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The emerging role of ebooks in Centraland Eastern EuropeToday, ebooks have everything they need to turn anotherpage in this context. While printed books must overcomeslow delivery and high shipping costs, ebooks can bedownloaded instantly and at even lower prices than printedbooks in English. Readers of English are therefore obviouslyamong the earliest adopters of ebooks and e-reading devices. The ultimate consequences, though, mayprove to be truly disruptive. Experimental research conductedat the Florence Publishing Summer School (organizedby university students and teachers from Paris, Oxford,Leipzig, and Ljubljana) has revealed that, in Slovenia inJune 2013, a remarkable 70% of the 100 top-selling titlesin the Slovene IBookstore were in English. By comparison,in Germany, English titles accounted for only 1 percent ofthe top 100 titles, 3 percent in Italy, and 2 percent in France.The domestic production of ebooks in local languages isa different matter altogether. The relatively poor availabledata indicate that, in all CEE countries, the number ofebook titles in local languages is still just a fraction of theoverall output. In 2012, for example, only 400 to 600 ebooktitles were available in Slovenia, Croatia, Latvia, and Lithuaniaeach, and 1,600 titles were available in Estonia. However,in the first half of 2013, significant growth was recordedacross almost all CEE countries: in Croatia, the numberof available ebook titles increased to 1,800, to 1,000inSlovenia and Lithuania, to more than 9,000 in the CzechRepublic, to between 5,000 and 6,000 in Hungary, and to2,000 in Estonia.In 2011, opening localized versions of their ebook storeswas hardly an option for global platforms such as Amazonor even Kobo. In Apple’s iBookstore, CEE books were limitedto just a few. However, since 2011, a surprising numberof local e-bookstores has started to emerge, mostly in theform of startups (e.g. Palmiknihy in the Czech Republic) oras new ventures from established local combined booksellersand publishers (e.g. Zvaizgne in Latvia, Pegasas inLithuania, and Mladinska knjiga in Slovenia).In addition, some booksellers are expected to launch theirown ebook platforms (such as Rahva Raamat in Estonia),and in some cases, even telephone companies havelaunched such experiments (e.g. VIPnet and Hrvatski Telekomin Croatia). In the Czech and Slovak republics, platformssuch as Martinus and Palmiknihy operate across theborder in both countries, forming the only cross-borderoperations in a highly fragmented region.Judging from publishers’ responses to a questionnaire forthis report, a majority assumes that local platforms arecurrently local market leaders, as Amazon has not yet enteredthe CEE market. This might change by 2014, as Amazonhas announced plans to establish a regional logisticscenter in the Czech Republic, and it must be assumed thatother global players will follow suit quickly.Besides such locally developed e-distribution platformsthat were prevalent in the region, Mladinska knjiga in Sloveniahas developed its own digital bookstore in a partnershipwith the American company Impelsys (full disclosure:the author of this chapter has been in charge of thisproject). Additionally, in Slovenia in September 2013, theebook library distribution platform Biblos (owned by thelocal fiction publisher Studentska zalozba), in cooperationwith Slovene public libraries, has started to test the uniquebusiness model of offering customers the possibility to eitherbuy an ebook or borrow it for free for two weeks, withboth alternatives proposed through the same Web page.It must be stressed that, in CEE, there is no real price warbetween ebook-sellers and print booksellers, as in the majorityof cases, ebook retail prices are set by the publishers.Quite obviously, the common vertical integration betweenpublishers, booksellers, and ebook sellers seems tomake a strong case for a rather peaceful cohabitation ofthe analogue and digital side of the business, and the attitudeis shared even by independent ebook sellers.In a majority of CEE countries, most of publishers discountebooks by about 30 percent, with Slovenia being the onlyexception, as publishers have decided to set the prices ofebooks equal to those of paperback editions, the mainreason for this being the fact that, due to the higher VATand higher royalties, the production costs of ebooks moreor less equal those of printed books.In all CEE countries, the preferred format for local ebooktitles is EPUB, and most publishers use hard DRM, but witha growing skepticism as to its value, so watermarking isgaining in popularity.SloveniaIn the tiny Slovene publishing market, which is worth anestimated €80 to €100 million at consumer prices, accordingto the official statistics, more than 6,000 titles are releasedevery year. However, recent research has shownthat, out of these 6,000, only 3,500 to 4,500 titles are publishedfor sale on the marketplace, while the rest are re-51 The Global eBook Report