Le Trung, who calls himself as a “book addict”, spent hours on every weekend at the book stores on Nguyen Xi streets to look for new interesting books. However, Trung has given up the habit in the last two years.

Trung still likes reading books. However, instead of reading thick print books, he now uses a small electronic book, with which he feels more convenient.

It’s now very easy to look for electronic book products manufactured by Sony, Amazon or Barnes & Noble, which have different designs, a lot of functions and different price levels.

“In general, they are affordable to the majority of people. A product costs just several millions of dong, which is equal to the value of 20 or 30 books. But they are much more wonderful in the functions,” Trung said.

Having been available on the market for the last three years, the e-book products, such as Kindle 2 and 3 of Amazon or Sony eReaders have become popular to Vietnamese people. Using the e-ink technology, e-books allow readers to have good feeling as if they read normal print pages, while they do not feel the eyestrains – the feeling they would have when looking at the screens of tablets.

Thanh Duong, a man who likes reading swashbuckling romances, said if using iPad or Android tablets, people should think that the tablets would be better for playing games or surfing on Internet. Meanwhile, if they want to read books, they would need a specialized tool like Kindle.

It’s easy to seek electronic books on Internet. Especially, e-book tool suppliers could be as generous as giving buyers some DVDs with thousands digitalized books.

Thuy Duong, a second year student of a foreign language school, passionately loves Japanese comic strips. Therefore, Duong has decided to buy a Kindle DX which has been always full of the books of this kind.

“A lot of print copies of the books have not been available on the market, and you would have to seek a copy on Internet. If you download the book from Internet, you would have to turn on computer every time you want to read it. It would be more simple if you have a Kindle,” Duong said.

Different classes of e-books

Kindle series of Amazon prove to be the most popular products in Vietnam, from Kindle 3 to Kindle Touch, which are priced between 2.2 and 3.2 million dong. Kindle 3 has disappeared from the shelves, which has been replaced with Kindle Touch.

Like Kindle, Nook Simple Touch of Barnes & Noble has also been favored in Vietnam. Most recently, the manufacturer and book distributor has provided an upgraded version, allowing readers to read books in the darkness. For the new feature, users have to pay 30 percent more of the product price, abut 4 million dong for a product.

Sony eBook Reader WiFi proves to be choosier than the two popular products series. Though the price of the machine is equal to Simple Touch or Kindle Touch, its accessories are much more expensive. Therefore, a Sony eBook Reader WiFi would be valued at 50 percent higher than the products of the rivals.

The higher price is one of the reasons that explain why the products have been less popular in Vietnam. In general, Sony’s models are the optimal solution for foreign readers with epub function – which is not popular in Vietnam.

It’s easy to buy book covers, but difficult to find content

Kindle, Sony or Nook e-books can be described as just the covers of the books, which do not contain any content until users download data to the e-books.

Vu Trung complained that Vietnam’s digital content industry proves to lag far behind the rest of the world. Therefore, it’s really difficult to find newly published e-book contents.

“In many cases, as I cannot buy real books, I have to download pirated versions from the Internet,” he complained.

Vietnamese users can only read new publications many months after the publications hit the market. Volunteers would re-type the books and scan them under the mode of PRC or EPUB files and post on the Internet to share with others.