The Global eBook Report: Current Conditions & Future Projections. Update October 2013 Read Online Free PDF
Author: Rüdiger Wischenbart
ebooks,” serving various formats (PRC, PDF, EPUB, and mp3), and to expand their offer by partnering with selected foreign publishers, notably German educational and language teaching Klett Group and the Polish branch of Canadian romance publisher Harlequin. The venture is the offspring of Apetonic, a local consultancy specializing in IT and telecommunications and financed through the Dracula Investment Fund, plus private investors from Poland and France.
Libranova is a promotional platform for ebooks and digital reading.
Wolne Lektury is a project launched by the Modern Poland Foundation in 2007, promoting and displaying school reading as identified by the Polish Ministry of National Education, with a library of predominantly Polish classical literary books in the public domain.
Central and Eastern Europe: eBooks in English and Local Languages
Overview by Miha Kovac
While most of the international debate focuses on ebook developments in only the largest markets, an analysis of smaller markets allows an exploration of whether or not the digital publishing and distribution of books can provide new opportunities for small and highly diverse book cultures, with audiences that are often particularly fragmented between a domestic population and relevant groups that have migrated overseas. Also, it allows us to highlight how the emergence of ebooks reinvigorate and accelerate other patterns of change, such as the increasing tendency of the strongest readers to read in two languages, their mother tongue and English. Finally, relatively small local publishers and retailers in those markets usually find themselves confronted at once by totally new competitors as consumers privately take advantage of the possibilities for privately importing books and e-reading devices from global platforms such as Amazon or Apple , which results in further strain for local actors in an already strained economic environment.
The case study of this chapter aims at analyzing this complex evolution, as Central Europe offers a good example through its unique set of small countries that stretches from the Baltic to the Adriatic sea, each with less than five million inhabitants and speakers of languages more or less limited to their national states ( Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia , and Serbia ). Regardless of their shared history in the second half of the twentieth century, significant economic, political, and cultural differences are also an inherent part of their contemporary identities, as much as the fact that today’s economic recession hits them in very different ways.
The book markets in Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania , commonly described as the Baltic region, were most severely struck by the financial crisis after 2008 and started to show new growth only in 2012. The economic evolution of Slovenia , meanwhile, is different, as it had its worst year in 2012, resulting in a decline of the book market by 10 percent — while it was up by 5 to 10 percent in Latvia and Estonia .
The accelerating impact of English reading
Regardless of their differences, these book markets share at least three similar characteristics:
With the only exception of Slovenia, in most Central and East European (CEE) countries, many of the old, traditional publishing houses of the Communist era disappeared with the state-centered economy after 1989, while new ones were created by either local entrepreneurs or by international actors, which withdrew from these markets after 2000.
In most CEE countries (with the notable exception of Estonia), major bookshops and publishers are often owned by the same mother companies (so bookstores are commonly owned by publishers or the other way around).
As English as a second language gains ground massively across the CEE region, all of these markets turn more and more into bilingual reading markets, witnessing a steady growth of imported books in the English language, though it
Libranova is a promotional platform for ebooks and digital reading.
Wolne Lektury is a project launched by the Modern Poland Foundation in 2007, promoting and displaying school reading as identified by the Polish Ministry of National Education, with a library of predominantly Polish classical literary books in the public domain.
Central and Eastern Europe: eBooks in English and Local Languages
Overview by Miha Kovac
While most of the international debate focuses on ebook developments in only the largest markets, an analysis of smaller markets allows an exploration of whether or not the digital publishing and distribution of books can provide new opportunities for small and highly diverse book cultures, with audiences that are often particularly fragmented between a domestic population and relevant groups that have migrated overseas. Also, it allows us to highlight how the emergence of ebooks reinvigorate and accelerate other patterns of change, such as the increasing tendency of the strongest readers to read in two languages, their mother tongue and English. Finally, relatively small local publishers and retailers in those markets usually find themselves confronted at once by totally new competitors as consumers privately take advantage of the possibilities for privately importing books and e-reading devices from global platforms such as Amazon or Apple , which results in further strain for local actors in an already strained economic environment.
The case study of this chapter aims at analyzing this complex evolution, as Central Europe offers a good example through its unique set of small countries that stretches from the Baltic to the Adriatic sea, each with less than five million inhabitants and speakers of languages more or less limited to their national states ( Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia , and Serbia ). Regardless of their shared history in the second half of the twentieth century, significant economic, political, and cultural differences are also an inherent part of their contemporary identities, as much as the fact that today’s economic recession hits them in very different ways.
The book markets in Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania , commonly described as the Baltic region, were most severely struck by the financial crisis after 2008 and started to show new growth only in 2012. The economic evolution of Slovenia , meanwhile, is different, as it had its worst year in 2012, resulting in a decline of the book market by 10 percent — while it was up by 5 to 10 percent in Latvia and Estonia .
The accelerating impact of English reading
Regardless of their differences, these book markets share at least three similar characteristics:
With the only exception of Slovenia, in most Central and East European (CEE) countries, many of the old, traditional publishing houses of the Communist era disappeared with the state-centered economy after 1989, while new ones were created by either local entrepreneurs or by international actors, which withdrew from these markets after 2000.
In most CEE countries (with the notable exception of Estonia), major bookshops and publishers are often owned by the same mother companies (so bookstores are commonly owned by publishers or the other way around).
As English as a second language gains ground massively across the CEE region, all of these markets turn more and more into bilingual reading markets, witnessing a steady growth of imported books in the English language, though it
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