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publishers’ agreement with Apple a “conspiracy”. The ultimateresult of this lawsuit, say the critics —and not all ofthem are publishers— will be a “government-assisted monopoly”(Jenn Webb in a TOC blog post), as it would helpAmazon to single-handedly dominate an industry, allowingit ultimately to define retail prices of ebooks instead ofpublishers and thus further expand its massive marketshare. The European Commission has a similar investigationunderway.The complex legal argument, though, is not the most relevantaspect for our perspective here. It is the political dimensioninstead, and the fact that Amazon —and a fewother companies, mostly from the US, that are rolling outtheir ebook services on a truly global scale— are of an entirelydifferent scale and scope from what used to reignover publishing in the old days.Pearson, the leader in global book publishing, had annualrevenues of $9.2 billion in 2012. NewsCorp, one of the leadingglobal media companies and the parent of HarperCollins,recorded a turnover of $34 billion in 2012. This hasNewsCorp playing in the same ballpark as Amazon (with$61 billion in 2012). By comparison, Apple has recordedrevenues of $156 billion (Sept. 2012) and an operating incomeof over $55 billion. Google had revenues of $50 billionand an operating profit of over $13 billion.The discrepancies in size fueled the biggest merger in thehistory of book publishing, when Random House and Penguin(a division of Pearson) decided to combine their activitiesin a new company, Penguin Random House, whichbecame effective July 1, 2013. Together, they will generaterevenues of ca. $3.9 billion from an output of ca. 15,000new titles annually (see The Bookseller, 1 July 2013). However,even the now largest trade publisher is clearly centeredon books.In the current battle over emerging ebook and digital publishingmarkets, we must understand a variety of dynamicsbetween players of not entirely different scales but alsocontrasting agendas. For Penguin Random House and forHachette Livres (with revenues from publishing at $2.8 billion),turning front- and backlist titles into ebooks and expandingtheir access to international markets on a globalscale is an imminent priority.For companies such as Apple or Google, the digital transitionand global outlook in book publishing will be onlypart of a much broader picture, as they distribute all kindsof digital media content, not just books.Even though revenue from books is a central element atAmazon, retailing books is one among several of a broadeningset of services, and this is similarly true for scores ofdomestic ventures in emerging markets where those globalplayers are currently expanding with their book andpublishing related offers. Obviously, this opens muchroom for friction and competition.Only a few book markets are large enough -notably theUnited States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, orthe Spanish language market, as well as China- to formcenters of gravity in their own right for distinct domesticdevelopments. These markets reflect their own nationalcultural traditions and identities, resulting in strong nationalframing conditions. Such markets foster the emergenceand, more importantly, sustenance of strong domesticplayers for both publishing and retail and for servicesand innovation.Examples include the emphasis on the national book culturein Germany or France, with an almost unanimous consensusin the professional book communities there on thevalue of the book and reading and, as a result, calls for priceregulation as well as strong defense of their book culturesagainst what is defined as external interference.Google —via its digitization efforts with libraries and thescanning of copyrighted works— had become an earlycatalyst for such confrontations, getting local stakeholdersout rallying in defense of the American company’s claimto “organize the knowledge of the world,” at least in Germanyand France, and in the US, over the past several years.This communal action has resulted in the identification ofthe digitization of books most broadly as an assault onbook culture and on fair compensation for intellectualproperty. After the downfall of the music industry and theimpact of piracy on the music business, lobbying by professionalorganizations of the publishing industry couldfind broad support for its claims.Digital has been broadly identified with illegal or at leastunfair use of the cultural stock, first in Germany and Franceand then over time in many parts of continental Europe.In the context of an ever-broader concern about digitalinformation technologies, surveillance, and the loss of privacy,ebooks hit continental Europe at a moment whendigital or e reading is often considered a threat to citizens’freedom and Europe’s difficult standing in a globalizingworld.In such a context, books are swiftly perceived as a strongsymbol of resistance, rooted in a genuine European tradi-6 The Global eBook Report