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formats. A preference for direct distribution of ebooks bythe publishers, which could be seen in 2011, has diminished,as most houses have signed service contracts withGerman distributors.Some, like general trade publisher Haymon, started tobuild a modest list in 2011 and added digital editions oftheir printed releases as a routine procedure as of spring2012.But, as on the German side, the ebook market is largelydominated at this point by a few leading publishinggroups. It is forseeable that it will be increasingly difficultfor small Austrian publishing houses to carve out a digitalniche.A first survey of the Austrian ebook market, released onSeptember 29, 2011, by the Austrian publishers’ and booksellers’association HVB showed that just 17 percent ofAustrian publishers have sold ebooks as of 2010. Another21.7 percent are planning to do so in 2011, 30.1 percent atsome point in the future, and 36 percent said that they hadno plans for ebooks. This compares to Germany, where 35percent of publishers already offer ebooks, and another 43percent plan to include ebook editions in the near future(for details, see the Börsenverlag study from spring 2011in the discussion on Germany). The Austrian study revealsseveral more distinctly different developments and expectationsbetween the two countries, as even those publishersin Austria who have launched ebooks do so for just10 to 20 percent of their new releases and prefer distributionfrom their own website (with online retailers and Librekabeing the second and third most popular optionsfor distribution). PDF is the prevalent file format, with 88.5percent of the titles, but half are available as EPUB as well,and 15 percent in the MobiPocket format for Amazon’sKindle. Three out of four books are distributed with somecopyright management included, but only 35 percent ofthe books come with DRM, and 65 percent have digitalwatermarks built in.Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that nodomestic infrastructure for ebook distribution and serviceshas been set up, and publishers—just like local chainand independent bookstores—are instead encouraged touse services from companies based in and run from Germany.At this point, no local branch offices of any of themajor German service providers have been opened.As in other European countries, books are subject to a reducedVAT of 10 percent, and ebooks carry the full 20 percentVAT and are discounted against printed editions by10 percent on average.PolandUpdate spring 2014In 2013, the Polish ebook market was estimated to beworth $37 million in downloads, in a total book marketwoth PLN 2.67 billon (or $805 million, estimate by Price-WaterhouseVCooper, quoted by Jaroslaw Adamowski inPublishing Perspectives, 17 October 2013)In devices, Instytut Ksiązki (the Polish Book Institute) estimatesa market sharw for Amazon’s Kindle of around 50%,which is remarkable in view of Amazon not operating aPolish language webshop. The estimate is consistent witha user survey by Polish ebook distributor Virtualo, witheven 55% of its users owning a Kindle.Matras, the second largest book retail chain, behind Empik,has been put up for sales in early 2014. (buchreport, 2April 2014)Poland: Developments until 2013With revenues of 50 million Zloty in 2012 (ca. €12 million,up from 23 million Zloty in 2011), the Polish ebook sectornot only shows a strong curve of growth. It is also characterizedby significant momentum for all revel drivers. Witha catalogue of ca. 25 to 30,000 ebook titles by mid 2013,and 150,000 ereading devices (of which half are estimatedto be Kindle devices) across a total population of 38 million,ebooks have become a focus for a number of domesticplayers in Poland. (All data provided by The Polish BookInstitute for this report)Remarkably, the initially widely used hard DRM fromAdobe gave place recently to watermarking, or social DRM,with some local firms experimenting with their own solutions.Competition over pricing is considered to be onlymodestly growing, despite overall competition in digitalpublishing is see as rising.In late 2012 and in 2013, a number of domestic platformshave launched sibscription services, and lending models.These experiments have been pioneered by Legimi, witha catalogue of 2500 ebook titles, at 19.90 Zloty per month(€4.80). Also Virtulo, one of the leading Polish distributorsfor ebooks, has started a cooperation with the telecommunicationscompany Orange. Nexto and Bezkartek.pl arespecializing in library services. The largest distributors arealso offering selfpublishing solutions to their customers.The Global eBook Report 48