Amazon Kindle has officially launched a new subscription service that offers all-you-can-read digital books for only 12 yuan ($1.84) per month. (Photo : REUTERS)
Amazon Kindle has officially launched on Tuesday, Feb. 23, a new subscription service that offers all-you-can-read digital books for only 12 yuan ($1.84) per month, China Daily reported.
Called Kindle Unlimited, the service provides Chinese subscribers with access to more than 44,000 e-books, which they can read on any Kindle device or any device, including smartphones and tablet computers, by installing Amazon's Kindle app.
Gu Fan, the head of Kindle content product management at Amazon China, said that the service aims to provide Chinese customers a more flexible way to read and to nurture the emerging e-book market in the country.
In Dec. 2012, Amazon launched its Kindle e-book store in China and saw that the number of active paid readers per month increased by about 37 times by the end of 2015.
According to the report, the Kindle Unlimited service was launched when China observed that the number of books being read by its people dropped.
Zhu Ning, an economist, who recently published a book named "The Guaranteed Bubble," noted the number of books read by Chinese people is "embarrassingly low."
But for the sustainable development of the subscription service, more publishers and authors must participate, Amazon Kindle said.
Zou Jihua, director of digital media division of Tianjin-based publisher, China South Booky Culture Media Co. Ltd., said that partnering with Kindle is more about marketing books rather than directly making money by selling e-books.
"As long as the books get well known in China, you can make money in different ways, such as making movies or TV dramas," Zou said.
Meanwhile, China's leading mobile messaging application, WeChat, said that it is working on a paid subscription service, as an effort to further commercialize its platform with 650 million users.
The company said that the service would allow writers of WeChat's public accounts to charge readers for certain content by allowing them to show a small part of the content while readers will only get full access to the articles by paying.
The report said that the service was accidentally discovered by users while WeChat was testing it online.
WeChat confirmed in an email to China Daily on Tuesday, Feb. 23, that it is working on the new feature but did not disclose when the service will be officially launched. It said the service intends to "support and encourage creative work" on WeChat.
The move is expected to help WeChat further monetize its huge online traffic, analysts said.
