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ebooks in the Kindle shop, domestic players largely ownthe book market in Holland and in Flemish Belgium in bothprint, online retail and ebooks. The market leader for onlineretail in books and ebooks is Bol.com, since 2012 a serviceof the retail giant Ahold, followed, in ebooks, by Kobo,Apple, Cosmox and ebooks.nl.Ebook distribution is mostly covered by Central Boekhuis.Ebooks are on average discounted 25% against the printedition.The Netherlands: Developments in 20132012 was a tough year for the Dutch book market, as saleshad declined by 6.3% in value and 4.3% in volume. (Informationprovided by the publishers’ associationwww.nuv.nl for this report). Earlier reports saw an evenstronger decline for the first quarter 2012, of –15.4%, hittingtop-selling titles particularly hard and resulting in thechain bookstore Selexyz’ filing for bankruptcy in March(buchreport, March 26 and August 2, 2012). The overalleconomic crisis is seen as a central factor causing theshrinking of the book market. At the same time, the Dutchebook market saw a comparatively positive evolution,even though it does not yet compensate for the loss inprint revenue. For 2011, the trade association NUV recordedebook sales of about €7.6 million from a catalog ofsome 10,000 commercialized titles in the Dutch language.By mid 2012, the title catalog was estimated to have grownto 16,000 titles, with a market share of 3 percent, whichmay grow to as much as 7 percent by the end of the year(estimates by goodereader.com as well as by Jürgen Snoerenat the Futurebook blog).Anticipating further rapid growth in ebooks, the largestDutch ebook publisher, De Arbeiderspers | A.W. BrunaUitgevers, has decided to use watermarks instead of hardDRM effective January 18, 2013, for its current catalog of1,200 digital titles (more here).NetherlandsKey Indicators Values Sources,commentsBook market size (p+e, atconsumer prices)Titles published per year(new and successiveeditions)New titles per 1 millioninhabitantseBook titles (availablefrom publishers)€1,363 million (Trade:557m)2012, PublishersAssociation NUV22,261 2012, PublishersAssociation NUV1,41230,000 Estimate, PublishersAssociation NUVMarket share of ebooks 4.7% Estimate, PublishersAssociationKey market parametersFixed book prices foryear 1 after publication;VAT of 6% for printedbooks versus 21% (fromOctober 2012) forebooksThis recent development must be compared to an initiallyslow start in an ebook market that had been characterizedby readers and consumers that showed little enthusiasmin migrating from print to digital, according to a study byPricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) carried out among consumersand experts from the publishing industry in 2010.In addition, the survey concluded that iPads and othertablets had little use as reading devices. The ebook marketin the Netherlands shows similar characteristics as Germany,with a conservative approach to digital publishing outsideof science, technical, and medical (STM) publishing.In public professional debates, the threats—rather thanthe opportunities—are highlighted, such as the risk of lostprint book sales.However, the situation started to change in early 2011,when the trade magazine Boekblad reported that as manyebooks were sold in the Netherlands in the first half of 2011as were sold in 2010 altogether. For January through June2011, ebook sales totaled €3.4 million, with about 327,000units sold. From there, the growth curve continues to gosteadily up.Momentum is building in the Dutch ebook market fromthe addition of several of the big global players. Apple,Google, and Kobo (partnering with the retailer Libris BLZin the Netherlands) launched localized platforms in 2012,The Global eBook Report 46