United States (2010–2011 Book Market)Key Indicators Values Sources, commentsBook market size (print + electronic [p+e], at consumer prices)New titles per 1 million inhabitants 1116Publishers’ net salerevenues: $27.124 billionDown from $27,124 bn. Source: AAP/BISG; data for 2012. Nielsen reported print sales tohave declined by 9.3% in units, in 2012, against 2011. (Quoted in PublishersLunch, 7January 2013). No comparable data available for ebooks.eBook titles (available from publishers) 1,700,000 Amazon claims in early 2013 to have 1,700,000 ebook titles in their catalog, the vastmajority of which are in English.Market share of ebooks ca. 20% of all trade sales AAP/BISG; data for first half 2013.Key market parametersNo price regulationthe ebook market further, with new challenges with regardto pricing strategies for both print and ebooks anticipated.In late July 2013, for instance, Amazon had decided to discountmajor bestsellers, inlcuding Inferno by Dan Brown,between 50 and 65% in response to a campaign of discountingby Overstock, which subsequently ended theskirmish in early August (see Publishers Weekly, August 12,2013).The other litigation, on Google’s practice of scanning hugenumbers of titles, both in and out of copyright, from libraries,continued to -grind on- in its eigth year, after thecompany settled with publishers as well as the Associationof American Publishers (AAP) (see Silicon Republic, October13, 2012), but it is still in a confrontation with the AmericanAuthor’s Guild (for a ccincise status and assessment, see e.g.Publishers Weekly, July 4, 2013).The US ebook market in 2012The US publishing industry and the US public have embracednew reading formats like no other nation. For readers,ebooks came as a natural and permanent choice inaddition to printed books. Publishers have effectively respondedto consumers’ fast-growing acceptance of newreading devices by constantly redefining and expandingnew concepts for books.“The eBook phenomenon continued in 2012 with eBooksranking, for the first time, as the year’s #1 individual formatfor Adult Fiction” was the headline in the BookStats reporton US publishing in 2011, issued jointly by the Associationof American Publishers (AAP) and the Book Industry StudyGroup (BISG) in July 2012. The $27.2 billion 2011 US bookmarket declined by 2.5& from $27.94 billion in 2010, whileunit sales grew by 3.4%, as did the number of new printtitles, from 328,259 million in 2010 to a projected 347,178million in 2011 (Bowker, June 5, 2012).By the end of 2012, with incomplete data available for theentire 12 months, a somewhat complex picture tookshape. Unit sales of print books had fallen over 9% accordingto Nielsen BookScan, continuing the decline seen a yearearlier, from 2010 to 2011 (Publishers Weekly, January 6,2013). Print sales were largely driven by a few bestsellingtitles, notably E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy with14.4 million print units sold, followed by Suzanne Collins’Hunger Games books with 9.6 million. “Together, these twoauthors accounted for over 4 percent of all print sales forthe year” (data from Nielsen BookScan, quoted in PublishersLunch,January 7, 2013).Despite the decline in print, according to the AmericanAssociation of Publishers (AAP), based on data from September2012, the overall bookmarket reflected “the trendswe’ve seen all year: continued publishing growth overallwith significant increases in children’s/young adult (especiallyeBook format) and slight erosion in religion publishing”(“StatShot” for September 2012, quoted in PublishersLunch,January 25, 2013).Similarly, the US Census Bureau reported that bookstoresales increased by 3.3% in November 2012, largely compensatingfor prior losses (Publishers Weekly, January 15,2013). As for holiday and year-end sales, independentbooksellers widely congratulated themselves on the highlypositive development in sales (Publishers Weekly in asummary for this report). At the same time, Barnes & Noblereported a decline of 8.2% in comparable store sales forthe nine-week holiday period. Digital NOOK sales decreasedby 12.6% compared to 2011, with revenue fromdigital content going up by 13.1% and device unit salesgoing down (Barnes & Noble press release, January 3, 2013).18 The Global eBook Report
Overall, the spectacular growth in ebooks since the fourthquarter of 2010 seemed to have come to a halt by 2012,arguably the result of saturation in the migration of readersfrom print to digital. By September 2012, ebooks “comprisedjust 19 percent of trade sales for the month—theirlowest percentage since December 2011” (AAP StatShotsSeptember 2012, summarized by PublishersLunch, January25, 2013). The “revolution has reached an evolutionarystage,” according to Mike Shatzkin (“The Shatzkin Files”,August 13, 2012).Still, the number of Americans over age 16 reading ebooksrose in 2012, from 16 to 23%, while those reading printedbooks fell from 72% to 67 (PewInternet, “E-book ReadingJumps; Print Book Reading Declines,” press release, December27, 2012).In fiction, the share of ebooks was 34% in units and 31%in value in the first quarter of 2012, according to the AAP(“StatShots”); for the first time, ebooks—which on averagesell at a significantly lower retail price than printed copiesof the same work—at $282.3 million brought in larger revenuesthan hardcover sales at $229.6 million, sparkingcomments such as: “It’s the end of books as you knewthem” (ZDNet, June 18, 2012). The change was mirrored inpurchases and ownership of devices as well as in readinghabits.The shift in devices, with tablets gaining on dedicatedereaders, continued throughout 2012, according to researchby BISG, and the recent increase in tablets was notablyfueled by Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which was the firstchoice of 17% of ebook consumers, as compared to 10%who preferred Apple’s iPad. Barnes & Noble’s NOOK increasedfrom 2% in August 2011 to 7% in August 2012(“Tablets Gain on Dedicated E-readers, Says New BISGStudy,” Bowker press release, November 14, 2012).US title production grew significantly, as it had alreadydone in previous years, driven notably by self-publishing,roughly tripling since 2006 to 235,000 titles for print anddigital combined (“Self-Publishing Sees Triple-DigitGrowth in Just Five Years, Says Bowker,” Bowker press release,October 24, 20012).In 2012, the US publishing industry began to witness thetransition from print to digital as well as the transformationof the very business practices governing the sector. At first,a battle over who controls pricing in ebooks came to aseminal settlement. Only a couple of months later, the announcementof the merger between two of the largesttrade houses, Random House and Penguin, was understoodto be just the first step in a major process of industryconsolidation that, according to most commentators, wasset to redefine the industry (“Random House, PenguinAgree to Merge,” Publishers Weekly, October 29, 2012; fora critical economic analysis of the merger, see Adam Davidson’s“How Dead Is the Book Business,” in the New YorkTimes, November 13, 2012).In April 2012, a filing by the US Department of Justice (DoJ)in New York against five large publishers and Apple definedwhat may become the key battle over the terms andconditions for the ebook economy in the US and beyond.After a standoff between Macmillan and Amazon in early2011, the DoJ alleged that a scheme known as the AgencyPricing Model, in which publishers set retail prices for theirebooks, came from an “ongoing conspiracy and agreement”between defendants, causing “e-book consumersto pay tens of millions of dollars more for e-books thanthey otherwise would have paid” (quoted in PublishersLunch,April 11, 2012).Three of the publishers — HarperCollins, Hachette, andSimon & Schuster — settled with the DoJ by promising fortwo years not to “restrict, limit, or impede an e-book retailer’sability to set, alter, or reduce the retail price of anye-book or to offer price discounts or any other form ofpromotions to encourage consumers to purchase one ormore e-books.” Macmillan and Penguin argued that they“did not act illegally” and therefore declined to settle (JohnSargent, Macmillan, quoted in PublishersLunch, April 11,2012).The settlement between HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon& Schuster, and the DoJ was approved on September 7,2012, more swiftly than had been expected (PublishersWeekly, September 7, 2012). The settlement almost instantlyresulted in publishers reconsidering their pricingpolicies and renegotiating their agreements with many oftheir ebook retailers, including Amazon (see the discussionof HarperCollins in PublishersLunch, September 11, 2012;for a detailed overview of all related lawsuits, see PublishersMarketplace, September 8, 2012; for an initial assessmentof the agreement on pricing policies, see PaidContent,September 11, 2012). By December, a settlement had alsobeen reached between the DoJ and Penguin (Departmentof Justice press release, December 18, 2012).By spring 2012, 21% of adults had read an ebook in theprevious year, versus the 17% who reported doing so inDecember 2011. This is part of a broader “shift from printedto digital material,” according to Pew Research, as 43% ofAmericans ages 16 or older had read either a book or “otherThe Global eBook Report 19
- Page 2 and 3: ContentsAbout the Global eBook Repo
- Page 4 and 5: Receptiveness for foreign (English)
- Page 6 and 7: Produced in Atlas by O’Reilly Med
- Page 8 and 9: Mapping and Understandingthe Emergi
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- Page 12 and 13: January 18, 2013; “Un rapport env
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- Page 16 and 17: The ambitions, and thelimitations o
- Page 18 and 19: Metadata is the key to online sales
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- Page 25 and 26: hit (source: various reports summar
- Page 27 and 28: Debates Shaping the Book Industry i
- Page 29 and 30: Contributed article BookwireAvailab
- Page 31 and 32: GermanyKey Indicators Values Source
- Page 33 and 34: than 10% of all online sales by the
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- Page 39 and 40: ginning by Hachette Livres, among o
- Page 41 and 42: SpainKey Indicators Values Sources,
- Page 43 and 44: focusing on both Spain and Latin Am
- Page 45 and 46: The emerging ebook market may confr
- Page 47 and 48: SwedenKey Indicators Values Sources
- Page 49 and 50: Netherlands2012 was a tough year fo
- Page 51 and 52: inging ebooks to the tenfold larger
- Page 53 and 54: magazines, and devices, with a cata
- Page 55 and 56: ever, in the first half of 2013, si
- Page 57 and 58: Source: Vesselin Todorov, Ciela Nor
- Page 59 and 60: Contributed articleCopyright Cleara
- Page 61 and 62: Emerging MarketsRussia70% of Russia
- Page 63 and 64: (see details in “eBook piracy in
- Page 65 and 66: The first research comparing the pe
- Page 67 and 68: Revenue Service has been receiving
- Page 69 and 70: on ebooks. It has not gained much t
- Page 71 and 72: ChinaKey Indicators Values Sources,
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Key players in the digital environm
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The Government of India is leading
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Android-based devices in the countr
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and Mathematics books, Hindustan Bo
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When it first launched, most ebooks
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3. Source: Personal interview with
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The Expansion of GlobalPlatformsPub
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Amazon’s performance in 20122012
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strict or eliminate competition”
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settlement is expected to make avai
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Forces Shaping the eBookMarkets: Ke
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Average top 10 ebook prices in sele
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As for the UK, The Bookseller compi
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ation solutions have recently emerg
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In Germany, the by far the largest
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(SSRC, the American Assembly, Colum
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In its report of May 2011, by Le Mo
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Of those who admitted to downloadin
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1,200 titles (see this blogpost by
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The AcceleratedTransformation of th
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AcknowledgmentsThis report has been
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Mandarin, she has specialized in re