Reading between the lines

In the past 12 months, several major players in the Chinese book industry and researchers have conducted surveys into digital reading habits. Here are some of their conclusions.

Unsurprisingly, all agreed that the e-readership is young, with 60 to 80 percent of them aged 18 to 35. Moreover, they discovered that the most devoted readers tend to be found in large cities, are usually well educated, and are the most-avid readers of books in non-traditional formats. Mobile phones have surpassed all other devices to become the reader's favorite accessory.

Three found that men read more than women - Openbook's online survey concluded that the proportion of men who read on digital devices was 17 percent higher than women. The number was 14 percent, according to iResearch, while Tianyi Reading, a popular digital-reading platform hosted by China Telecom, found that it had almost double the number of male customers versus female, with men accounting for approximately 65 percent and women 35 percent.