The Challenges Facing E-book Publishing Industry in Taiwan

Abstract A successful E-book market needs several members to work together including authors, publishers, online book stores, book distributors, reading device manufactures and so on. Although various participants have actively involved in Taiwan digital publishing, the sales of E-book is still less than 1% of total publishers’ revenues in 2011. Compared with North America market share, Taiwan's E-book market share is not meaningful. As a matter of fact, Taiwan readers are facing a dilemma in which there is a lack of E-book title and no proper reading device available. This study examines the current status of Taiwan E-book market from the E-book supply chain members’ points of view. We adopted an exploratory approach to provide different perspectives of these members through semi-structured interviews. This study result shows that government regulations, quality content, E-book titles availability, E-book price and reading device price are considered as most challenging factors facing Taiwan E-book publishing industry.