35 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections device was not shipped into Slovenia before spring 2011, so consumers had to travel to Austria or Italy to purchase the popular devices. Similarly, a signi cant number of readers bought a Kindle from Amazon online, as the gadget of choice to access Amazon’s vast catalog of English-language books. So far, only 300 titles are avail- able as ebooks. Also, no domestic distribution platforms have been created. The gap between a VAT of 8.5 percent on printed books versus 20 percent for ebooks further adds to the hurdle. Since 2011, the economic crisis has strongly impacted the Slovenian book market, and book sales dropped by an estimated 10 percent in the rst half of 2012 (information from Miha Kovac, of Mladinska pub- lisher and booksellers for this report). The emergence of domestic production of ebooks has stalled. For publishers, it is not a ordable to invest in building an infrastructure for a domestic ebook distribu- tion system, given the small size of the Slovenian market. With consumers often reading international bestsellers in English, and importing reading devices directly, the only realistic perspective for hooking up Slovenian publishers with digital developments may be opening Slovenian-branded stores—or channels—on interna- tional platforms such as Kobo or Amazon. By far the largest domestic player in the eld of books and reading is the publishing and retail group Mladinska (with holdings, in addition to Slovenia, in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia, and yearly group revenues of 120 million Euros from combined publishing and book- the professional association, digital platforms are not currently relevant in education. As in other European countries, books are subject to a reduced VAT of 10 percent, and ebooks carry the full 20 percent VAT and are discounted against printed editions by 10 percent on average. Slovenia Slovenia, a small country of 2 million that achieved independence only two decades ago upon the collapse of Yugoslavia, is an exemplary case for many markets at the periphery of the EU. In a tiny publishing market worth an estimated €80 to €100 million at consumer prices, more than 6,000 titles are released every year, which is almost threefold the output per 1 million inhabitants as compared to large markets like Germany or France. Slovenians are remarkably strong readers and are used to reading books not only in their native language, but also in English and, to a lesser degree, German. In larger bookstores, English titles—which represent an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the Slovenian market—are not in a separate “foreign language” section but are seamlessly intermingled with domestic titles. Public libraries add to the ample reading diet of Slovenians. Yet in the digital environment—which is controlled to a large degree by global players and designed for economies of scale, not niche markets—a country like Slovenia sees itself unexpectedly discriminated against, simply because of its small size. For instance, Apple’s iPad Slovenia Key indicators Values Source, comments Book market size (p+e, at consumer prices) €90 m Estimates by Mladinska publishers Titles published per year (new and successive editions) 5,621 (from 6,139 in 2010, of which around3,500 are trade titles) Estimates by Mladinska publishers Ebook titles (available from publishers) 300 Estimates by Mladinska publishers