More Chinese purchase books online: poll

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Book sales in the retail market kept growing in 2013, and the growth of online book sales exceeded 30%, rising to 17 billion yuan, according to a survey of Chinese Internet users.

In the lead-up to World Book Day, People's Daily and China's central television broadcaster CCTV conducted a joint survey with web services Baidu, online media Sina, online retail sellers Jingdong Mall, Amazon (China), and Horizon Research Consultancy Group, aiming to explore Chinese reading behavior and trends in the book market.

According to Baidu, reading online took second place in the Chinese netizens ranking of the top 8 things to do in their spare time. Different genders and ages record different reading habits. People aged between 20 to 39 are the main online book consumers; more than 60% of men search for arts books, teaching materials, science and technology information, and literature; 60% of women search for books about social science.

The number of readers using mobile apps has experienced steady growth in last 3 years. The data from Jingdong shows its E-book apps users read a book five times a day on average and they spent about 30 minutes each time; 70% of users read between 6 am and 11 pm, and the most popular places for reading are in the subway or at home. 92% of netizens have a college degree; those born post-1970s and post 1980s prefer to get news and information from microblogs.

Purchasing online is becoming a main channel for people to obtain books. In 2013, Jingdong sold 120 million books in total and had 32 million orders from 12 million consumers. Literature, education, and social sciences were the top sellers.

According to Amazon, the list of 2013 top 10 biggest-reading cities in China are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Wuhan, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Tianjin and Chongqing. Different cities have different book preferences. Beijing online readers opt for literature, children books, political and military books, while Shanghai netizens choose books about literature, family education, parenting and social science.