"I am taking part in a process of self-annihilation," says Wang Jung-wen, Yuan-Liou's publisher and CEO. "Paper books are going to gradually migrate to digital formats and will ultimately become museum pieces." But, he adds, there is another way to look at it: "We are also taking part in the birth of a new era. We are rebuilding from the ground up."

Facing the tech titans' entry into the e-book reader market, Wang is pragmatic: "The publishing industry is transforming in an effort to survive."

Yuan-Liou's virtual platform, YLib, utilizes the Koobe DRM software the company developed in house. YLib now retails digital versions of more than 30 magazines and nearly 2,000 e-books, offering readers a chance to try the e-reading experience for themselves.

When BenQ linked its hardware, content and communications via its e-book store, Yuan-Liou took up the challenge, choosing to play its ace in the hole-powerhouse author Jin Yong (Louis Cha)-by rolling out a Cha-branded e-book reader of its own.

The Jin Yong Reader is 0.9 centimeters thick, weighs just 250 grams, and features a six-inch touchscreen. It also boasts storage for up to 1,500 books, the ability to switch between portrait and landscape views, and the capacity to handle Chinese and English texts. Slated to hit the market in late June at a price of NT$14,800, the Jin Yong Reader is roughly comparable to the second-generation Kindle in terms of both size and features.

Generally speaking, the hardware driving today's e-book readers is pretty similar. What makes the Jin Yong Reader stand out from the crowd are the 15 Cha novels that come pre-loaded free of charge.

The Jin Yong Reader also comes equipped with the "Jin Yong Knowledge Base," a database put together by Yuan-Liou's editors which breaks down the characters, martial arts, weapons, history, places, and buildings appearing in Cha's work into 20 categories. Readers looking for more information on the brilliant exploits of Genghis Khan, wondering whether Qiu Chuji, founder of the Quanzhen school of Daoism, was a real person, or seeking to better understand references to Yueyang Tower or Shaolin Temple can find even more information free of charge via the Encyclopedia of China. These resources, together with the onboard English-Chinese dictionaries, make the Jin Yong Reader a virtual portable Jin Yong library.

Though Taiwan's e-book market has been hot this year, Wang argues that the e-book industry requires five things if it is to grow further: content, software, hardware, communications, and distribution.

Taiwanese manufacturers have taken their cues from Amazon's successful Kindle business model. New local offerings include Chunghwa Telecom's Hami bookstore, which targets smartphone users, BenQ's eBookTaiwan marketplace, and Yuan-Liou's Koobe platform. Power supply manufacturer Delta Electronics has also begun working on e-publishing with UDN.com, while notebook computer giant Quanta Computers plans to enter the fray next year.

"Right now, the e-book market is filled with contenders vying for turf," says Wang. "Yuan-Liou's Jin Yong Reader is a pioneering five-in-one device that could either win the day or, just as likely, become cannon fodder. But that's what makes life interesting."

Yuan-Liou's virtual platform, YLib, utilizes the Koobe DRM software the company developed in house. YLib now retails digital versions of more than 30 magazines and nearly 2,000 e-books, offering readers a chance to try the e-reading experience for themselves.

A publisher for 35 years, Yuan-Liou began researching e-publishing some 15 years ago. In short, it's been working in the field for a long time, and doesn't fear the competition.

In 1993, multimedia CDs were the touchstone for digital publishing at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's largest book exhibition. At the time, the UK's DK Publishing, the US' Random House and other major international publishers were busily developing and creating books on disk, a phenomenon that instigated discussions about a revolution in reading and learning.

Yuan-Liou established its own "e-books workshop" the following year, then spent two years and NT$10 million creating an interactive, disk-based version of The Mouse Bride, an illustrated children's book. The disk-based multimedia edition went on to win numerous awards, including the very first Golden Tripod Award for best e-book.

But then the Internet revolution derailed development of multimedia disks.

The Internet's collective intelligence and negligible cost of reproduction took the wind out of the sails of books on disk, which were expensive to produce.

Yuan-Liou's virtual platform, YLib, utilizes the Koobe DRM software the company developed in house. YLib now retails digital versions of more than 30 magazines and nearly 2,000 e-books, offering readers a chance to try the e-reading experience for themselves.

The rise of the Internet drew away energy and attention as the online "global village" phenomenon overturned reading habits and compelled publishers to adjust their business strategies.

Yuan-Liou began going digital internally in 1996. People outside the company never saw its transition to editing on computers or to using the Enterprise Resource Planning system for production, finances, and inventory. What they did see was the creation of the YLib website, which began as an online community before gradually branching out into online sales. The YLib virtual reading group is one of the world's most successful Chinese-language websites, with 110,000 members, 1.3 million monthly visitors, and NT$60 million in annual revenues.

Wang's digital experience has led him to believe that libraries-our most important means of archiving and acquiring knowledge-must also go digital, and Yuan-Liou has been unrelenting in its efforts to place itself at the crux of this transformation. Wang established Wordpedia.com in 2000 with the goal of building a comprehensive "encyclopedia team" to digitize searches of encyclopedias, dictionaries, and academic periodicals.

Major parts of this endeavor, such as negotiating a contract with mainland Chinese officials and spending NT$130 million to acquire the rights to the print edition of the Encyclopedia of China for 10 years, have been aimed at creating an online encyclopedic database about China.

Wang also dreamed of compiling an encyclopedia of Taiwan, but feared it would bankrupt his company. After all, it took the Chinese government 15 years, hundreds of millions of RMB, and the efforts of 20,000 scholars to produce the Encyclopedia of China. Taiwan's population and market were simply too small for the private sector to take on such a task, so Wang had little choice but to "provoke" the government into doing it.

Yuan-Liou's knowledge-base group proposed its Encyclopedia of Taiwan project to the Council of Cultural Affairs and in 2007 was allocated a budget of NT$30 million. Over the course of two years, it produced six volumes on topics including history, geography, religion and folk customs, arts and culture. Made public at the end of last year, the project allows readers to search for information on Taiwan free of charge.

Yuan-Liou's virtual platform, YLib, utilizes the Koobe DRM software the company developed in house. YLib now retails digital versions of more than 30 magazines and nearly 2,000 e-books, offering readers a chance to try the e-reading experience for themselves.

In 2005, the knowledge-base group developed two approaches to digital publishing. The first was Internet-based. The second recognized the difficulty of establishing the identity of Internet users and preventing multiple individuals from utilizing a single account. It therefore proposed that Yuan-Liou develop its own core technologies and its own digital rights management (DRM) system.

In October 2006, before the company decided on its approach, Wang, in his role as executive director of the Magazine Business Association of Taipei, led a group of publishers to Korea to study Paju Book City and Heyri Art Valley, never suspecting that the trip would point the way to Yuan-Liou's future.

Paju Book City covers about 1.6 square kilometers, which makes it the largest industrial park in the world devoted exclusively to publishing. Located about one hour by car from Seoul, the park sits close to the border with North Korea. Surely the siting of this brilliant cultural flower along a border that could erupt into war at any time makes it something of a world wonder.

Yi Ki-ung, the initiator of the Paju Book City project, is the president of the Korean fine arts publisher Youlhwadang Publishers. Upset that the small and scattered nature of the Korean publishing industry resulted in high printing, binding, and distribution costs, and that the industry's obsolete distribution system left it with warehouses full of fine but unsold books, Yi began thinking about completely restructuring the publishing environment in 1989.

Yi persuaded more than 200 publishers to each invest US$10,000 in his idea. After more than a decade, in which time the Korean government had 25 construction ministers, 15 culture ministers, and two presidents, Yi finally resolved the project's siting issues and brought in Korean and foreign architects to do the design and planning. When the Book City formally opened its doors in 2004, it gathered the entire publishing chain-publishers, writers, copyright agency offices, a paper mill, printers, a distribution center, an online bookstore, banks, and even a shopping center-in Puju.

Once the city had made a name for itself, writers, artists, architects, designers, and filmmakers began pouring into the artists' village within its confines, causing the village to grow and eventually spin off into an independent art-themed community. The Korean government now plans to turn the Book City, the arts community, and the nearby movie production area (known as Hallyuwood) into the locomotive at the forefront of Korea's creative and cultural industries.

Yuan-Liou Publishing and ViewSonic are making a joint foray into the Chinese e-reader space. In fact, ViewSonic helped Yuan-Liou develop its Jin Yong Reader, designing the device's human interface, developing its display technology, and providing access to distribution channels.

Inspired by the way in which the Korean publishing industry had taken a leading role within the creative and cultural field, Wang decided to take a similarly large step when he returned to Taiwan-he brought Yuan-Liou, the Ambassador Hotel, and the Observer Design Group together to form the Taiwan Cultural-Creative Development Company.

In late 2007, Yuan-Liou bid on and acquired a 15-year operating license for the 2.3 hectare Huashan 1914 Creative Park (formerly the Taipei Distillery). Wang's plans call for using this creative and cultural platform as a place where artists can let their talents run wild and nourish Taiwan's aesthetic life.

Yuan-Liou's employees similarly saw at first hand how Korea's notion of "culture-oriented nation building" had encouraged its publishing industry to reject restrictions imposed by the US software industry and instead build its own "ebook-topia." Korea's example fostered an "ethnic self-confidence" among Yuan-Liou's employees and left them resolved to develop their own e-book software.

"The publishing industry exists to serve authors," says Wang. "There's no point in going digital if we can't protect the product of our writers' sweat and tears and generate revenues from their work." Wang says that Yuan-Liou has taken the approach it has in order to ease the biggest obstacle to e-publishing: making writers comfortable with transferring the digital rights to their works to publishers.

Yuan-Liou's digital content development division began working with its multimedia The Mouse Bride disk, looking for ways to dynamically display e-book content. The division sought to maximize the value of the thin, dozen-odd page illustrated book by, for example, allowing readers to switch between simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and between Chinese and English text. They also looked at ways for parents who don't have time to read to their children every day to record and play the story automatically, and for children to compete at telling the story by making and playing their own recordings.

In order to sell the title, the R&D group also had to think about how to strengthen DRM mechanisms. For example, when readers install Koobe, they must register the software before they can read any of Yuan-Liou's electronic texts. Registration demonstrates that they have a legal right to read the text. Members of Yuan-Liou's YLib website who wish to purchase, view, download, and print texts from online must go through the same process, alleviating rights holders' concerns about rampant pirating of electronic texts.

"The key to DRM isn't technology, but service," says Wang Yi-ling, vice president of Koobe, the Yuan-Liou subsidiary that developed the software. "You can't make it too aggravating for readers to use." Wang says the best approach is bundling the DRM system with the front-end software, which makes it less likely to be cracked. But it's still hard to make it watertight. After all, any code one person can make, another person can break. Even Apple's powerhouse R&D department has proved unable to protect its iPhone from hacking. But Wang argues that the problem isn't so much that a device can be hacked. It's more a question of how big an effect such hacks have and how quickly they can be patched.

Yuan-Liou's decision to promote Koobe has sparked tech-industry interest in the software. AU Optronics now uses it to distribute internal publications (in English, as well as in traditional and simplified Chinese) to its more than 50,000 employees worldwide, greatly reducing its consumption of paper.

Seeking to expand the software's applications to other industries and deliver cross-platform services, Koobe spun off from Yuan-Liou in 2009 and grew its R&D team to 40 people, up from its original seven to eight individuals. Yuan-Liou's Jin Yong Reader was Koobe's first client. Now, some 31 magazines, including Business Next, Manager Today, and Money Weekly, use Koobe's software to distribute their electronic editions.

Yuan-Liou Publishing and ViewSonic are making a joint foray into the Chinese e-reader space. In fact, ViewSonic helped Yuan-Liou develop its Jin Yong Reader, designing the device's human interface, developing its display technology, and providing access to distribution channels.

"My measure of success was developing a system that would win us the right to use Louis Cha's books," says Wang. "The reason being that Mr. Cha is an author with a very clear understanding of the management of his works." Wang says that after receiving the digital rights to Cha's work in 2008, Yuan-Liou began looking for the ideal time to release the properties. The e-readers from tech firms and publishers all fall short in some respect, whether in terms of content offered, software design, or the payment system. Since such devices need to meet all five criteria to succeed, cooperation between firms in multiple fields is a must.

With manufacturers and content providers still figuring out issues such as e-book pricing, the division of royalties, and how to service purchasers of e-book readers, the e-book business model remains a work in progress.

"Taiwan's digital publishers excel at using hardware to drive content," says Wang. He explains that this new e-publishing era, which is arising 500 years after the print revolution, offers new opportunities. But publishers need to reexamine their own core values, consider how to repurpose old assets, and perhaps head in a new direction. "It's worth taking the time to ensure that our efforts don't go to waste!"

Yuan-Liou's virtual platform, YLib, utilizes the Koobe DRM software the company developed in house. YLib now retails digital versions of more than 30 magazines and nearly 2,000 e-books, offering readers a chance to try the e-reading experience for themselves.

The 35-year-old Yuan-Liou Publishing began "going digital" many years ago. Commenting on the ever-changing technology, CEO Wang Jung-wen says: "Today's revolution in reading is one of medium. We had our print revolution 500 years ago. Now publishing has arrived at another crossroads that requires it to rethink its core values."

Yuan-Liou's virtual platform, YLib, utilizes the Koobe DRM software the company developed in house. YLib now retails digital versions of more than 30 magazines and nearly 2,000 e-books, offering readers a chance to try the e-reading experience for themselves.

Yuan-Liou's virtual platform, YLib, utilizes the Koobe DRM software the company developed in house. YLib now retails digital versions of more than 30 magazines and nearly 2,000 e-books, offering readers a chance to try the e-reading experience for themselves.

Yuan-Liou's virtual platform, YLib, utilizes the Koobe DRM software the company developed in house. YLib now retails digital versions of more than 30 magazines and nearly 2,000 e-books, offering readers a chance to try the e-reading experience for themselves.

Yuan-Liou's virtual platform, YLib, utilizes the Koobe DRM software the company developed in house. YLib now retails digital versions of more than 30 magazines and nearly 2,000 e-books, offering readers a chance to try the e-reading experience for themselves.