(Yicai Global) Sept. 22 -- China's audiobook market will take 10 to 20 percent of paper book sales within the next three years, Li Guoqing, chief executive of E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc. [NYSE:DANG], forecast in an open letter recently.

Li is very optimistic about the nation's audiobook market and unveiled a new division in the letter, Dangdang Audio.

Unlike existing audiobooks in the country, which may just be fragments of a publication, Dangdang's will be based on complete books, edited by publishing houses and run through a strict 'three-review system,' Sina Tech reported on Sept. 21.

Dangdang Audio has up to 30,000 hours of content, covering 2,000 kinds of books and 800,000 users, Li said. The user base is growing rapidly and audiobook readers are willing to pay for content, he added.

In the first half of the year, sales of Dangdang Books' paper book sales made up 35 percent of the Chinese market, Li said in his letter, while e-book sales grew almost 120 percent on the year. He forecast annual e-book sales will reach CNY300 million (USD46 million) by next year, or 2019 at the latest.

Dangdang was set up in 1999. It originally sold books online, but has expanded to sell a range of products, including groceries, and become a world-leading online shopping mall.