The sentence, from chapter 7 of the Tobira textbook, is 日本の[漫画]{まんが}は[欧米人]{おうべいじん}の本の読み方さえ変えようとしている, which I think from context should mean something like "Japanese manga even changed the way that Americans & Europeans read books," except that ようとしている is in the present tense.
The rest of the paragraph goes on to explain, in the past tense, that the manga fans in Europe and the US wanted the manga books to be published from right to left like the books in Japan, and so it ended up being like that. The "changing how Westerners read books" is clearly a thing that already happened.
I am used to that grammar construction meaning either "about to do something" or "try to do something," neither of which work in this context. I'm completely mystified. What are the nuances I'm missing?
Note: my question had to do mostly with the reason it is in the ongoing present tense, not the actual meaning of ようとしている in the general case.