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PolandKey Indicators Values Sources, commentsBook market size (p+e, at consumer prices) €1053 million total market value at consumer prices, and €639 million in net sales, The Polish BookInstituteTitles published per year (new and successive editions) 27,000New titles per 1 million inhabitants 706eBook titles (available from publishers) 25-30,000Key market parameters VAT on printed books 5%, ebooks 23%In late 2012 and in 2013, a number of domestic platformshave launched sibscription services, and lending models.These experiments have been pioneered by Legimi, witha catalogue of 2500 ebook titles, at 19.90 Zloty per month(€4.80). Also Virtulo, one of the leading Polish distributorsfor ebooks, has started a cooperation with the telecommunicationscompany Orange. Nexto and Bezkartek.pl arespecializing in library services. The largest distributors arealso offering selfpublishing solutions to their customers.Publishers have however critically emphasized that theseapproaches, while providing ebooks to readers, would notlead to actual sales of these titles. (Information by The PolishInstitute for this report).Earlier developments in 2011 and early 2012With an estimated 8,000 trade titles available as ebooksand scanning initiatives for public domain books accountingfor about 27,00 titles (mostly in PDF), the Polish ebookmarket is in its early stages. However, the topic is widelydebated, such as in panels at the 2011 Warsaw Book Fair.More importantly, major domestic actors are committedto developing their strategic position.By the end of 2011, and for the holidays, ereaders werepromoted heavily, and most publishers started to addrights for ebook editions to new author contracts. However,printed editions and ebooks were considered differentproducts and were usually not promoted together.This resulted in only modest growth in sales. eBook bestsellingtitles included Umberto Eco’s new novel, The PragueCemetery, and the biography of Apple founder Steve Jobsby Walter Isaacson.Regarding devices, industry sources estimate an installedbase of about 20,000 Kindles, 7,000 ONYX BooX readers,20,000 to 40,000 iPads, and 250,000 to 350,000 iPhones(source: EMPIK).A discussion of ebooks in Poland cannot be limited to afocus on an exclusively domestic market. Not only areforeign-language imports—notably in English and, to acertain degree, in German—already a staple for printedbooks, but in addition, imports and adaptations of devicesare met with significant attention, such as when a Kindleedition of the weekly news magazine Polityka is promoted(without a localized Kindle shop by Amazon in sight) orwhen a Polish programmer comes up with an upgrade thatallows the popular American Kindle device to read ebooksaloud in Polish.Distribution platformsEmpik, the largest chain store and online shop for booksand cultural goods in general (CDs, films, multimediagames, art&pap, press, tickets for cultural events), which isowned by NFI Empik Media & Fashion, is moving into theemerging market, with 175 stores in Poland and 19 in Ukraine(as of October 4, 2011). In 2007, Empik set up empik.comto extend their international business by offeringforeign language (primarily English and German) productsand by catering to communities of Polish customers internationally.In its online stores, Empik is offering 250,000Polish and 425,780 products in its foreign catalog. SinceNovember 2010, Empik has promoted its own dedicatedereading device, the Oyo, and in 2011 it added the Booxas well as other devices. By summer 2011, the Empik ebookcatalog included 4,521 titles in EPUB format and 4,068 inPDF format, with most (7,010) selling under 50 Zloty (or€12), similar to the retail price for printed books. eBookshave their own section at empik.com, plus a “Top 50 ebooki”bestseller chart and promotional campaigns such asheavily discounting a popular series (which included theStieg Larsson Millennium trilogy) in March 2011.Virtualo Sp. z o.o., in which Empik Group holds a controllingstake of 51 percent, claims to be the largest electronicbookstore in Poland, specializing in a mix of ebooks, digital48 The Global eBook Report