Although prominent officials still insist that "there is no timetable for the Kindle to enter China", there are indications that the Amazon's Chinese subsidiary is actively preparing for an early pick-up of the "atmosphere" of the world's best-selling Kindle reader, with the Kindle's talent-recruiting program quietly unfolding recently. This undoubtedly to include the Han Wang technology, including the domestic E-book giant brought a huge profit model to break through the pressure.
Excellence is expected to operate the Kindle
According to one industry insider, Amazon is currently recruiting some of its domestic talent for Kindle readers through several agencies. The daily economic news reporter quickly found a 119699 recruitment message on the "Vacant posts" page of the Amazon website, the position is "senior manager of the Kindle supplier management", the location is in Beijing, the release date is July 19, 2010.
Information shows that the job's main work revolves around "Chinese book publishers and other providers who provide content for Kindle readers", and has the power to negotiate content and purchase amounts, and to properly handle copyright matters.
Industry insiders say the network has not published such information, which not only shows Amazon's desire to consolidate Chinese reading content into the Kindle, but also the Kindle's signal to enter China.
Reporters on the matter to the excellence of Amazon, its responsible for the reply said that Amazon is very concerned about China's electronic reading market growth trends and popular reading enthusiasm. "We are working hard to get into the Chinese market as soon as possible, but we are not able to give a specific timetable." ”
In fact, since Amazon's successful launch of the Kindle E-reader in November 2007, the industry has been expecting the Kindle to be introduced into the book-selling network of excellence, but the network has not yet affirmed its stance.
Amazon CEO Wang Hanwa has repeatedly said that the Kindle to enter China to solve two problems, one is content, the second is hardware. Reasonable copyright schemes and anti piracy cannot be solved, which is a long-standing impediment to the Kindle's entry into China. Wang Hanwa revealed that, although with the domestic press and so on to maintain active contact, there are many publishers interested in the Kindle, but due to copyright issues, can not be discussed in depth.
Short Board of urgent complement of domestic enterprises
Amazon's homepage on the U.S. is hot to sell the latest DX, and its Chinese subsidiaries on the Amazon's web site is selling the Han Wang, Patriots, Taiwan Electric and other brands of E-books.
It is undeniable that the domestic electronic reader market is by the Han Wang electric paper book Fry Red. September 2008 Han Wang launched the first electronic reader, 2009 actual sales of 270,000 units, the March 2010 Han Wang successfully listed, and the annual sales are expected to exceed 2 million units. Although the average price of the current paper book in more than 2000 yuan, gross margin of nearly 47%, but in the long run, the electronic reader market overall price reduction is inevitable, simply selling hardware is difficult to support the long-term development of the company.
A number of Chinese e-reader makers, led by Han Wang, are almost simultaneously aware of the Amazon's "Kindle+amazon" model to build its own content platform.
The "Kindle+amazon" model simply means that e-commerce platform Amazon not only sells paper books, but also sell e-books for the Kindle. Although the price of e-books is lower than paper books, the profits from high sales are far more than paper books. Information shows that Amazon sold 100 copies of the hard copy, you can sell 143 e-books. Amazon is optimistic that future e-book sales will become an important source of corporate profits.
Referring to this model, Han Wang is perfecting the online bookstore, which provides content for the paper books, in addition to work with publishers, book copyright agencies, May 11 also with the Chinese Text Copyright association reached the content of digital copyright purchase agreement; founder and the joint venture established a sweet potato network, and launched the Cloud reading bookstore; Guangzhou daily and so on to reach a deep cooperation, to become the national map, the above map, a wide picture and so the only cooperative electronic reader.
It is worth mentioning that, in addition to the E-reader manufacturers in the construction of "Amazon", the domestic content production side and platform are also building their own "Kindle." Following the publication "Reader", "Cihai" and other customized launch of Handheld reader, this April, Xinhua media, Jiefang daily newspaper group Joint Yi-Europe joint venture launched the Xinhua e-Shop platform and also ink electronic reader. A few days ago, Shanda literature also revealed that its own brand "Kam book" released soon, the fastest will be in the ChinaJoy this week, the latest will be available in early August, the content of its platform is expected to find a carrier.
"Blade" domestic is not good to sell
Some people laugh that "Kindle+amazon" mode is "Razor frame + blade", only one time to pay the knife, the constant replacement of the blade is a steady stream of profit points. However, looking at the above several domestic hardware manufacturers, there is no small obstacle to go this mode.
First of all, due to consumption habits and payments and other reasons, the conversion rate of online e-books is generally not high, Han Cold's "a city" is a best-selling hot book, in the Han Wang bookstore downloaded to 29 times, this download in the same kind of site is pretty good. Second, because users can get the reading text from the Internet and copy it into the reader, it also leads to less downloading of the handheld terminal.
A traditional book publisher who has been in charge of digital content told reporters that traditional publishers have almost been able to accept digital, "the content of the Internet for us is a good means of publicity, can directly achieve the purchase is better." But we also often say that many domestic partners do not have a perfect piracy measures, especially for books on the mobile terminal download has no better solution, so the cooperation is more cautious. ”
He revealed that there is another layer of concern is that "sell the entity book is to get the actual printing and sales data, the code is very clear." But e-books are divided into downloads, and it's hard to tell how much the data is. Many technology companies in the division of the issue, the publishing house run even talk about the heart of cooperation. ”
He also said that although the large content side and the Han King is generally divided into 8:2, and founder of the division can be specific consultations, but the current publishing house from this channel to the income is very humble, "it can also be seen that the content of the reader for domestic readers, but also attached to the hardware of the slightest premium." ”