Original link: https://huiris.com/kindle-exits-from-china/
I recently received an email from amazon saying that it is going to withdraw from the Chinese market. This is not surprising to me, after all, when I started using Kindle, Kindle had not yet entered the Chinese market. Now I’m still using the kindle, but he’s about to quit.
I am a kindle deep user. From 2011 to now, I have used 4 kinds of kindle, namely kindle keyboard3, kindle paperwrite 3, kindle oasis, and now I am using kindle oaisi2 – originally a gift for iris, and then gradually became my personal item.
I read about 50 books every year. If we assume that the reading time of each book is 5 hours, the time spent using the kindle is about 250 hours a year, which is a little more than half an hour a day. Most of this time is in the evening. Consume before going to bed.
From my experience of using it for more than ten years, I will try to interpret why kindle has withdrawn from the Chinese market.
pure reading tool
I personally define kindle as a pure reading tool, without a library.
When I bought the kindle keyboard 3, my initial motivation was to experience this special electronic product, because the official claimed that the standby time is 1 month or more, and the electronic ink screen has an experience close to reading a physical book. In the later use, it has indeed confirmed the standby time. Every kindle product I have used can be charged once a month, and the electronic ink screen is indeed very close to a physical book during the day. Does it hurt? I don’t know about vision, I didn’t wear glasses before using it, and I don’t wear glasses now, so I can’t draw a conclusion.
When many friends see me using kindle, they can’t help but play for a while, and then tell me: kindle has less functions, iPad seems to be better, you can read books and do other things at the same time. . They’re absolutely right, and I agree that the iPad has a lot more features than the Kindle.
However, the functions on the kindle are a bit small, which has become the main driving force for me to use the kindle for so many years. I can concentrate on reading books for a period of time without being disturbed by various notifications, low battery reminders and other things. Just like many people know the function of the calculator on the iPad, and the calculator also has this function on the computer, but you will find that all accountants or cashiers in the company will have a single-function calculator on their desks, but the price is too cheap. , was not noticed.
Publishers and Amazon’s eBook Library
In addition to reading books on kindle, you can directly purchase and download all books in Amazon’s e-book library. However, from the actual use effect, the books in Amazon’s e-book library, in terms of classification and quantity, cannot be compared with several major e-commerce platforms. Most of the newly published books in that year cannot be directly searched on kindle. of.
Any physical book we buy has an ISBN on the back. The cost of purchasing an ISBN alone is about 15,000-40,000 yuan. Most of the ISBN is in the hands of the publisher. Ordinary people want to publish a book. , you need to apply to the publishing house to buy an ISBN, and the number of ISBNs that the publishing house can get each year is also limited. Therefore, in a general sense, the publishing house will not sell the ISBN separately to individuals, unless you give it to a very limited number of books. High prices, or a good relationship with the publisher.
If you want the publisher to come up with an ISBN for you to use, most publishers will bundle the book’s distribution copyright with the ISBN. The distribution copyright includes: the sales of physical books, the scope of sales channels for physical books, the sales of digital copyrights, and the scope of sales channels for digital copyrights. Most publishers will give priority to printing physical books when publishing books, while digital copyright will not be given priority. In the process of selling physical books, if it is found that the sales of physical books are not good, digital copyright will basically not be considered. (Of course, the publishing house has the advantage of publicity, which is not shown for the time being.)
For the above reasons, the number of books in Amazon’s library is not only small, but also fewer new books. For many people who like to read and read a lot of books every year, at this time, kindle will have the embarrassment of lack of book resources. Physical bookstores and major e-commerce companies will naturally become the first choice. Physical books can also fill the bookshelf and charge The role of face-filling.
Most of the books I read myself come from online sources. If I feel good after reading it, I will buy a physical book and put it on the bookshelf at home.
Publishing Industry: Lack of Book Diversity
Published volumes of different categories of books in my country in 2020, from top to bottom: teaching supplementary books, literature, politics and law, language, art, industrial technology, medicine and health care, history and geography, philosophy, mathematics and chemistry, general social sciences , general books
Due to some indescribable reasons, the publication of certain types of books in China is restricted, so the types of books that can be published in China every year are extremely limited, and teaching and auxiliary books occupy a considerable share – I have been to several Xinhua In bookstores, almost every teaching and supplementary book can account for 1/3 of its display scale, and its income should account for more than 80%. Literature, law, language, industrial technology, economics, etc. followed closely. This part is dominated by white-collar workers and college students, and the needs of many rural users for popular literature are also included.
Once and now, there has always been a saying that Chinese people don’t like reading. Judging from the above data, it’s not that Chinese people don’t like reading, but that the overall base of the book market is too low. Excluding some “long-selling books”, they still occupy some book numbers. The number of new books published every year is even less than the statistical data. Fewer “good books” are published each year. Dangdang’s book rankings also indirectly prove this inference.
The conclusion is: It’s not that I don’t like reading, but that there are too few good books to waste time looking for a needle in a haystack.
#who can replace kindle
Users who like Kindle, even if Kindle exits China, this group of people will still have a way to continue to use Kindle ( for example, change the region to register an account ), and users who do not like Kindle are mostly affected by WeChat reading, get, Fan Deng and other related products. absorb.
Wechat Read and Get, have launched their own reader products respectively. The people who plan and design these products should be deep users of Kindle, racking their brains to make breakthroughs and make e-readers more functional, but All the same.
From an operational point of view, WeChat reading, although the library is richer in content (most of which are fantasy and immortal books), thanks to the good product design of the APP itself and the data exchange with WeChat, the number of users can reach a higher level. The core business of APPs such as Get and Fandeng is knowledge payment – selling courses/members. Most of the books on the products are also related to the content of these courses, membership rights and other related books sold, and the number of bookstores is completely different from WeChat reading. An order of magnitude, it is a new way, and different natural techniques are different.
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This article is reprinted from: https://huiris.com/kindle-exits-from-china/
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