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The Global eBook Report - Rüdiger Wischenbart, Content ...

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DenmarkKey Indicators Values Sources, commentsBook market size (p+e, at consumer prices) 4,000 million DKK (€540) BogmarkedetTitles published per year (new and successive editions)New titles per 1 million inhabitants 1,275ca. 9,619 titleseBook titles (available from publishers) 7,000 10,000 trade titles expected by January2013 (Bogmarkedet)Market share of ebooks 1% to 2% in 2011 BogmarkedetKey market parametersNo price regulation. VAT at 25% for both print and ebooks.(Saxo Publish) in September 2012; the dedicated ebookplatform riidr.dk; Adlibris (by the Swedish Bonnier group);and Danish Gyldendal’s g.dk. But Amazon also has a significantmarket presence through its British site www.amazon.co.uk,catering to the high percentage of readers whoare fluent in English. Apple’s iBookstore is also popular withusers.According to the Danish book trade magazine Bogmarkedet,E ink–based reading devices have a limited presencein Denmark, while the iPad is “dominating the market totally.”The average retail price for ebooks is between 99 and 179DKR (Danish crowns), at a discount of 40 to 50 percent fromthe printed edition. There is no price regulation for printedbooks or for ebooks, and both formats are subject to 25percent VAT, which is among the highest rates in Europe.NorwayWith a population of just around 5 million—yet a nominalGDP per capita of $97,254 (2011) and an economy benefitingfrom rich offshore oil resources—Norway is spendingpart of its fortune on significant subsidies to its culture.The country’s book market, which is worth around €800million, is commercially embedded in the wider Scandinavianmarket, where notably publishing companies fromSweden (e.g., Bonniers) have a strong role to play, yet witha local book production that is strongly supported by governmentfunding, as it acquires 1,000 copies of every bookthat a Norwegian author publishes. Furthermore, everyNorwegian author who is a member of the Author’s Unionreceives an annual grant of $19,000 (Andrew Goldstoneand Lee Konstantinou: To Norway!).Aside from state support, local Norwegian authors, suchas Jon Michelet (En sjøens helt, The Hero of the Seas) and PerPetterson (Jeg nekter, I Refuse), are embraced by a largedomestic readership. And they compete on par with internationalstars like E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey, with420,000 copies sold of the combined three volumes in2012) or Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, which sold440,000 copies).Unlike neighboring Sweden, ebooks have made a significantimpact on Norwegian readers. In 2012, 148,000ebooks worth 10 million Kroner (€1.34 million) were sold(data provided by the Norwegian book trade magazineBok&samfunn for this report). Some 3,500 titles are availableas commercial ebooks.All ebooks from Norwegian publishers are distributed byone central platform, Bokskya, a service provided by theindustry information service Bokbasen (or Book Database),which is co-owned by major publishers, distributors,and booksellers in Norway (more details here). By the endof 2012, Bokskya had 100,000 registered users (up from50,000 in August). The platform calls itself a “digital bookshelfwhich provides secure storage of all your e-bookspurchased in a Norwegian online bookstore. The bookscan be downloaded or read in the apps offered by Norwegianonline bookstores,” with all major retail platformsbeing members. In addition, Bokskya also offers an HTML5-based app for offline reading in EPUB format.With the ambition of creating a vast library of earlier Norwegianliterature and making it digitally available to thecountry’s readers, the National Library of Norway has starteda substantial digitization effort. In collaboration withKopinor (the Norwegian collecting society that representsall domestic copyright holders through its 22 member organizations),250,000 works are to be digitized by 2017,with 60,000 titles already available “to anyone with a NorwegianIP address” (read more here).44 The Global eBook Report

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