Thanks to the rise of the Internet, a new generation of writers have achieved success and fame by posting their works online, allowing readers to give instant feedback on their writing. And as our next story explains, it has already caused major changes in the publishing industry. For aspiring writers, getting published used to be the first step toward success and popularity. But the rise of the Internet has changed the rules of the game. A new generation of best-selling novelists, such as JHT, Hiyawu and Giddens Ko, have all achieved literary stardom online before being approached by publishers. Lu-yi, an up-and-coming novelist with a day job as a high school teacher, is another example. She shot to fame last year after winning a major award in a cross-strait online fiction-writing contest, which not only focused on creativity but also on the speed of composition. "It's a contest that requires entries to be uploaded right after they're written." And the author does not have complete control over the story. "It's a different kind of composition. You're constantly interacting with your readers." The comments from readers may change the direction of the plot at any point, and not even the author can be sure how the story will end until the last minute. But for renowned essayist Chang Show-foong, who just turned 70 last March, composition is all about literally putting pen to paper. "I enjoy scribbling on paper." And she still prefers to do her reading the old-fashioned way. Yet for both the writers and the readers, electronic publishing does hold several advantages over their conventional counterparts. First of all, as it incurs much lower costs than traditional publishing, writers now are allowed to enjoy a larger share of the fruit of their labor. With print books, it's customary for writers to get at best 15% of the proceeds, while the rest goes to the publishers. But with e-books, it's 70% for the writers and 30% for the publishers. And for readers, the relatively modest prices of e-books can be irresistible. "Could you please tell us the price difference between print books and e-books?" "Nowadays in Taiwan, e-books generally cost 40% to 60% less than print books." This, of course, doesn't necessarily mean the end of print books, but for the majority of the public, reading might never be the same again.