Amazon has also launched premium devices to attract high-end Chinese customers. In April 2016, the 2,399-yuan Kindle Oasis, the lightest and thinnest one in the Kindle family, was introduced in China concurrently with other markets in the world.
Amazon is not the only company betting big on e-book readers in China. Beijing-based iReader Technology Co Ltd released its latest e-book reader called the iReader Light in early September last year. The device weighs only 142 grams, and is priced 658 yuan.
Cheng Xiangjun, CEO of iReader Technology, said more than 100 million people across 150 countries use the iReader to read e-books each month.
Online shopping major JD.com Inc launched its JDRead last year. Priced 769 yuan, the JDRead device can access about 300,000 e-books.
The hardware segment has grown for sure, and the software segment, or e-books/content, appears set to follow suit.
"We find Chinese users refer to the dictionary a lot. Especially their use of the English dictionary is higher than in any other countries, so we specifically designed a function of tips about new words, and provide English-to-Chinese/English definition automatically for Chinese readers," Aitken said.
Amazon, he said, will launch more new functions over the next year.
Compared with printed books, the cost of e-books is very low. In fact, some of the e-books are free of charge or cost just a few dollars.
For instance, the printed version of The Shortest History of Europe, one of the top five bestsellers in 2016, is priced 25 yuan, while its e-book version retails for only 2.99 yuan.
To be sure, e-books account for only a small percent of the whole publishing industry. Sales of printed books reached 62.4 billion yuan in 2015, while revenue from e-books was 10.8 billion yuan, or 15 percent of the total, according to a book retail market report.
That suggests the potential for growth is immense. So, to make more e-books available to device buyers, Amazon introduced the Kindle Unlimited e-book monthly subscription service in February 2016 in China.
The service costs each user 12 yuan each month and allows users to access and read over 67,000 Chinese and foreign e-books on their devices.
Amazon has also forged partnerships with more than 660 publishers in China such as CITIC Press Group, Commercial Press, China Machine Press, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Changjiang Children's Press.
More than hardware
There is more to the digital publishing industry in China than just hardware and software.
Elaine Chang, vice-president of Amazon, said male users outnumber female users in China, and all of them are younger.
In this respect, the China market is different from the US market where 70 percent of users are female and older.
A report from the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association showed the post-'70s generation love historical biographies, while the post-'80s and post-'90s generation are willing to read romantic stories, while the post-'00 generation prefer modern metropolis stories.
Analysts said whether or not digital book sales would see significant growth depends on the range of content on offer in the market, not just the features of a device.
So, the emphasis should be as much on technology as nurturing more authors and original literature, they said.
Huang Guofeng, an analyst with Beijing-based consultancy Analysis, said, "China's digital book and e-reader market shows huge growth potential."
