A page is being turned on reading habits as technology opens a new chapter for books with people aged 35 and below taking the lead in digital reading, a recent report shows.
Last year, Chinese people read an average of eight books, including more than three e-books, according to figures released on Jan 6 by BigData-Research in Beijing.
The number of e-book readers has grown from 300 million in 2015 to 740 million last year, data shows. More than 86 percent of the readers are younger than 35. Half of them have a monthly income of less than 5,000 yuan ($724).
Meanwhile, the e-book market has been developing rapidly in China in recent years with its market value estimated at more than 20 billion yuan last year, up 21 percent year-on-year. There were 460 million readers of online literature by the end of last year, about 8.3 percent more than the number for the previous year.
Men, who make up more than 55 percent of online readers, prefer to do so using mobile screens, according to the survey.
A report by China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association estimates that the total revenue from copyright licensing of the country's major online reading platforms hit 1.77 billion yuan in 2018, almost double the number in 2017 of 840 million yuan.
Source: China Daily
