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of which 75% are in PDF format and the rest primarily inEPUB. Fnac introduced its own dedicated ereader, theFnacBook, in October 2010. In 2010, Fnac.com hosted120,000 ebook downloads (versus 60,000 in 2009), with130,000 in the first quarter of 2011 alone—half of which,however, were free titles (LeMotif).French online bookshop Chapitre has started a partnershipwith Sony for distributing its ereaders and tablets,starting in September 2012 (buchreport, August 22, 2012).For the library market, British academic book supplierDawson runs a branch office out of Paris that is dedicatedto serving France and other French-speaking markets.Bookeen is, according to one of its founders, Laurent Picard,“primarily a site for book lovers. A 100 percent digitallibrary where the Internet user can be well served,” with acurrent catalog of 42,700 titles, of which 1,300 are free ofcharge and without DRM, the others including works publishedby Gallimard, Flammarion, P.O.L., Bragelonne, andPublie.net. The two largest French publishing groups withtheir digital platforms are “the big voids” (company statement).Bookeen was founded in 2003, after the first waveof enthusiasm in electronic reading devices had collapsed,and produces its own reading device. In summer 2011,Bookeen opened its digital library, Bookeenstore.com, toereading devices other than its own.Two important aspects in French ebook publishing are theparticularly strong national culture and the large fan basefor both domestic comics —notably Japanese-style manga—as well as other graphic novels, which are also forminga digital niche market, with platforms like www.kaze.fr(and its German spinoff, www.kaze-online.de) and Digibidioffering the catalogs of 30 publishers. And the US graphicnovel platform CimoXology has launched a French languageA catalogue of 1500 French canadian ebook titleshas been cleared for distribution in France through DiffusionDimedia, in a cooperation with Volumen and EdenLivres in 2013.[platform].SpainThe Spanish publishing market —and, as a consequence,the ebook market in Spain— is shaped by several paradoxicalparameters. With a population of 47 million inhabitants,Spain is a medium-sized European market, closer toPoland than to Germany. However, Spanish is the primarylanguage for 650 million people worldwide, including asignificant number of Spanish speakers in the US. Spanishpublishing revenues were strained recently by shrinkingconsumer prices over several years, from €3,110 million in2009 to €2,772 million in 2011, with more titles publishedthan ever (88,349 in 2012) but each selling fewer copiesthan before. No final numbers are available for the economicdevelopment of the book market in 2012. Predictionsprojected a decline of some 8%.Most of Latin America is served by Spanish publishing enterprises.However, when the economic crisis of 2008 hitSpain, exports witnessed a severe drop from €490 millionin 2007 to 384 million in 2009. Although Spain has recentlystarted to recover some of this lost terrain —exports wereworth €430 million in 2011— the overall market environmentas well as protectionist politics in several Latin Americancountries point to a difficult path for the years ahead(according to statistics from the publishers’ associationGFEE).The Spanish domestic publishing sector, though populatedby small- and medium-sized publishing houses, is increasinglydefined by three big groups: Planeta, Santillana,and Random House/Mondadori (a former joint venture,with Random House taking over full control in 2013).In this challenging, yet dynamic context, the governmenthas canceled the reduced VAT rate of 4% (versus the normalrate of 21%) being applied to ebooks —as well as theater,music, and movies— with only printed books beingexempt. Publishers are concerned that the measure will“slow down sales in a newborn market that had just startedto give signs of acceleration,” according to Ernest Folch,the editorial director of medium-sized and highly regardedEdiciones B and its digital arm, B de Books (Julieta Lionetti,“Spain Hikes E-book VAT to 21%, Likely SlowingGrowth,” Publishing Perspectives, July 19, 2012).In 2012, ebook downloads accounted for €12 million, upfrom only €2 million in 2011, and grew by over 100% in thefirst half of 2013 (according to market research by GfK,presented by Actualidad editorial, June 6, 2013). Varioussurveys by GfK, as quoted in this overview, point at theconsiderable base of 5 million devices (tablets and ereaderscombined) acquired by Spanish consumers and a particularlyhigh penetration of smartphones.However, the recent expansion of the ebook market segmentfaces a general reluctance of consumers with regardto ecommerce, as well as a high level of piracy. Still, respondentsto a questionnaire for this report, targeted atSpanish book professionals, estimate the market share ofebooks by mid-2013 at around 3% (up from just 1% in36 The Global eBook Report