28 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections books in digital formats.” eDigita serves a broad selection of Italian online retailers, including Mondadori’s bol.it site. In its announcement, eDigita stated that it expected the Italian ebook market to grow to a volume of €60 to €70 million by 2015. Mondadori (and Telecom Italia) Mondadori, Italy’s largest publishing group, set o another strong spark under the emerging market by announcing a distribution agreement with Italy’s Telecom in October 2010, with Telecom and its ebook store Biblet, adding some initial 1,200 titles from Mondadori imprints (800 backlist plus 400 new titles, from Mondadori, Einaudi, Sperling & Kupfer, and Piemme). Biblet o ers ebooks in EPUB and PDF format, with DRM protection. With retail prices under €12 to €14 for many trade titles, and many o ers even lower, the venture shows a remarkably competitive approach to pricing. In May 2011, another agreement was announced, bringing together Mondadori with Vodafone Italy for the creation of a “digital tablet kiosk.” With Italians being strong early adopters of Apple’s iPad (reportedly 300,000 units were sold in Italy by October 2010, according to the online journal Publishing Perspective (October 2010), the open question of reading platforms—between tablets and E Ink–based reading devices—is crucial for Mondadori, which has signi cant revenue from magazines and newspapers as well as book publishing. Sweden When it comes to books, Sweden has a strong reputation of di ering from what observers expect to see in a highly industrialized and technologically advanced market and, at the same time, a model for a balanced society founded on civic and democratic values and a social welfare state. Swedish—and Nordic—literature became world famous and staggeringly successful worldwide for serial murder novels and conspiracies by the rich, with Almost all commercially released ebooks come with DRM protection. The more broadly de ned digital publishing market, notably including revenue from databases and various sources of Internet-based sales, accounted for revenues of €150 million in 2011 (up from €125.6 million in 2010, with database sales and related services increasing signi cantly (AIE). The emerging market of ebooks may confront an additional challenge from piracy, according to the pub- lishers’ association AIE, which found in February 2012 that three out of four bestselling titles are also available in pirated editions. Overall, the organization’s research found approximately 20,000 pirated titles on 100 illegal sites. Since 2011, ebooks and ebook distribution have been gaining high visibility in professional debates, media coverage, and promotions at major book fairs such as the Salon in Torino, while ebooks have overall been considered less of a threat to the book industry than was the case in other large European markets, notably in Germany. Distribution The relevant domestic distribution platforms include (in alphabetical order) Bookrepublic, Edigita, Mondadori, and Stealth (Simplicissimus Book Farm), while also a number of domestic platforms operate online book stores, notably IBS, Bookrepublic, Bol, Feltrinelli, Mediaworld, Ultima Books (Simplicissimus Book Farm), and Hoepli. eDigita Three publishing companies—GeMS/Messaggerie, Rcs, and Feltrinelli, representing a combined market share of about 30 percent of Italian trade publishing—took the initiative in May 2010 and joined forces to create a con- sortium platform for the distribution of ebooks, branded eDigita, which claims to o er a solution “from publishers to publishers, for the emergence and development of
Downloaded from Tizra Support Resource Hub (support.tizra.com) by unknown.