PC Home Online moves into Internet book sales

The nation's fourth largest Internet portal PC Home Online (網路家庭) yesterday unveiled its online bookstore, which offers customers free shipping and payment by installments to appeal to book lovers.

"With Taiwan's e-commerce continuing to boom, we believe there is still huge room for online book retailing to grow," Su Yun (蘇芸), vice president of PC Home's e-commerce business division, said at an inauguration ceremony yesterday.

The new online bookstore features 10,000 Chinese-language books spread over 15 categories. The company plans to expand this to 100,000 books by the end of the year, Su said. No foreign language books are available now.

The e-bookstore business is an extension of PC Home's current e-commerce retail business, which offers consumer electronics goods, software and female products. It accounted for over 86.8 percent of the company's total revenues last year.

The current leader in online book retailing is Books.com.tw (博客來), which began operations near the end of 1995, with a stock of over 454,000 books. It is followed by Kingstone.com.tw (金石堂網路書店) and eslitebooks.com (誠品網路書店).

PC Home offers free shipping, with the aim to attracting casual buyers, Su said. The company also offers payment plans, allowing buyers to pay in six installments even on low-price orders, she said.

Books.com.tw charges a NT$20 shipping and handling fee on orders under NT$350 if consumers choose to pick up their purchases in selected 7-Eleven stores, or NT$50 on orders under NT$1,000 if buyers choose to use the home delivery service.

Books.com.tw said it has no plans to match the measures.

Terry Chang (張天立), general manager of Books.com.tw, said the company's delivery service has already met the demand of most consumers.

With a more complete product line, ranging from books, audio CDs and DVDs, to magazines and stationary products, Chang said he believes the company will continue to lead the market and show significant growth.

Books.com.tw reported more than NT$700 million in revenue last year, and aims to push this figure up to NT$1.2 billion this year, Chang said.

Eslitebooks.com, meanwhile, expects the addition of a new player will expand the market.

Eslite joined the online business in 2000 and reported NT$4.324 billion in revenue for the first seven months of last year.