aggressively at €0.99 or €2.99, occupy a significant numberof top positions.By contrast, traditional publishers especially in Germanyor France, have made it their preferred policy to accountonly for book titles published in the established houses,and priced at a levels as close to print books as possible.Case study GermanyIn Germany, for example, the average retail price of a printedbook is around €12 (2013: €12.40), while the averageprice for an ebook is €7,58 (2013, GfK). But around 70 percentof revenues from printed books result from sales ofhard cover editions, with the largest portion coming fromnewly released titles, and with bestsellers having a decisiveimpact. (Source: Boersenverein).The top 10 fiction bestsellers on the authoritative Spiegelbestseller list in February 2014 came at an average retailprice of €19.90, while the most popular trade paperbackssold at roughly half this price (€9.89).These price levels for each format are both consistent overtime, and have not changed tremendously in recent years.The opposite is true however, when it comes to ebooks.The top 10 bestselling Kindle ebooks at Amazon.de at thesame week (9/2014) were priced at €2.68 on average,forming an altogethjer different corridor of books sellingin their majority at unter €5.By contrast, a top 10 ebook bestseller list published byBörsenverein in November 2013 (and discontinued later)had an average ebook pricee of €13.54. Perhaps even moreinterestingly, the listed titles came with wildly different individualprices, ranging from €6.99 (which is below theaverage print paperpack) to 19.99 (which equals the averageprint hardcover. A similar list by ebook.de of Libri, theleading German wholsaler’s own retail arm, had a middleof €7.79, with again a wide price range from €2.99 to€16.99.A comparison of ebook and print pricing of top10 bestselling titleson various German charts. Germany February 2014 (and November2013, for ebook chart from Börsenverein).We assume that over time, and in view of Amazon’s significantmarket share in Germany for both print and digitalbooks, consumers will question the validity of establishedprice levels, which will probably result in severe a pressureon traditional price policies of publishers for both print anddigital formats.Ironically, the consensus among publishers to informallyapply fixed prices to ebooks has little effect when the offerof ebooks now comes not anymore from just the well establishedpublishing houses. Instead, new digital only ventures,ebook divisions specializing on certain genres, andmost importantly, selfpublished titles, and books availableonly through Amazon largely dilute and diversify whatreaders can buy. On the contrary, the practice of many ofthe traditional publishing houses who try their best tokeep ebook prices at levels close to even hardcover printeditions might backfire over time, as their approach mightultimately fail with consumers.Case study: Comparing ebook prices and discountsacross European marketsA strong competitive pressure builds, as Amazon in particularis seamlessly including low-priced ebooks with titlesfrom publishers whose outspoken policy it is in marketssuch as Germany to keep prices for ebooks close tothe level of printed editions. It is foreseeable, that overtime, even in markets where book prices are fixed by law,as is the case in Germany and in France, publishers will seetheir pricing strategies seriously challenged by Amazon’spolicy.103 The Global eBook Report
Average top 10 ebook prices in selected EU markets (September 2013, ave. price in €)Country Top 10 Amazon Kindle Top10 leadingdomestic platformGermany 7.14 13.99France 5.08 9.79Spain 6.88 6.74Italy 6.99 6.19UK 3.15 (£ 2.65) not collectedFor the purpose of a comparison across markets, we choseseveral approaches. At first, we wanted to see, if, and howmuch, a gap existed between average prices for top sellingebooks at Amazon, and on the respective domestic retailplatforms in selected countries.In a second attempt, we pickted for each of these markets,at one point the top 10 bestselling print titles, and lookedup the retail price for their ebook editions, repeating theexercise regularly over more than two years.€14, as seen in France, Germany and Sweden, and the otherconverging at around €10 (yet with Great Britain showingsome recent sepcifics which we need to critically checkagain, after a few more months, to see if the recent dropcontinues over time, forming yet another, even lower level).Expectedly, these different price levels and corridors reflectsignificant differences in how much the ebook editionof a title is discounted against print.Top 10 print fiction bestsellers in selected countries, with theirebook editions(2011 to January 2014, ave. price in €).What we see are two distinctly different corridors in theprice of ebook editions of frontlist fiction titles: One aboveTop 10 print fiction bestsellers in selected countries, and the averagediscount for ebook editions against print (in %).It becomes remarkably obvious that publishers’ decisionson how much they discount an ebook against the printThe Global eBook Report 104
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ContentsAbout the Global eBook Repo
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• The Bookseller (United Kingdom)
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Executive SummaryThis report provid
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The ambitions, and thelimitations o
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ending requests by email and face t
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Chris Kenneally, Copyright Clearanc
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A Global Industry, and Many Local P
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transformation longer than other se
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The Bookish Elites: Market size & n
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Book markets evolution in selected
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Market share of ebooks (in various
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English Language eBookMarketsThe fo
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United States (2010-2011 Book Marke
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Ebooks accounted in 2013 for one in
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stores, and 700 Argo stores, as wel
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Metadata is the key to online sales
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EuropeGermanyUpdate spring 2014Afte
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GermanyKey Indicators Values Source
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Ebooks evolve in a complex and chal
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actively seeking Google’s coopera
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SpainKey Indicators Values Sources,
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early days there. Yet according to
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According to the Danish book trade
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and Amazon is as well. Barnes & Nob
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PolandKey Indicators Values Sources
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The emerging role of ebooks in Cent
- Page 56 and 57: Nemokamospdfknygos (Aida Dubkeviči
- Page 58 and 59: play a role for starting to change
- Page 60 and 61: 57 The Global eBook Report
- Page 62 and 63: RussiaKey Indicators Values Sources
- Page 64 and 65: OzonOzon is a general retailer sell
- Page 66 and 67: tribute the PDFs they had received
- Page 68 and 69: a company wants—and it should—t
- Page 70 and 71: also has the fourth largest install
- Page 72 and 73: ChinaKey Indicators Values Sources,
- Page 74 and 75: lion in 2008 to ¥60 million in 201
- Page 76 and 77: The National Book Trust (NBT), the
- Page 78 and 79: tion. Of these, 73% youth are liter
- Page 80 and 81: Wiley were among the first. Much of
- Page 82 and 83: launched with 47 titles, available
- Page 84 and 85: Ebook publishers are faced with the
- Page 86 and 87: Arabia, the situation improves dram
- Page 88 and 89: Contributed articleCopyright Cleara
- Page 90 and 91: Forces Shaping the eBook MarketsA c
- Page 92 and 93: In the current battle over emerging
- Page 94 and 95: Paradoxically, the global expansion
- Page 96 and 97: The Expansion of GlobalPlatformsPub
- Page 98 and 99: Interestingly, all Amazon figures b
- Page 100 and 101: $1.8 billion”, equalling some 8%
- Page 102 and 103: leader in the digital industry thro
- Page 104 and 105: By January 2013, Kobo claimed to ow
- Page 108 and 109: edition of the same titles is still
- Page 110 and 111: Self-publishingUpdate spring 2014In
- Page 112 and 113: continental Europe have launched th
- Page 114 and 115: Goodreads, launched by Otis Chandle
- Page 116 and 117: Regulatory frameworksThe litigation
- Page 118 and 119: Receptiveness for foreign(English)
- Page 120 and 121: suffers not in spite of but because
- Page 122 and 123: entific and professional publishing
- Page 124 and 125: utors. Börsenverein’s own Librek
- Page 126 and 127: sources and blogs promoting and poi
- Page 128 and 129: In France, the independent literary
- Page 130 and 131: eBook Yellow PagesThe eBook Yellow
- Page 132 and 133: dotbooksEdiciones B, founded in Bar
- Page 134 and 135: Neowood Éditions is a French digit
- Page 136 and 137: those who would like to create thei
- Page 138 and 139: about 60,000 ebooks. In November 20
- Page 140 and 141: making the ebook creation and publi
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- Page 144 and 145: MyiLibrary is an econtent aggregati
- Page 146 and 147: that publishes RNTS branded digital
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- Page 150 and 151: Professional organizationsProfessio
- Page 152 and 153: Advertising in the eBookYellow Page
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IndexSymbols100knygu, 13224Symbols,
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INscribe, 139Integral, 139iStoryTim