7 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections reworked version was rst self-published in early sum- mer 2012, it was published by major traditional publish- ing houses internationally and became a bestseller, rst in the US and then in countless translated editions around the globe for autumn 2012 and the end-of-year holiday season 2012. In the meantime, all sectors and elements in the value chain of publishing have been confronted with new players and new business practices, notably as the largest retail platforms assume more and more roles that had been previously taken care of by specialized actors. eBooks and reading devices are now host to hefty con- troversies with regard to market access, business prac- tices, and consumer attention. Amazon has launched and then scaled up its own publishing activities. Even libraries have found themselves becoming battle elds, as a controversy between public libraries and US pub- lishers took shape over lending rights for ebooks when several major groups, including Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Penguin, decided to withhold titles from library loans (The Bookseller, February 16, 2012). In April 2012, a ling by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in New York against ve large publishers and Apple de ned what may become the key battle over the terms and conditions for the ebook economy in the US and beyond. After a stando between Macmillan and Amazon in early 2011, the DoJ alleged that a scheme known as the Agency Pricing model, in which publishers set retail prices for their ebooks, came from an “ongoing conspiracy and agreement” between defendants, caus- ing “e-book consumers to pay tens of millions of dollars more for e-books than they otherwise would have paid” (quoted in Publishers Lunch, April 11, 2012). Three of the publishers—HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster—settled with the DoJ by promis- ing for two years not to “restrict, limit, or impede an e-book retailer’s ability to set, alter, or reduce the retail price of any e-book or to o er price discounts or any other form of promotions to encourage consumers to purchase one or more e-books,” Macmillan and Penguin $282.3 million brought in larger revenues than hardcover sales at $229.6 million, sparking comments such as: “It’s the end of books as you knew them” (ZDNet, June 18, 2012). The change was mirrored in purchases and owner- ship of devices as well as in reading habits. By spring 2012, ebooks became mainstream: 21 percent of adults had read an ebook in the past year, versus the 17 percent who reported doing so in December 2011. This shift is part of a broader “shift from printed to digital material,” according to Pew Research, as 43 percent of Americans ages 16 or older had read either a book or “other long-form content” in digital format (Pew Research Center Publications, April 4, 2012). The 2011 end-of-year holiday season saw a signi - cant spike in sales of devices. The share of US adults owning a tablet nearly doubled, from 10 to 19 percent, equaling the ownership of ereaders, which was also at 19 percent, with a stronger adoption by women than men (Pew Internet, January 23, 2012). However, another survey only a few months later pointed toward tablets actually outperforming ereaders as the preferred ebook reading device (Bowker, with BISG, April 30, 2012). The work of authors has also undergone structural change on a broad scale, as self-publishing has become the path to market for an increasing number of books. Based on ISBN statistics, Bowker has counted 211,269 self-published titles for 2011 (compared to 133,036 in 2010), with ction accounting for 45 percent of the titles. The average retail price is $6.94 for self-published ction. eBooks represented 41 percent of self-published units, yet a mere 11 percent of sales, as the average self-pub- lished ebook sold for $3.18 in comparison, trade paper- backs had an average price of $12.68 and hardcovers averaged $14.40 (PW, June 4, 2012). Bowker has announced the creation of a self-publish- ing bestseller list the segment was represented strongly in overall charts, a development that became a game- changer with Fifty Shades of Grey, a three-volume novel by E. L. James, which (as mentioned earlier) was origi- nally written as fan ction for the Twilight series. The