10 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections and in other English-speaking markets. According to statistics presented by Nielsen BookScan in February 2012, in the UK “the print decline accelerated in 2011, while in the rst four weeks of 2012 print sales have dropped 12 percent, with ction sales down almost 26 percent” (The Bookseller, February 8, 2012). In the rst quarter of 2012, eight out of the top ten UK publishers recorded double-digit drops in print sales (Nielsen, The Bookseller, April 13, 2012). The continuing shift toward online ordering as well as that of digital replacing physical reading altogether has much broader implications. As a survey by Deloitte frames the issue: “The majority of UK retailers have simply got too many stores” (The Bookseller, March 21, 2012). An ever broader sector of the market for content has moved online. Amazon alone accounts for 21 per- cent of the British entertainment market (The Bookseller, July 24, 2012). The resulting momentum brought about some surprising new coalitions of (primarily) brick-and-mortar book chains for instance, in May Waterstones started selling Amazon’s Kindle devices, Kobo engaged in a partnership with 100 WHSmith stores, and Barnes & Noble—in preparation to enter the UK market as their rst step in a broader strategy of going international— will sell its NOOK across 37 John Lewis retail stores, 60 for the January to June period, compared to £30 million for the same period in 2011, according to the British Publishers Association (The Bookseller, September 18, 2012). In 2011, UK publisher sales of books fell 2 percent compared to 2010 to £3.2 billion, with a 5 percent decrease in physical book sales outweighing a 54 per- cent increase in digital sales. All digital formats—ebooks, audio book downloads, and online subscriptions—accounted for 8 percent of the total invoiced value of sales of books in 2011, up from 5 percent in 2010. Consumer ebook sales in 2011 constituted 6 percent of consumer physical book sales by value. Thirteen percent of academic and professional book revenues came from digital products (UK Publishers Association, based on Nielsen data, May 1, 2012). As in previous years, the end-of-year holidays in 2011 resulted in yet another push from print to digital, as mirrored in statistics reported by Nielsen BookScan print sales in ction declined by 30 percent in the three weeks after the holidays, according to The Bookseller. In the week of December 31, 2011, ction hardcover sales were down 14 percent and paperbacks declined by 34 percent (The Bookseller, January 23, 2012). At the same time, sales of printed works showed signi cant decline in the UK United Kingdom Key indicators Values Sources, comments Book market size (p+e, at consumer prices) £3.2 b* PA Statistics Yearbook 2011 Titles published per year (new and successive editions) 149,800 PA Statistics Yearbook 2011 New titles per 1 m inhabitants 2,459 eBook titles (available from publishers) ca. 1 m Ebook titles available in the UK, partly from US publishers (PA Statistics Yearbook 2010) Market share of ebooks 12.9% January to June 2012 (PA release September 18, 2012) Key market parameters No price regulation VAT: 0% for print, 20% for ebooks * b = billion