Hanvon to Invest RMB 30 Mln on Content This Year
Netease Tech, 6/03/10
Chen Shaoqiang, GM of e-reader maker Hanvon's (002362.SZ) e-book mall and resource operation department, said that Hanvon plans to invest RMB 30 mln this year in setting up and acquiring content for its e-book mall. The mall currently features 40,000 titles; by August, the mall will have grown to more than 100,000 titles, and to 200,000 titles by year's end.
The "four cardinal principles" of Hanvon's copyright partnerships are for the company to provide free assistance for copyright holders to digitize their books; to offer a 20:80 profit share between Hanvon and rights holders; to provide DRM protection against copying for downloaded books; and to allow rights holders to set prices for online e-book mall content.
Hanvon has also offered free promotional downloads for books to which it has bought the rights: one third of its titles are free to download. The most-downloaded title at present is Woju, a popular drama about young urban professionals, with 14,453 downloads.
Hanvon only implemented billing at the start of this year. The company says its e-book mall has had more than 2 mln downloads to date. E-book prices range from one-fifth to one-third of physical book prices.
Chen Shaoqiang said that at present, titles downloaded from the Hanvon online bookstore can only be read with Hanvon e-paper readers; when buying titles, users must input the passwords unique to their reader devices.
In addition to books, the Hanvon store offers more than 100 newspapers. The model for partnership with newspapers offers three to six months of free readership, after which subscribers will be charged. The Global Times has already begun charging readers, and the Beijing Times will soon follow.
Keywords: content hardware e-book Hanvon 002362.SZ Chen Shaoqiang Internet traffic revenue share
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