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inging ebooks to the tenfold larger German market, asit allowed them to compete on par with the much largerGerman publishing houses. eBooks and the various servicesproposed by Amazon would more and more lower thebarriers of entry and compensate for a disadvantage ofgeography for small enterprises.A top 20 fiction ebook bestselling list for October 2012,which was included in the association’s ebook report, wasunsurprisingly dominated by James’ Shades trilogy, followedby Rowling with Casual Vacancy and numerous internationalblockbuster titles, like Ken Follett’s Giants sagaand Jonasson’s Hundred Year Old Man. All top 20 titles camefrom German publishers.AustriaKey Indicators Values Sources,commentsBook market size (p+e, at consumerprices)Titles published per year (new andsuccessive editions)New titles per 1 million inhabitants 1,028€792 million PublishersAssociation8,505 PublishersAssociationAustrian publishers have been very cautious with regardto investing in digitization, with most starting only in 2011,or even 2012, to regularly offer new print releases in ebookformats. A preference for direct distribution of ebooks bythe publishers, which could be seen in 2011, has diminished,as most houses have signed service contracts withGerman distributors.Some, like general trade publisher Haymon, started tobuild a modest list in 2011 and added digital editions oftheir printed releases as a routine procedure as of spring2012.But, as on the German side, the ebook market is largelydominated at this point by a few leading publishinggroups. It is forseeable that it will be increasingly difficultfor small Austrian publishing houses to carve out a digitalniche.A first survey of the Austrian ebook market, released onSeptember 29, 2011, by the Austrian publishers’ and booksellers’association HVB showed that just 17 percent ofAustrian publishers have sold ebooks as of 2010. Another21.7 percent are planning to do so in 2011, 30.1 percent atsome point in the future, and 36 percent said that they hadno plans for ebooks. This compares to Germany, where 35percent of publishers already offer ebooks, and another 43percent plan to include ebook editions in the near future(for details, see the Börsenverlag study from spring 2011in the discussion on Germany). The Austrian study revealsseveral more distinctly different developments and expectationsbetween the two countries, as even those publishersin Austria who have launched ebooks do so for just10 to 20 percent of their new releases and prefer distributionfrom their own website (with online retailers and Librekabeing the second and third most popular optionsfor distribution). PDF is the prevalent file format, with 88.5percent of the titles, but half are available as EPUB as well,and 15 percent in the MobiPocket format for Amazon’sKindle. Three out of four books are distributed with somecopyright management included, but only 35 percent ofthe books come with DRM, and 65 percent have digitalwatermarks built in.Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that nodomestic infrastructure for ebook distribution and serviceshas been set up, and publishers—just like local chainand independent bookstores—are instead encouraged touse services from companies based in and run from Germany.At this point, no local branch offices of any of themajor German service providers have been opened.As in other European countries, books are subject to a reducedVAT of 10 percent, and ebooks carry the full 20 percentVAT and are discounted against printed editions by10 percent on average.PolandWith revenues of 50 million Zloty in 2012 (ca. €12 million,up from 23 million Zloty in 2011 and estimated €9-12 millionin 2010), the Polish ebook sector not only shows astrong curve of growth. It is also characterized by significantmomentum for all revel drivers. With a catalogue ofca. 25 to 30,000 ebook titles by mid 2013, and 150,000ereading devices (of which half are estimated to be Kindledevices) across a total population of 38 million, ebookshave become a focus for a number of domestic players inPoland. (All data provided by The Polish Book Institute forthis report)Remarkably, the initially widely used hard DRM fromAdobe gave place recently to watermarking, or social DRM,with some local firms experimenting with their own solutions.Competition over pricing is considered to be onlymodestly growing, despite overall competition in digitalpublishing is see as rising.The Global eBook Report 47