After 1 month of hard work, TReader finally gets to a point for us to write a post about it. First let's take a look at the icon.

The icon of TReader

So yes, you guessed it right. TReader is the name of a boat, not the big ship in the Narnia. And it's something about books.

TReader is an ebook reader for Chinese

TReader KK[trɛdɚ]

One who treads.

We all know that the best part of being Chinese is you don't have to learn Chinese! Chinese is hard but beautiful. And bumping into Chinese literature may be the most wonderful mistake you'd ever met. The poor thing is: we don't have a decent online ebook platform. We don't have a decent business model. We even don't have real ebooks. (OK, we may have, but barely.)

Admit it!! It's impossible to find the Chinese ebook you want (coz there ain't any). Even techies like us (OK, just one of us) don't bother wasting our precious time searching for them. Eventually and naturally we have to turn to either pirates, peer-to-peer services or English ebooks (The good part is our English improves along the way).

So we made our own reader based on our imagination, for the time being. And our books come from haodoo (opens new window).

Haodoo.net is an online Traditional Chinese Library

It's free. It's a hard work of numerous devoted readers. They recomposed and proofread books they chose so that other readers can enjoy those books more. Isn't it illegal? you might doubt. We have to be careful with our wording here: "It stands on the verge of a mountain rock facing towards a right and a better world."

For those books which are copyrighted but no longer accrue royalty. It's rather less controversial. For other books, it has the danger to be titled "piracy" and there's a tough war in front of them.

What the f**k is going wrong with Chinese ebooks

We don't know. We wish someone could tell us. We don't just want e-magazines and porn books. We want real ebooks (not scanned pages) with good quality. Publishers and the press told us they're working on it. But as far as we can tell, they're just trying hard to protect their vested interest and don't take risk stepping any further. Hard-core readers like us wouldn't compromise on this kind of situation. So the so-called micro-revolution arises.

You may claim that reformation is in progress. True or not it's us to discern. When the urge for something better cannot be satisfied, revolution is inevitable (just like ancient empires being overthrown).

We're not claiming what we're doing is justifiable. It's just a way, our own way, to break something bad, selfish, and monopolized. People like us and haodoo.net are not Robin Hood in cultural circles (opens new window) (link to a Chinese article) or pirates. We're not yearning for profits. We're just looking forward to a reader-friendly ebook reader, an access-friendly platform with fair price, and lots of good ebooks.

Please prove us wrong

According to Reuters (opens new window): "Rovio's General Manager China says the company is concerned about infringement on its intellectual property and does go after some pirates, especially those found to produce harmful goods. But, he adds: "We tend to want to collaborate." Rovio says it is recruiting some IP infringers to be partners, and even offering some of them free ad space on the Angry Birds app.It also now sells officially licensed Angry Birds balloons after Vesterbacka saw a pirated one for sale in Beijing earlier this year and liked the idea. He calls it "pirating the pirates"."

Working with pirates is an idea never going to happen here in Taiwan, unless a pirate is too big to ignore. Pirates exist because there's demand. It's a basic economic theory. So why don't the publishers fill the demand themselves? They may argue that the cost is too much compared to the demand, and they just want their right to survival. But the thing is you can not and should not survive without moving forward with the whole world. The rule for the game is always changing. The middleman for everything is gradually disappearing (you should really read Seth Godin's blog (opens new window)) due to the success of the internet. Once you don't qualify as a content provider, please step back and let us try. If you insist on doing the old way, please prove us wrong first.

Writer's dreams

The difference between physical libraries and virtual libraries like haodoo.net is there exists a law protecting its right to spread books without permission. Would writers and publishers oppose against physical libraries? No. Partly because it's legal, partly because they believe this kind of public service can actually increase exposure rate and is good concerning sale. Then why can't the same thing happens on the ebook? It can (opens new window), it just needs time and effort. And it won't happen without us, together, trying. Publisher needs to be re-educated, so are readers. We all need to sacrifice a little to create a beautiful world.

All writers want their books to be read by many people, and at the same time financially sustain at their own feet to carry on making great books. We'll keep tinkering our boat to be stronger. So writers, be brave! Self-publish your works. Keep writing and post parts of them on the web till the end of the world. We promise you'll get what you deserve.

Think big, start small. Hang on tight with us. Let's make this happen.