Dangdang cashes in on e-books

E-commerce China Dangdang Inc, a major online shopping website in China, expects the number of e-books sold on it to surpass that of paper books in three years, Dangdang Chief Executive Officer Li Guoqing said on Tuesday.

Li didn't elaborate on the company's current sales volumes.

Dangdang started selling e-books in December 2011, and offers more than 100,000 e-books.

Among all business-to-consumer websites, Dangdang accounted for 29.4 percent of total online book sales in the first quarter, followed by 27.5 percent from Amazon.com Inc's Chinese branch, Z.cn, according to domestic research company Analysys International.

In the second quarter, the company's revenue from media, including books, music, and videos, reached $121.5 million, an increase of 32 percent year-on-year, according to its financial report.