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The Expansion of GlobalPlatformsPublishing groups with international reach arecertainly not a new feature of the industry, asthe strong presence of British houses in all ofthe former Commonwealth and in the US wellillustrate. With the acquisition of the world’slargest trade publisher, Random House, by the Germanmedia conglomerate Bertelsmann in 1998, the subsequentreaching out of Hachette in the US and the UK, andthe more recent international aspirations of regionalgroups such as Spanish Planeta or Swedish Bonnier, internationalexpansion has become common. And their parentcompanies all control various media and related activities,with book publishing in most cases not being thegroups’ largest division. (Pearson, the world’s largest publishinggroup being one exception to this pattern.)Today, opening offices in the Gulf (like Bloomsbury in Qatar),or even holding corporate management conferencesin Beijing (as Penguin did a few years ago) has shown thatbook publishing is in no way any longer limited by nationalor linguistic borders.The recent expansion of distribution platforms and channels,both in reach and in the scope of their offer of productsand services, has brought the globalization of publishing,books and reading to an entirely new dimension.AmazonWhen Amazon released data on its 2012 financial performanceat the end of January 2013, Jeff Bezos, the company’sfounder and CEO, concluded: “We’re now seeing thetransition we’ve been expecting. After 5 years, e-books isa multi-billion-dollar category for us and growing fast—up approximately 70% last year” (“Amazon reports recordsales growth,” The Bookseller, January 30, 2013). That is certainlytrue. But Amazon may no longer be in the privilegedrole of ruling the game almost all alone, as least in the US,due to the introduction of the Kindle in 2007.Sales from Kindle and tablet devices alone are estimatedat $4.5 billion, up 26% from 2012, according to MorganStanly, yet with annual growth expected to slow down inthe years ahead. For 2014, sales of digital media content isexpected to surpass revenues from devices. Overall, the“Kindle ecosystem” is expected to account for 11 percentof the company’s total revenue this year, but 23 percent ofits operating profit. (Quoted by Allthings, 12 August 2013).A major expansion in the ecosystem that Amazon offers toits customers was in spring 2013 the acquisition of thereading platform Goodreads, which had grown, by summer2013, to a community of 20 million.Amazon’s International GrowthFor the first time ever, the annual report 2012 gave someinsight into the stupendous international expansion of theworld market leader in online bookselling (Annual Reportfor fiscal year, ended December 31, 2012, US SEC).While overall sales of Amazon in North America always exceedrevenues from its international business, at leastsince 2010, international changes in the media sector areclearly ahead of domestic North America (“media” includes,in addition to ebooks, all other digital content: music,movies, and games, but not “electronics and othergeneral merchandise”). Even more remarkably, at least in2010 and 2011, “international media” showed strongerThe Global eBook Report 81