China's Amazon? Tencent and Shanda to merge online publishing and eBook services

Two of China's largest online publishing companies announced this week that they will merge, creating what some have called the 'Amazon of eBooks'.

Tencent Literature and Shanda Cloudary will become Yuewen Group, the country's largest online publishing and eBook company.

With 1,200 employees and more than three million books, the new company expects to attract around 100 million readers generating more than 200 million yuan (US$31.9 million) per year, said Yuewen CEO Wu Wenhui.

In a public letter to staff on Monday, Wu called on them to work together to achieve the dream of creating a "nationwide" reading system in the coming decade.

"In the future, I hope everyone from an eight year old to an 80 year old will be able to use digital devices – laptop, tablet, smartphone, iWatch or Google Glass – to read whatever they want," Wu said.

He added that to achieve that goal, Yuewen will need to purchase more books, develop better reading apps, promote the creation of online literature and work to strengthen copyright protection for both electronic and print books.