Paper or pixels, book business booming

Despite a perception that readers are choosing pixels over pages, sales of hard copy books through Tmall reached 1 billion last year while the number of orders for hard copy and digital books jumped 17 percent from a year earlier, Alibaba says.

The average buyer bought 5.5 hard copy books from Alibaba’s retailing platform last year — 60 percent of them women.

And people born in the 80s and 90s make up the three quarters of the country’s overall readership.

The total amount of reading time has also picked up thanks to more convenient purchasing channels and popular e-reading services, according to Alibaba’s online retail platform Tmall and Alibaba’s literature arm.

New readers, or those who purchased digital or paper books for the first time last year, reached 30 million, most of whom are under 30.

A total of 1 billion paper books worth 50 billion yuan (US$7.3 billion) were sold through Tmall in the past year, and nearly half the readers took up both physical and virtual forms for reading.

Shanghai has the highest number of readers, who also bought the most second-hand books through Alibaba’s online flea market, Xianyu.

They’ve shown particular preference for vocational and foreign books.

Consumers from Beijing and Guangzhou are the next biggest book buyers.

Tmall’s online reading platform attracted 25 million digital book orders after its launch in mid-2018.

Younger readers like pixels and are more inclined toward digital gadgets.

Readers born after the 90s make up 46 percent of the total digital reading population.

Overseas orders for books on Tmall also boomed — doubling from a year earlier.

The most popular categories are educational materials, children’s books and art.