchase system on the surface, but its actual function is to expand the user base - 20 days of free access after logging in, and you can continue to read for free by sharing with friends, reading time, answering questions, and other methods.
Some people in the publishing industry admit that it is difficult for copyright holders to get money from books listed on WeChat Reading. At present, the share that copyright holders get from the WeChat Reading platform mainly comes from membership fees. The platform calculates the proportion of the reading time of a book to the reading time of all books on the platform, and divides the membership fees according to the percentage. Li Jihong, a translator of best-selling books such as "The Kite Runner" and "The Little Prince", once posted his 2022 e-book income report. Excluding single paid e-books, the total income of more than ten books on WeChat Reading is only 4,321.14 yuan a year, while Amazon is 37,236.23 yuan. An editor from a publishing house said that after the withdrawal of Kindle, the income from e-books per book has dropped significantly, and the copyright income of the e-book business is facing a "worse" situation.
In November 2023, the editorial department of The Paris Review announced that all e-books in the Paris Review series would be removed from WeChat Reading, which was seen as the first shot of "self-protection" fired by the producer. This year, more and more readers have found that some of the best-selling new books they are reading have been "removed from the shelves while they are reading."
In fact, on the Internet and e-commerce platforms, e-books and paper books face a similar fate - being used as traffic-generating tools. With cheap prices, extremely low costs, a wide variety of products, and zero logistics, e-books have obvious advantages in attracting new customers. In 2015, Suning announced that all e-books on its website would be free. Since then, Dangdang, JD.com, Taobao and other Internet platforms have also offered "e-books for free".
"The current problem is that there is only one dominant e-book platform. When Amazon withdrew, some optimists believed that other platforms would soon fill the gap, but the opposite is true," said an industry insider. "Will the low-price strategy benefit readers? In the short term, it seems so. But in the long run, publishers will have to raise prices or reduce costs, or even produce shoddy products, in order to survive."
Some people also believe that the more serious problem than whether e-books can make money is how to cultivate readers' reading habits today. Before the rise of the Internet and mobile Internet, books were the main channel and method for readers to obtain knowledge and information. As the fragmentation trend becomes more and more obvious, books and their successors, e-books, have to compete with videos, audio, live broadcasts, games, etc. for users' limited time. From this perspective, platforms represented by WeChat Reading provide a convenient channel for obtaining serious content - whether reading paper books or e-books, they are all contributing to national reading, and the cultivation and growth of the reading population is the survival foundation of publishing institutions.
Commuting to work is the peak of fragmented time. In April this year, Shanghai Library, IPSHANGHAI, Sinan Reading Club and Shanghai Metro jointly launched the "Read a good book on the subway" - "Book-scented Shanghai" subway reading promotion activity. The "Book-scented Shanghai" citizen reading micro-platform has been permanently settled in the "Metro Metropolis" APP. Users can click on the homepage to enter the authorized digital reading resources, audiobook resources and Jiefang Daily, Wenhui Daily, Xinmin Evening News e-newspapers from platforms such as Shanghai Library, Yuewen, Himalaya, and Qimao.
"On the subway, read a good book" - "Bookish Shanghai" enters the subway reading promotion activity
Since 2015, Shanghai Library has launched the "Micro Reading" brand, and the "E-book Channel in WeChat" is open to licensed readers. At present, Shanghai Library's "Micro Reading" provides more than 20,000 e-books within the authorized period, and has cooperated with well-known publishing institutions such as Shanghai Jiaotong University Press, Shanghai People's Publishing House, and Shanghai Translation Publishing House, as well as with e-book platform providers such as Chinese Online, Eslite Reading Library, and Easy Reading. The "Jingdong Reading Micro Reading Edition" customized in cooperation with "Jingdong Reading" brings together 189,000 e-book resources such as popular novels, film and television originals, and workplace advancement. Licensed registered readers in the city can read for free with no limit on the number of borrowings; "Zhangyue Selection" contains 150,000 e-book resources. Chen Chao, director of Shanghai Library, told reporters that the "Book-scented Shanghai" citizen reading micro-platform will include nearly 330,000 digital reading resources provided by Shanghai Library, which will be collected into one port, which is not only convenient for citizens to use, but also expected to cultivate more "reading population" in the city.
"At present, the domestic e-book market still has the phenomenon of inconsistent formats and overlapping platforms. For e-book companies, reading ecology, marketing strategies and content copyright may be the focus of future competition." Industry insiders predict that the functions of domestic e-readers will be further expanded in the future, and intelligence, personalization, socialization and openness will become the keywords for the future development of the industry. The development goal of e-book companies is to build an all-media matrix form, creating an all-media digital reading matrix that integrates reading, listening to books, interactive communities, scrolling pictures, etc., to bring readers an immersive reading experience.
At the 2011 China E-book Industry Summit, Cheng Sanguo, founder of Baidao.com and a veteran in the publishing industry, proposed three stages and forms of e-book development: e-book 1.0 is the digitization of traditional paper books, e-book 2.0 refers to native e-books distributed on the Internet, and e-book 3.0 is enhanced e-books including interaction and games. Judging from the current development of e-books, they have not yet left the 1.0 stage. Therefore, the dilemma that paper books are currently facing is also encountered by e-books.
No matter how e-books and e-book readers change in the future, adapting to user needs and providing high-quality content should be the unchanging purpose. "I miss the era of ink screens, pure readers without other functions, but it's just a memory." A netizen left a message.
