KOREA: Korea's e-book market to triple in 2006

With improved platforms and surging consumer demand, Korean e-book market anticipated to explode

The Korea Herald
Wednesday, February 15, 2006

By Yang Sung-jin
 
Korea's fledgling e-book market is expected to take off on the strength of better platforms and surging consumer demand, painting a positive outlook for the industry that has struggled with slower-than-expected growth in the past couple of years.

According to E-Book Korea, the country's largest e-book association, the market will reach 140 billion won this year, marking a strong increase from 55 billion won in 2005.

"The number of e-book titles will grow to 340,000 this year and 400,000 in 2007, up from 200,000 last year," Choi Young-chan, chairman of E-Book Korea, said. "New innovative solutions are encouraging people to try e-book titles, and the market is also teeming with hope for a faster growth."

The estimated market value of e-book titles in 2006 accounts for about 5 percent of the entire publishing industry in Korea. The strong growth comes after a host of e-book title makers and solutions providers produced lukewarm results in recent years, hurt in part by the lack of support from the government.

Even though the e-book market shows signs of strong potential, the Culture and Tourism Ministry halved the budget for promoting e-book titles to 500 million won.

But e-book solutions providers remain upbeat, pledging to accelerate their efforts to provide more titles to readers through various digital devices.

"The strong increase in demand for e-book titles is thanks to the growing business-to-consumer market," said Oh Jae-hyuck, CEO of Booktopia Inc., the country's largest e-book solutions provider.

Oh said Booktopia's mobile phone e-book service known as "u-book," launched last year, is particularly growing at a rapid pace. Previously, the general public used to associate e-books with specially designed devices like PDA or e-book readers, but the introduction of the mobile phone e-book service is redefining the idea of reading books on the go, he said.

Currently, SK Telecom subscribers can download e-book titles on their handsets through the u-book service platform, while KTF and LG Telecom will introduce the same service in April and June, respectively.

Another major development is that major online and offline bookstores are scrambling to carve out a share in the fast-growing e-book market. Last month, Booktopia signed a partnership with Yes24.com, the country's biggest online bookstore, to provide consumers a free e-book version for each paper-based title purchased on the website.

Yes24.com handles 450,000 titles online, and Booktopia provides about 30,000 domestic titles in the electronic version. "The e-book service will be expanded to the entire collection of Yes24.com's titles, and Booktopia will form partnerships with other offline and online bookstores," Oh said.

Kyobo Bookstore, the country's largest offline bookseller, is also rushing to join the fray. The company set up its own e-book section on its site and is expanding the number of titles available.

The power of e-book titles and related solutions is most palpable in the sales figure of offline book titles. Two years ago, Naver.com, Korea's biggest online portal, kicked off a content-search service which is based in e-book technology. Users can type in keywords and the search engine navigates a huge database of e-book titles and their contents.

At first, offline publishers expressed reluctance at the content-search service, saying that readers will simply read the specific passages in the electronic version of books they want and will not bother to purchase the titles. Defying such skeptical views, Naver.com's book sales jumped from 100 million per month to 100 million won per day.

The global market is embracing e-book as well. Google, the world's biggest online search engine, is in talks with major publishing companies to introduce a new type of e-book service. Amazon.com also launched an e-book download service last year, while Sony, a major electronics maker, unveiled a new e-book reader PRS-500 early this year.

Date Posted: 2/15/2006