Neat article today looks at the Taiwanese ebook scene. As we all know, Taiwan is the major source of ereaders nowadays. However, according to the article, if you live there you can buy a lot of readers, but not many contemporary books.
Plenty of Chinese classics are available, but not much by way of current Chinese literature. According to the article the problem is that Taiwanese publishers are unclear of what impact ebooks will have on their paper sales. Sound familiar? The article says that the Taiwanese have near 100% literacy and are big readers, but evidently they are not reading the newest books on their newest gadgets.
I’ll be damned if I can find any ebook readers here, and I’ve been living in Taiwan for just over two years now. If they’re showing them at the Book Fair here that’s new; I was at last year’s one, I think, and nobody there had even heard of e-ink readers. Similarly, whenever I go on the subway system here, my Sony Reader still attracts a lot of curious stares. A lot of people in Taiwan still have no idea what they are.
The problem with piracy doesn’t so much have to do with people in Taiwan as it does with mainland China, where piracy of all sorts is thoroughly endemic and essentially state-supported. Misha Glenny’s ‘McMafia’ describes how the Chinese government literally bootlegged an entire high-speed train system built for them by a foreign company and proceeded to rip that company off by building duplicates all across the country. Shops are filled with bootlegged clothes, bags, books, CD’s, videos, you name it. If Taiwanese publishers are worried about anything, I suspect it’s about the Chinese mass-distributing their ebooks. Taiwan is an affluent country, and I can’t see that many people here actively engaging in piracy, although that’s purely a personal opinion.
I should add that the level of literacy here is evident in the sheer density of bookshops everywhere you go. It’s just a shame for me most of them are written in Mandarin.