25 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections By mid-2012, Amazon, Apple, Casa del Libro, and FNAC, among others, were o ering some 10,000 com- mercial ebook titles in the Spanish language, mostly with retail prices of 30 to 40 percent below that of their respective print editions. Overall, some 60,000 titles are estimated to be available in EPUB format, according to Barnes & Noble (Patricia Arancibia, TOC Buenos Aires, April 2012, quoted in blog.book-fair.com/2012/04/25/ latin-america/). With regard to devices, ereaders (notably including those of local retail chains Casa del libro and Fnac) and tablets had roughly equal market share, with approxi- mately half a million of each device sold by the end of 2011. In May 2011, Kobo launched a Spanish platform, and Google Editions is also now available for readers in Spain. The report “La digitalización del libro en España,” released in November 2009, argued that “the digitization of books will be one of the most strategic decisions that publishers will have to make in the next years,” yet the report also notes that paper and electronic will coexist in the future (“The emergence of ebooks in Spain,” Emerald Group Publishing LTD, 2010). Almost half of the polled publishers for this study expected that even in 2020, print would still be their main source of income. Another report, by the Federación de Gremios de Editores in collaboration with the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruiperez and published in February 2010, polled 254 publishers, of whom 80 percent planned “actions in the digital area during the period of 2009 to 2011,” including parts of their backlist, with 19 percent expecting to have their full catalog of titles digitized by the end of 2011. According to that report, small publishers showed—at that moment, at least—a higher predisposition to digi- tizing their backlists than the market leaders even by 2011, the large groups have implemented considerable e orts in that respect as well, o ering growing digital catalogs of their titles. In 2009, an e ort to digitize major works took place in both Spanish and Latin American literature under the books being exempt. Publishers have concerns that the measure will “slow down sales in a newborn market that had just started to give signs of acceleration,” says Ernest Folch, the editorial director of medium-sized and highly regarded Ediciones B and its digital arm, B de Books (Julieta Lionetti, “Spain Hikes E-book VAT to 21%, Likely Slowing Growth,” Publishing Perspectives, July 19, 2012). B de Books was launched in November 2011 as Spain’s rst digital-only book publisher to experiment with new approaches for the book business in several regards, including competitively low pricing of its titles (between €1.99 and €9.99) as well as publication without DRM, to make reader convenience a clear priority (“Libros digitales desde 1,99 euros y sin protección anticopia,” El Pais, November 15, 2011). What is by far Spain’s largest publisher, Grupo Planeta, also launched two ebook imprints with a similar pricing strategy, from €0.99 to €4.99: Za ro (romance) and Scyla (science ction) ebooks (http://bit.ly/RyHdIb press release: http://bit.ly/RyHgUm). For 2012, Planeta is expecting an increase in ebook sales of around 200 percent in 2012 versus a year before, yet at a de nitely low level of around 500,000 units of legal downloads—equaling roughly half an ebook per reading device over a total of half a million of ereaders and tablet computers, keeping revenues well under 1 percent of the total book market (source: communica- tion from Planeta). With the launch of localized ebook shops by Amazon (in December 2011) and Apple (in October 2011), a signi cant promotion of ebooks and reading devices by the leading retailers (notably Casa del libro and Fnac) in the end-of-year holiday sales, and a substantial rise in the presence of both ereading devices and tablet com- puters, Spain started in the second half of 2011 on a similar trajectory to that of Germany or France. In articles in the general media, comments saw the advance of ebooks in Spain in terms of “gigantic leaps,” with Amazon’s market entry seen as “triggering the avalanche” (El cultural, November 25, 2011).
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25 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections By mid-2012, Amazon, Apple, Casa del Libro, and FNAC, among others, were o ering some 10,000 com- mercial ebook titles in the Spanish language, mostly with retail prices of 30 to 40 percent below that of their respective print editions. Overall, some 60,000 titles are estimated to be available in EPUB format, according to Barnes & Noble (Patricia Arancibia, TOC Buenos Aires, April 2012, quoted in blog.book-fair.com/2012/04/25/ latin-america/). With regard to devices, ereaders (notably including those of local retail chains Casa del libro and Fnac) and tablets had roughly equal market share, with approxi- mately half a million of each device sold by the end of 2011. In May 2011, Kobo launched a Spanish platform, and Google Editions is also now available for readers in Spain. The report “La digitalización del libro en España,” released in November 2009, argued that “the digitization of books will be one of the most strategic decisions that publishers will have to make in the next years,” yet the report also notes that paper and electronic will coexist in the future (“The emergence of ebooks in Spain,” Emerald Group Publishing LTD, 2010). Almost half of the polled publishers for this study expected that even in 2020, print would still be their main source of income. Another report, by the Federación de Gremios de Editores in collaboration with the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruiperez and published in February 2010, polled 254 publishers, of whom 80 percent planned “actions in the digital area during the period of 2009 to 2011,” including parts of their backlist, with 19 percent expecting to have their full catalog of titles digitized by the end of 2011. According to that report, small publishers showed—at that moment, at least—a higher predisposition to digi- tizing their backlists than the market leaders even by 2011, the large groups have implemented considerable e orts in that respect as well, o ering growing digital catalogs of their titles. In 2009, an e ort to digitize major works took place in both Spanish and Latin American literature under the books being exempt. Publishers have concerns that the measure will “slow down sales in a newborn market that had just started to give signs of acceleration,” says Ernest Folch, the editorial director of medium-sized and highly regarded Ediciones B and its digital arm, B de Books (Julieta Lionetti, “Spain Hikes E-book VAT to 21%, Likely Slowing Growth,” Publishing Perspectives, July 19, 2012). B de Books was launched in November 2011 as Spain’s rst digital-only book publisher to experiment with new approaches for the book business in several regards, including competitively low pricing of its titles (between €1.99 and €9.99) as well as publication without DRM, to make reader convenience a clear priority (“Libros digitales desde 1,99 euros y sin protección anticopia,” El Pais, November 15, 2011). What is by far Spain’s largest publisher, Grupo Planeta, also launched two ebook imprints with a similar pricing strategy, from €0.99 to €4.99: Za ro (romance) and Scyla (science ction) ebooks (http://bit.ly/RyHdIb press release: http://bit.ly/RyHgUm). For 2012, Planeta is expecting an increase in ebook sales of around 200 percent in 2012 versus a year before, yet at a de nitely low level of around 500,000 units of legal downloads—equaling roughly half an ebook per reading device over a total of half a million of ereaders and tablet computers, keeping revenues well under 1 percent of the total book market (source: communica- tion from Planeta). With the launch of localized ebook shops by Amazon (in December 2011) and Apple (in October 2011), a signi cant promotion of ebooks and reading devices by the leading retailers (notably Casa del libro and Fnac) in the end-of-year holiday sales, and a substantial rise in the presence of both ereading devices and tablet com- puters, Spain started in the second half of 2011 on a similar trajectory to that of Germany or France. In articles in the general media, comments saw the advance of ebooks in Spain in terms of “gigantic leaps,” with Amazon’s market entry seen as “triggering the avalanche” (El cultural, November 25, 2011).

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