OzonOzon is a general retailer selling not only books and othermedia products but also house and garden appliances,beauty, gifts, shoes, antiques, jewelry, and fashion products.It is currently the second-largest online retailer inRussia (after Utkonos.ru, a platform specializing in food).Opened in 1998 as a “scalable business” (company statement),Ozon is a megastore market leader in B2C ecommercein Russia, with revenues of US $137 million in 2010,up 34 percent from 2009, 5.6 million registered users (asof March 2011) and 600,000 visitors daily.Ozon has a catalog of about 600,000 printed book titles,of which 240,000 are in Russian, and about 10,000 ebooktitles, equaling some 10 percent of value of hardcover sales(Elizabeth van Lehr, “A Russian Riddle,” London Fair Dealer,April 27, 2011). Ozon promotes its own ereading device,the Ozon Galaxy (not to be confused with the SamsungGalaxy).In September 2011, Ozon raised US $100 million in funding,the largest such investment ever for an Internet companyin Russia, according to the company (The Guardian,September 8, 2011).KnigaFundKnigaFund (BookFund) was launched by Digital DistributionCenter Ltd. in September 2008 as a division of Prof-Media, one of Russia’s largest media and entertainmentcompanies, to “develop and realize projects in legal digitalcontent distribution. DDC Ltd. is the Russian supplier ofspecific educational information aimed to perfect, harmonize,and simplify the education process in graduate-leveleducational institutions (colleges and universities)” (companystatement).KnigaFund offers a full online library of copyrighted booksin various digital formats with approval from the copyrightholders. Its mission is to “assist in modernisation of theresearch process in graduate-level educational institutions(colleges and universities) by providing effective accessto information through modern Internet technologies.”Currently, 50,000 titles are listed, with 1,500 new titlesadded per month, including textbooks, educational materials,and scientific literature. Books are digitized in waysthat reproduce exact page layouts in order to allow academicquotes and bibliographies. KnigaFund cooperateswith major academic institutions in the Russian Federation,including Piter Publishing House, АSТ, Drofa, INFRA-M, Europe, Economika, East-West, Logos, and Tri Quadrata,as well as several international publishers, notably JohnWiley & Sons. The digitized titles allow margin notes andfootnotes, as well as the creation of personal bookshelves,comments, and interactive features within the user’s personalworkspace. The catalog of titles is organized by topics,similar to a physical library.BookMateBookMate is a book club in which registered users pay 99rubles a month to read from a current selection of 40,000titles, either on a computer or mobile devices (with theAndroid, Apple iOS, and Symbian operating systems supported).BookMate cooperates with authors and publishers,allowing them to upload their own titles on a revenuesharingbasis. Books, available in the Russian FB2 and EPUBformats, are copy protected and cannot be downloaded.About 5,000 titles of classic—that is, out of copyright—literature can be accessed and read free of charge andwithout registration.Only 20 percent of Bookmate’s readers are in metropolitanMoscow (company website and Hannah Johnson and EdwadNawotka, “Russian Publishing Is No ‘Depressing’ Siberia;E-book Innovation from Bookmate.ru,” PublishingPerspective, April 12, 2011).iMobilco is another, competing online bookclub, whoseoffer also includes movies to rent.Librusek, launched in 2007, is an online library, for whichreaders can pruchase a monthly subscription.BrazilBy Carlo Carrenho (PublishNews) Update spring 20142013 must be seen as the first year with a true marketevolving for ebooks in Brazil. Amazon, Apple, Kobo andGoogle where all fully operating during the whole year,after setting up their ebookstores in 2012, together withthe Brazilian group Saraiva, which had prepared for theirrole in the digital transition since 2010.Based on numbers provided by various players on the digitalBrazilian market, a rough estimate of the growth curvesince January 2012 is conceivable, as represented in agraph.61 The Global eBook Report
Ebook sales in units in Brazil, January 2012 to December 2013 (Varioussources, estimate by Carlo Carrenho)On similar grounds, it can be estimated that in Brazil in2013, 2.5 million copies of ebooks have been sold, as comparedto 101 copies of print books, according to the annualsurvey conducted by the Brazilian Book Chamber in 2011,and 109 million in 2012 (numbers for 2013 haven’t beendisclosed yet). Since the digital market in Brazil consistsprimarily of trade titles – even STM have a presence in onlymodest numbers –, the overall market share of ebooks inBrazil can be estimated at 2.5% of the trade market.The Brazilian catalogue of available ebook titles is stillgrowing, yet not on a fast pace, which arguably forms themost important challenge in the Brazilian digital landscape.Although the overall catalogue includes around30,000 titles, the number of commercial ebooks is still alittle short of 20,000, with the difference consisting of free,public domain and selfpublished titles.Market share of ebook retailersWhile no concrete numbers on market share have beenreleased, we estimate that Amazon owns 30% of the Brazilianebook market, followed by Apple with 30%, Saraiva(15%), Google (15%), Kobo (5%) and others (5%). Other: 5%The real news here is that Amazon is now tied with Applein the number one position.Amazon moves, the Kindle arrivesAmazon is moving firmly towards a more active presencein Latin America’s largest book market. In February 2014,it started to ship Kindle devices using a logistics solutionof their own. Even though it is still outsourced to localcompanies, this was a huge step considering that in 2013all Kindles were sold through other e-commerce or brick& mortar retailers in Brazil. Concerning the beginning ofprinted book operations, Amazon has already signed distributioncontracts with most large publishers, and themarket expects their Brazilian store to start selling printbooks before the initial kick of the Football World Cup inJune 2014, probably around April or May. Once it startsshipping print books, it is natural to expect a traffic growthin the Brazilian Kindle store and, therefore, a potential gainof market share by Jeff Bezos’s company.The Seattle giant has also hit the news in March 2014, aftersending a press release with the following information:“Amazon today announced that the Brazilian Ministry ofEducation (MEC), via its National Fund for Educational Development(FNDE), has been working with Amazon to convertand wirelessly distribute more than 200 textbooks tohundreds of thousands of public high school teachers viaWhispercast. (…) To date, more than 40m eTextbooks havebeen delivered. FNDE is using Whispercast’s technology tosecurely manage its catalog of eTextbooks, open and organizethe teachers’ accounts into coherent groups anddistribute the digitized textbooks seamlessly and rapidly(…).” Following this press release, some news media ranthe story as if Amazon had just nailed down an importantdeal with the Brazilian government, but this was not accurateat all.Amazonhad not signed a deal with the government, buthad taken part in a public bidding process (Edital de Convocação03/2012) that the Ministry of Education hadlaunched in October 2012 in search of companies to “structureand operate a virtual service to make digital booksand other digital educational content available to teachers,students and other users of the Brazilian public schoolnetwork”. The platforms should be provided free of charge.According to the official document, “partnerships can beestablished with different institutions simultaneously ornot”, so, in practical terms, this means that there is no guaranteedexclusivity and the government might choose tonever use an approved platform. Also, the so called “approval”is valid only until 2015, and may be extended ornot. Therefore, Amazon only got the Kindle App platformapproved to be used by the government to distribute educationalcontent to teachers and students, and that is all.This is the closest Amazon got to a “contract deal” with thegovernment. And Brazilian Saraiva has also approved itsplatform in the same bidding process, so Amazon is notthe only player in the process.Of course, the Amazon approval has a value by itself, andhas lead to something bigger already. The Brazilian governmenthas decided to use the Kindle platform to dis-The Global eBook Report 62
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ContentsAbout the Global eBook Repo
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• The Bookseller (United Kingdom)
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Executive SummaryThis report provid
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The ambitions, and thelimitations o
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ending requests by email and face t
- Page 13 and 14: Chris Kenneally, Copyright Clearanc
- Page 15: A Global Industry, and Many Local P
- Page 18 and 19: transformation longer than other se
- Page 20 and 21: The Bookish Elites: Market size & n
- Page 22 and 23: Book markets evolution in selected
- Page 24 and 25: Market share of ebooks (in various
- Page 26 and 27: English Language eBookMarketsThe fo
- Page 28 and 29: United States (2010-2011 Book Marke
- Page 30 and 31: Ebooks accounted in 2013 for one in
- Page 32 and 33: stores, and 700 Argo stores, as wel
- Page 34 and 35: Metadata is the key to online sales
- Page 36 and 37: EuropeGermanyUpdate spring 2014Afte
- Page 38 and 39: GermanyKey Indicators Values Source
- Page 40 and 41: Ebooks evolve in a complex and chal
- Page 42 and 43: actively seeking Google’s coopera
- Page 44 and 45: SpainKey Indicators Values Sources,
- Page 46 and 47: early days there. Yet according to
- Page 48 and 49: According to the Danish book trade
- Page 50 and 51: and Amazon is as well. Barnes & Nob
- Page 52 and 53: PolandKey Indicators Values Sources
- Page 54 and 55: The emerging role of ebooks in Cent
- Page 56 and 57: Nemokamospdfknygos (Aida Dubkeviči
- Page 58 and 59: play a role for starting to change
- Page 60 and 61: 57 The Global eBook Report
- Page 62 and 63: RussiaKey Indicators Values Sources
- Page 66 and 67: tribute the PDFs they had received
- Page 68 and 69: a company wants—and it should—t
- Page 70 and 71: also has the fourth largest install
- Page 72 and 73: ChinaKey Indicators Values Sources,
- Page 74 and 75: lion in 2008 to ¥60 million in 201
- Page 76 and 77: The National Book Trust (NBT), the
- Page 78 and 79: tion. Of these, 73% youth are liter
- Page 80 and 81: Wiley were among the first. Much of
- Page 82 and 83: launched with 47 titles, available
- Page 84 and 85: Ebook publishers are faced with the
- Page 86 and 87: Arabia, the situation improves dram
- Page 88 and 89: Contributed articleCopyright Cleara
- Page 90 and 91: Forces Shaping the eBook MarketsA c
- Page 92 and 93: In the current battle over emerging
- Page 94 and 95: Paradoxically, the global expansion
- Page 96 and 97: The Expansion of GlobalPlatformsPub
- Page 98 and 99: Interestingly, all Amazon figures b
- Page 100 and 101: $1.8 billion”, equalling some 8%
- Page 102 and 103: leader in the digital industry thro
- Page 104 and 105: By January 2013, Kobo claimed to ow
- Page 106 and 107: aggressively at €0.99 or €2.99,
- Page 108 and 109: edition of the same titles is still
- Page 110 and 111: Self-publishingUpdate spring 2014In
- Page 112 and 113: continental Europe have launched th
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Goodreads, launched by Otis Chandle
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Regulatory frameworksThe litigation
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Receptiveness for foreign(English)
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suffers not in spite of but because
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entific and professional publishing
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utors. Börsenverein’s own Librek
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sources and blogs promoting and poi
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In France, the independent literary
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eBook Yellow PagesThe eBook Yellow
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dotbooksEdiciones B, founded in Bar
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Neowood Éditions is a French digit
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those who would like to create thei
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about 60,000 ebooks. In November 20
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making the ebook creation and publi
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extended ranges of books and audio
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MyiLibrary is an econtent aggregati
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that publishes RNTS branded digital
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lishers and over 30 sales channels,
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Professional organizationsProfessio
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Advertising in the eBookYellow Page
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The acceleratedtransformation of th
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IndexSymbols100knygu, 13224Symbols,
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INscribe, 139Integral, 139iStoryTim