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United KingdomKey Indicators Values Sources, commentsBook market size (p+e, at consumer prices) £3.1 billion PA Statistics Yearbook 2011Titles published per year (new and successiveeditions)New titles per 1 million inhabitants 2,424149,800 PA Statistics Yearbook 2011eBook titles (available from publishers) ca. 1,750,000 eBook titles available at Amazon UK, in early 2013, of which the vast majorityis in English.Market share of ebooks 12.9% January to June 2012 (PA release; September 18, 2012); eBook market estimatedat £250 million at the end of 2012 (The Bookseller, January 18, 2013)Key market parameters No price regulation; VAT: 0%for print, 20% for ebooksThe UK ebook market in 2012In all 2012, ebook sales doubled their volume for the toptrade publishers in the United Kingdom, forming a digitalmarket worth around £250 million, “putting the overallbook market back in the black after a transitional 12months for the trade,” according to numbers collected byThe Bookseller (“E’ market nears £300m”, The Bookseller,January 18, 2013). At Random House UK, digital reportedlyaccounts for over 22% of revenue (CEO Gail Rebuck in aletter to her staff, The Bookseller, December 19, 2012).Hachette UK reported 250,000 ebook downloads betweenChristmas and Boxing Day alone (The Bookseller, January7, 2013).Among the 65 million estimated downloads, fiction clearlydominates the ebook charts, led, as in most markets, byE.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, followed by SuzanneCollins’ Hunger Games, and 43 out of the top 50 titles werebrought to market by traditional publishers (The Bookseller,January 11, 2013).In the first half of 2012, digital sales accounted for 12.9%of the total value of sales, up from 7.2% in the equivalentperiod of 2011. Sales of digital fiction increased by 188%in value in that same period, and overall digital sales accountedfor £84 million for the January to June period,compared to £30 million for the same period in 2011, accordingto the British Publishers Association (The Bookseller,September 18, 2012).The continuing shift toward online ordering and of digitalreplacing physical reading altogether has much broaderimplications. As a survey by Deloitte frames the issue, “themajority of UK retailers have simply got too many stores”(The Bookseller, March 21, 2012). An ever-broader sectorof the market for content has moved online. Amazon aloneaccounts for 21% of the British entertainment market (TheBookseller, July 24, 2012).The resulting momentum brought about some surprisingnew coalitions of (primarily) brick-and-mortar bookchains; for instance, in May, Waterstones started sellingAmazon’s Kindle devices, Kobo engaged in a partnershipwith 100 WHSmith stores, and Barnes & Noble —in preparationto enter the UK market as their first step in a broaderstrategy of going international— began selling its NOOKin 37 John Lewis retail stores, 60 Blackwell_’s stores, 6 _Foylesstores, and 700 Argo stores, as well as online in October2012. In April 2012, Sony entered the field of content offeringsby opening its Reader Store UK, with digital editionsof old and new fiction and nonfiction books. Retailersin the traditional book sphere also secured their part of thepie: Tesco acquired the ebook platform MobCast with130,000 ebook titles from British publishers (buchreport,September 5, 2009).From numerous new dedicated ereaders under £70 tomultifunctional tablets of various brands and operatingsystems —and a new strong push in early fall of 2012 beforethe end-of-year holidays— the underlying sales trendpoints to a shift from dedicated black-and-white gadgetsto full-color tablets. At this point, though, dedicated ereadersstill occupy a significant market share. One-third ofBritons owned an ereader as of early 2012, and 40% ofebook readers do so on a Kindle. However, tablets havemore than doubled their market share to approximately12% among readers of ebooks (The Bookseller, May 15,2012; for the evolution of devices, see The Bookseller, September10, 2012).22 The Global eBook Report