The Global eBook Report: Current Conditions & Future Projections. Update October 2013

The Global eBook Report: Current Conditions & Future Projections. Update October 2013 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: The Global eBook Report: Current Conditions & Future Projections. Update October 2013 Read Online Free PDF
Author: Rüdiger Wischenbart
is difficult to quantify this development, as it is largely driven by individual imports of books and, more recently, of digital reading devices. It must be assumed that, to a high degree, these private imports come through the distribution platforms of Amazon and, to a lesser degree, Apple’s iTunes and iBookstore . However, no data have been made public about those trends.
    The only empirical reference available are British export statistics, which hint at, for instance, a share of 10 to 15 percent of English books in Slovenia, while in Latvia , Lithuania , and Croatia , English books supposedly account for around 6 percent of the local market. In all other CEE countries, English-language imports represented 3 to 5 percent of the market in 2011. This difference probably echoes the fact that, in Slovenia , even in the time of Yugoslavia , before 1992, English was the first foreign language usually taught in schools, as opposed to Russian in the other countries of the region.
    According to data from the British Publishers’ Association (PA), in 2012, printed book imports from the U.K. remained stable in Slovenia , Slovakia , and Hungary and were slowly growing in Romania , the Czech Republic , and Latvia , while Lithuania and Estonia saw a significant 20% growth, as opposed to considerable drops in Croatia (as importers expected the abolition of custom charges with Croatia’s entrance into the European Union by January 2013). In Serbia , a severe general recession has caused a cut in English book imports.
    Interestingly, most CEE publishers that agreed to complete a questionnaire for this report have not considered the import of English books as significant or endangering their own sales of translated international bestsellers, with the notable exceptions of Lithuania and Slovenia, where we estimate that notably strong young readers read more than 50 percent in English. Those who emphasize the impact of English reading habits refer to the lower prices of imported books and the broader choice of available titles through both local bookstores and through Amazon.
    The emerging role of ebooks in Central and Eastern Europe
    Today, ebooks have everything they need to turn another page in this context. While printed books must overcome slow delivery and high shipping costs, ebooks can be downloaded instantly and at even lower prices than printed books in English. Readers of English are therefore obviously among the earliest adopters of ebooks and e-reading devices. The ultimate consequences, though, may prove to be truly disruptive. Experimental research conducted at the Florence Publishing Summer School (organized by university students and teachers from Paris, Oxford, Leipzig, and Ljubljana) has revealed that, in Slovenia in June 2013, a remarkable 70% of the 100 top-selling titles in the Slovene IBookstore were in English. By comparison, in Germany , English titles accounted for only 1 percent of the top 100 titles, 3 percent in Italy, and 2 percent in France .
    The domestic production of ebooks in local languages is a different matter altogether. The relatively poor available data indicate that, in all CEE countries, the number of ebook titles in local languages is still just a fraction of the overall output. In 2012, for example, only 400 to 600 ebook titles were available in Slovenia , Croatia , Latvia , and Lithuania each, and 1,600 titles were available in Estonia . However, in the first half of 2013, significant growth was recorded across almost all CEE countries: in Croatia , the number of available ebook titles increased to 1,800, to 1,000in Slovenia and Lithuania, to more than 9,000 in the Czech Republic , to between 5,000 and 6,000 in Hungary, and to 2,000 in Estonia .
    In 2011, opening localized versions of their ebook stores was hardly an option for global platforms such as Amazon or even Kobo . In Apple’s iBookstore, CEE books were limited to just a few. However, since 2011, a surprising number of local
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Probability Space

Nancy Kress

Wild Raspberries

Jane Davitt

Skandal

Lindsay Smith

The Drowning House

Elizabeth Black

The Cupcake Queen

Heather Hepler

Lessons in Love (Flirt)

A. Destiny, Catherine Hapka

The Sonnet Lover

Carol Goodman