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The biggest e-bestseller in the first half of 2013 were theFifty Shades of Grey trilogy and three books by Hungarianauthors.The VAT on ebooks is 27%, one of the highest across Europe,while the VAT on printed books is only 5%. The preferredprotection is watermarking, and the preferred formatsEPUB and Mobi.Source: Geza Morcsanyi, Magvető, Budapest, Hungary,and Péter Inkei, Budapest Observatory.RomaniaThe Romanian book market saw a major downturn around2008–2009, and since then, it has remained flat. Kiosk (orpartwork) editions have also decreased in volume recently.An ebook segment only started to emerge in 2012, and for2013, it is estimated that the market share will be above1%. Approximately 65% of newly published fiction booksare converted to eformat and put on sale as ebooks. Accordingto industry estimates, only 10 to 12 trade publishinghouses have started to release ebooks, including Polirom,Humanitas, and Litera. Currently, some 1,500 to1,800 titles are available in digital format, mostly in EPUB.The leading ebook distributor is Elefant.Besides local authors, Tracy Chevalier and Haruki Murakamiwere e-bestsellers in the first half of 2013. As in most ofthe other CEE countries, the VAT on ebooks is much higherthan the VAT on printed books (24% vs. 9%).No Kindle editions are produced, as Romanian is currentlynot among the officially supported languages.Source: Siviu Lupescu, Polirom, Iasi, Romania.SerbiaThe Serbian book market has an estimated retail value of€50 to €70 million (excluding textbooks).No local distribution platform for ebooks exists so far, asthe cost of development would exceed the possible income.For the Apple platform, some local subcontractorsoperate and normally add a markup of 30 percent on theretail price of a work, in addition to Apple’s 40 percent fee,leaving a mere 30 percent for the originators of the work.Amazon’s direct publishing services are not available inSerbia, and the Serbian alphabet (either in Cyrillic or inLatin) is not actively supported for the generation ofebooks.Piracy is endemic, with illegal downloads of movies, music,and now ebooks being routine for many consumers. As aresult, content owners (namely publishers but also authorsand translators) are very reluctant to expose their contentto piracy in digital formats.Source: Aleksandar Drakulic, Knjizara, Belgrade.Conclusions on Central and Eastern EuropeIn this current, early stage, small markets overall seem tolag behind in their domestic production of ebooks, as theemerging new niche is challenged by a number of factors:required investments are difficult to earn back in small orat best flat local markets with small language communities.Some local languages have the additional disadvantageof so far not being supported by global ebook platformsfor producing ebooks—though in some cases, popularWeb browsers are available in local languages, whichopens a cultural and practical gap between the usage ofthe local language against the globalization of English. Thestrongest—and often best educated and fairly affluent—readers are also those in a position to read in English andmake direct purchases, particularly from the shops offeredby Amazon and Apple, as well as Kobo and Google, allowingthose global players to expand their market sharewithout the cost of localizing their offerings, hence competingwith the usually small locally emerging platforms.In this context, a set of problems was exposed, the mostobvious of them being the higher VAT on e-books andhigher royalties on translations that more or less equalizethe production costs of ebooks and printed books.Piracy is often not so much direct competition for a commerciallegal offer but instead compensates for a legal titlelist that is nonexistent or still highly limited in scope, whilelocal users nevertheless become accustomed to findingbooks in digital formats on the Internet, again putting thelocal legal offerings at a disadvantage against the muchbroader and better-marketed as well as better-protectedofferings in the English language.The potential of digital technology to cater to niches andto audiences spread geographically at low cost and greatconvenience has so far not even started to become a competitiveadvantage for small markets and small local actors.Google’s library-scanning initiative, publicized and madeaccessible via the Hathi Trust, is currently the by far largestcollection of digitized books from the many languages inthe region, and it will be interesting to observe if, after the2012 settlement with US publishers, that ressource willThe Global eBook Report 54