The Kindle is coming into China after a long period of preparation

China's internet industry has long been the only barometer of Silicon Valley, and China's IT entrepreneurs are always proud of imitation, "China's Google", "China's Facebook", "China's xx" ... There are many successful people, but when we look at its success, it is often a radical change of the existing model of the object of imitation, a new way out. Even today, the Chinese color for the internet stage left a new imprint, such as Taobao, such as Tencent. At the same time, Silicon Valley enterprises because of their cultural soil and market environment, enter the Chinese market is often difficult, near such as high friends, far like ebay.

The digital publishing industry is the same, the Han Wang technology to lift the first "Chinese Amazon" banner, to the concept of electric paper book listed and hit, but eventually because the content of the broken ring and disappeared; then, the most powerful original content provider Shanda literature took the torch of Han King, launched Bambook ebook, Take the lead to pay for the content for the profit model strong attack, but because the user is not enough gradually fade away; when, the country's largest book dealer website, with a huge book users and traffic base, focus on E-book distribution platform, with first-class library resources and reader terminal products, to "China's Amazon" dream to make the final impact, But the Amazon has finally been unable to resist the temptation to the huge Chinese market, the Kindle after a long period of preparation, is about to go into China, its "Chinese Dream" will be achieved? I think: Amazon model is only suitable for the United States, this model in China does not work, others do not, it itself can not.

First of all, the success of Amazon's ebook has benefited from the United States hardcover book and Platform book publishing mechanism, paperback books are often sold in a year after the hardcover sales, and paperback books with the same price with hardcover books issued. As can be seen from the data, the number of hardcover books has not Fallen, and the paperback market has suffered a great blow. At the same time because of the fast speed of e-book transmission, the purchase of convenience, so that total sales of books have been increased, the overall formation of a virtuous circle. In this sense, the Kindle is an "electronic paperback" that intelligently uses the time lag and price differentials of hardcover and paperback distribution mechanisms, and readers who buy electronic books because of their "cheapness, timeliness and convenience" have also made the Kindle a success. And China does not have such a distribution mechanism, leaving only the time and price gap between genuine and pirated, so that the Kindle bookstore and other similar models of E-book platforms are cheaper and cheaper, such an industrial chain is hardly healthy.

Some people may say that e-books without media costs, if you can rely on low-cost access to a large number of users, it is still promising! This is not true at present, because the main contradiction of Chinese digital reading is irrelevant to reading. On the one hand, digital reading is the branch of mobile interconnection, at present, although mobile internet sales have been far more than the PC, but mobile commerce accounted for only 3% of the business scale, users will not or are not accustomed to using mobile internet terminals to buy things, on the other hand, domestic user content payment habits more need a long period of adaptation, The impact of piracy can not be overlooked, "mobile internet payment Habits" and "content-paying habits" of these two mountains, to move away from the overnight can be, nor a company can do, no matter how big.

At the same time, there is a long way to go in the content of books, first of all, we must face the problem of poor data source, because of historical problems, many publishing institutions, the Digital Foundation is not enough, the data source is good and bad, format conversion itself will be wrong, and more is scanned version of the PDF file Direct OCR turn, typo wrong paragraph, missing words are very common, As for the lack of pictures and even more cover. To see more as an example, in order to protect the overall quality, worthy of the "fine" two words, must be manually revised to pick the wrong, this aspect of human, financial and material resources difficult to imagine, some book production needs 0.5 days, and revisers often need 2-3 personal day. Of course, Amazon is also a very quality-oriented enterprise, it is the method used once the user complained on the shelf, sent back to the press error correction. However, in China, E-book revenue is less than 1% of the publishing house, its error correction cost is far greater than income, it is difficult to let copyright party power to modify.

At the same time, we need to note another problem: Chinese layout itself is complex and changeable, in the layout, the Western document layout simple, change less, 95% of the book is pure text, not to mention the text, and even font changes are not much, but the modern Chinese layout emphasis on graphics and text mix row and font changes, for example, for example, In a song-body book you see a paragraph in italics, the natural response is dialogue or quotations, see a bold word you know is stressed that the format of the formation of "reading habits" in the Chinese mind deep-rooted, if missing, the discarded is not only aesthetic. These two reasons, but also make the pursuit of "all-inclusive" large-scale, standardized, industrialized operation mode is struggling.

Finally, we have to go back to the Kindle device itself, as you know, the Kindle's main product is the black and white ink technology, it has low power consumption, no eye damage characteristics, for the depth of the user experience very good. However, it also has some defects such as slow response speed and jerky touch-screen operation. When the Kindle is on its way, the performance and capability of the handset is still very weak, and today when all the necessary mobile phones become more and more powerful, when the gorgeous color, rich multimedia performance and smooth gesture operation has been deeply rooted, how many people are willing to return to the black and white era?

It is said that the April Kindle is really coming, can it really break through the above obstacles to achieve its "Chinese Dream"? I only know that its digital publishing dream has been achieved in the United States, is "knowable", and I see the digital publication of the Future "unknowable", the need for countless trial and error, countless exploration and toss, the road is different ...