tugal, South Africa, Thailand, Taiwan, UK, and the US. Rakuten’sCEO Hiroshi Mikitani has been quoted that Kobowas the market leader for ebooks in France. (Forbes, 6 September2012)By January 2013, Kobo claimed to own 20 percent of theglobal ereader device market (Press release, January 13,2013). 2013 has since seen two launches of new devices,in spring and in summer, which included both ereadersand tablets. (Publishers Weekly, 28 August 2013)Other than several of its competitors, Kobo has engagedin several strategic partnerships, including with Hongkongbased Cheung Kong Holdings, W H Smith in Great Britain,Whitcoulls in New Zealand, FNAC in France, and LivrariaCultura in Brazil. In many markets, Kobo is partnering withlocal retailers, aside from those mentioned, with Libris BLZin the Netherlands, Libreka in Germany, and Mondadori inItaly. In Japan, it started to develop an ebook userbaseahead of Amazon, in summer 2012 (The Bookseller, August16, 2012).For the US, and later on also in other markets, Kobo positioneditself as an ebook partner for independent bookstores,signing respective agreements with associations(ABA in the US, and the British AB), and replacing Googlein that position.In summer 2012, Kobo also kickstarted a self-publishingportal, branded as “Kobo Writing Life.”88 The Global eBook Report
Forces Shaping the eBookMarkets: Key Drivers andDebatesThe evolution of ebook markets is shaped bycomplex forces, some local, some global, asshown in the introduction (see Part II).In addition, publishers -but also authors, as wellas the reading public, the consumers- shape theebook markets through various choices and strategies.Several key drivers, and debates governing these choicesare framing what, in fact, works and what doesn’t.• Ebook bestsellers are not necessarily the same as inprint but allow a better understanding of the dynamicsof ebooks as a new market segment, and not justas an additional format that complements printededitions.• Pricing strategies differ significantly between countriesand highlight how publishers assess the marketpotential of ebooks - and how their new competitorschallenge their mostly conservative practices.• Many authors opt to self-publish their books as an alternativeto the traditional value chain, and find suchservices offered by a rapidly expanding field of localand global self-publishing platforms and communities,some even -again- proposed by publishing companies.• Readers do not always choose to download theirebooks from legal sources, so piracy must be understood,aside from the involved legal issues, as a reflectionof the shifting behaviors of consumers.• In addition, in more and more countries, reading marketsdevelop a bilingual segment, as growing numbersof readers read both in their mothertongue andin English, which introduces both new opportunitiesand real challenges to local publishers and retailers.• Regulatory frameworks, including the debate onadaptations of copyright law, define an importantcontext for ebooks.Each of these sets of parameters and combinations thereofwill not only affect each market’s ebook evolution but alsoframe the interplay of domestic and global factors as theyencourage either globalizing or more differentiatingforces.The aim of this chapter, though, is not to portray each ofthese factors in every detail for every single market but,rather, to develop an analytical framework to understandthe driving forces, the resulting patterns, and the resultingimpact of these forces as they are currently reshaping thebusiness of publishing and the culture of authorship andreading.The Global eBook Report 89
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ContentsAbout the Global eBook Repo
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Receptiveness for foreign (English)
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Produced in Atlas by O’Reilly Med
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Mapping and Understandingthe Emergi
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publishers’ agreement with Apple
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January 18, 2013; “Un rapport env
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1980s, global cities in the 1990s,
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The ambitions, and thelimitations o
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Metadata is the key to online sales
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English Language eBookMarketsThe fo
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hit (source: various reports summar
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Debates Shaping the Book Industry i
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Contributed article BookwireAvailab
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GermanyKey Indicators Values Source
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than 10% of all online sales by the
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warm at best, and the half-year res
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SNE had earlier started to systemat
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ginning by Hachette Livres, among o
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