Back to the future of print

This "sharing" practice seemed to have been vindicated by the success of several Internet giants that thrived at the expense of newspapers, as they lifted their content for free or at dirt-cheap prices. As the sites grew increasingly popular with readers, helpless newspapers were eventually forced to vie for their headlines to be posted on the homepages of the portals.

But Chinese authors have proved to be much tougher fighters, as shown by their incessant and high-profile legal tussles with Internet and technology companies over pirated content. These conflicts were usually settled by the hosts paying hefty amounts of compensation and promising to watch over piracy more carefully.

The result is that it's now increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to find best-selling e-books for free. A colleague who has followed the change closely told me that only "Web-smart" users know where to find "sharing" sites, but even they charge a price.

Unfortunately, despite the cleanup, the e-book business has remained in the doldrums as other fundamental flaws related to content and user experience came to the fore.

While e-readers are hugely successful half the world away, they have never really taken off in China, mainly because the manufacturers couldn't replicate Amazon's wide catalog of e-books and collaborative relationships with major publishers. Instead, they provide a trove of largely mundane and trashy reads, many of which are produced by struggling Internet writers.

A number of technology and telecommunications companies have tried to offer substitutes on tablets and smartphones, but the eyestrain and frequent distractions have deterred serious readers. The mobile phone operators have been known to provide romances and "Time Travel" tales online, mostly for the migrant worker market, for just several cents per read.

An official survey shows that in 2013, most Chinese adults still preferred to read printed books, and while the Chinese read an increasing number of both printed and electronic books, the rate of increase for physical volumes had outpaced that of e-books.

Another reason I rejected e-readers and e-books was that I had been cutting back on the time I spent on electronic gadgets at home after I detected early signs of addiction to them in my 5-year-old son.

Since last year, I've tried to take him to the nearby bookstore one afternoon every weekend, so he can be away from games and animated films on a tablet or smartphone. There, in the children's books section, watchful parents sit quietly against the wall, proud of what their children are doing and hoping they will stay with the books longer.

I believe none of us believes the printed book will disappear completely, at least not for our children's generation.

Contact the author at: dr.baiping@gmail.com