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This is much different in the US and in the UK, where, recently,the overall picture has become more complex:While print continues to slide, ebooks account for up to athird in revenues in those segments where they are strongest,notably in adult fiction, and particularly in genre fiction.Analysts from the US Book Industry Study Group,BISG, or from the British Publishers’ Association, and atNielsen Book Scan, provide numbers that all underlinehow any growth, for the moment, is a result of the ongoingdigital change. Comparing and understanding those datahowever requires to pay attention to detail, as ebooks havehit most dynamically a few formats, mainly mass marketpaperback, and genres, and as ebooks are on averagecheaper than any print editions, developments of unitsales are not necessarily equal to gains in revenue.In the United States, where ebooks have taken off dynamicallysince 2010, until plateauing in 2013, the overall revenuesin all of the publishing industry, and print in particular,seem to continue their decline. But the combinedvalue of print and digital has regained ground recently,and also the decline in units has slowed down.In the United Kingdom, in 2012 at least, revenues fromebooks have succeeded in compensating for the loss inprint, turning the overall trade book market to a slightgrowth.UK trade book market, print + ebook, 2009 to 2012 (Source of data:Publishers Association)By comparison, available documentation for the digitaltransformation in continental Europe is far more sketchy,as the overall market share of ebooks is still mostly in thelow single digits, but also it is often hard to grasp whatpublished numbers do represent exactly.Comparing ebook markets and their market shareagainst printIt can be said with certainty that in most countries, ebooksgain market share, yet at significant local variations. Germanyhas started to evolve along a curve that is similar tothe English language markets, yet with a delay of roughlythree years. Spain has also had a fairly impulsive start, inview of the otherwise rather slow digital penetration inprevious years. In France, and perhaps also in Italy, themomentum seems to be fairly limited. In Sweden, anotherwise early adopter of digital trends, a genuine domesticebook market, most interestingly, has hardly takenshape, due to a mix of remarkably high prices for ebooks(similar to France), and the role taken up by libraries whoare lending significantly more ebooks to readers than retailhas sold so far. The Netherlands can be found somewherein the middle, with regard to both market share and pricinglevels.A direct comparison based on data however is a tricky exercise,as no consensus exists as to what a given numberactually represents (if, for instance only ebooks are included,or - as it occurs in France in some statistics - educationalmaterials, or even downloaded audio books or CDRoms aswell), and to what overall market segment and definitionthe numbers refer to.Nevertheless, a broad and rough overview allows to frameand contextualize dynamics across markets, with the USand UK serving as useful benchmarks.The emergence of an ebook market segment howevergoes together with a fundamental shift between saleschannels for (printed) books, with particularly the largechain book stores, as well as super markets and departmentstores losing ground to online. Obviously, this migrationplays to the advantage of notably one global player,Amazon, which is expanding its grip on many marketsas the predominant platform for selling print books, andwith an even larger impact in ebooks. But still, Amazon isnot the number one everywhere, as it has localized webstores with a significant catalogue in the various local languagesin Europe only in the UK, Germany (plus Germanspeaking Austria and Switzerland), France, Spain and Italy.It is not present in Scandinavia or the Netherlands.The expansion of bookselling onlineAs Amazon is not revealing data on its market share, again,estimates based on a wide array of sources are the onlyviable alternative.The Global eBook Report 20