One thing really cool in China is that some books can be bought at half the price or even cheaper than in the book stores in US. The book I am currently reading is Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML. I bought it at Rmb 98 (about $13) at Shanghai Book City, while oreilly.com sells it at $34.95 online.

This is a classic elasticity case. The publisher wants to maximize its profit by selling as many books as possible. To achieve this goal, the publisher prices each book differently based on the elasticity (the purchasing power) of each market. The more inelastic (insensitive) the demand curve is (against the price change), the higher the price the consumers are going to pay. For publishers, as long as each book sells above its marginal cost, the publishers make money. However, this model only works if the consumers in less elastic market have no access to the same goods sold much cheaper elsewhere. Otherwise, the more expensive books will never sell.

Thanks for the internet and the modern means of transportation, consumers are much more powerful to reach goods sold worldwide than in, say, 60’s or 70’s in the last century. So, students could always go to amazon.com.uk to buy text books to save 20 to 30 bucks for the exactly the same books and people like me can buy the exactly the same book in book stores in China for half the price or even cheaper.

Books I am reading now. Reviews at http://www.slashdot.com/.

Once moved to Shanghai, I noticed that time spent on commute becomes almost unbearable. Taxis are hard to find during peak hours and even if you are lucky to find one, the hours you could end up spending on roads could easily drive people crazy. The roads are usually a parking lot with cars coming from all directions and people honking, cutting lanes or making stunts to get ahead. The subway are quick and punctual; but, first, it is very, very crowded and secondly, when a beggar or junk mail spreader turns up, they could make me easily regret for a whole day for deciding to take a subway.

Then, I found audio books at www.audible.com. With less than $10 subcription fee, I could download the latest audio books and put them into my ipod instantly. it is my saver!! I suddenly could not be bored to death when sitting in the car in vain. (I tried newspapers, but they could only make me dizzy after 10 minutes. And I want to relax my eyes if I could). The site has more than 25,000 titles and I could find books easily by genre, awards or by popularity ratings. It enables me to keep track of what’s most popular, sensible or controversial in US and the audio technology helps me to continuously improve my English skills. This service seems to satisfy all small, but important desires in my heart. I just can not stop raving the service and the business model!! (BTW, it could be a destroyer to Focus Media too. When people could make use of their idling time well, will Focus Media be disappeared in China? Maybe…)

Thought this site would be a great candidate for another copied-by-China idea. But, first, we need to create all the audio books and secondly, we need to fight for copy-right breachers. I know how to do the first. Not sure how to get the second right???