37 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections Libranova is a promotional platform for ebooks and digital reading. “Wolne Lektury” is a project launched by the Modern Poland Foundation in 2007, promoting and displaying school reading as identi ed by the Polish Ministry of National Education, with a library of predominantly Polish classical literary books in the public domain. Russia With a book market currently worth US$2 billion, accord- ing to the o cial Russian Federal Agency for Press and Mass Media two publishing groups with revenues of more than US$200 million, AST and EKSMO another publishing group reaching out internationally by pur- chasing British book chain Waterstones and several relevant domestic retail chains (e.g., Top Kniga, with more than 500 stores) and online book stores (e.g., Ozon. ru, o ering 370,000 titles), yet so far no presence of any of the new global players of the book industry such as Amazon or Kobo, Russia is taking a position among the largest emerging book markets, alongside Brazil, China, and India. However, market development in Russia is complex and unsteady. After signi cant growth in the early 2000s, when the value of the Russian book market almost doubled from US$1.6 billion in 2003 to US$3.0 billion in 2008, this trend was reversed after the economic crisis hit, bringing the market down to about US$2.3 billion in 2011 (US$2.5 billion in 2010). Due to its immense territory—which covers nine time zones between its Western and Eastern boarders, making distribution of physical books extremely complex and costly—with only few consumers carrying credit cards and the severe e ect of piracy, Russia is a particularly challenging environment for publishers and retailers, yet there is also a thriving reading culture in which writers and intellectuals occupy a prominent role in the public sphere and in which books stand at the center of the country’s cultural ambitions. of Polish customers internationally. In its online stores, Empik is o ering 250,000 Polish and 425,780 products in foreign catalog. Since November 2010, Empik has pro- moted its own dedicated ereading device, the Oyo, and in 2011 it added the Boox as well as other devices. By summer 2011, the empik ebook catalog included 4,521 titles in EPUB format and 4,068 in PDF format, with most (7,010) selling under 50 Zloty (or €12), similar to the retail price for printed books. eBooks have their own section at empik.com, plus a “Top 50 ebooki” bestseller chart, and promotional campaigns such as heavily discounting a popular series (which included the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy) in March 2011. Virtualo Sp. z o.o., in which EMPIK Group holds a controlling stake of 51 percent, claims to be the largest electronic bookstore in Poland, specializing in a mix of ebooks, digital magazines, and devices, with a catalog of 12,600 ebook titles. Weltbild is the Polish subsidiary of successful German parent Weltbild, as a chain store, online shop, and ebook platform Weltbild relaunched its Polish platform earlier in 2011, aiming to strengthen its position in the Polish market as a vendor for cultural as well as beauty and household supplies, catering to some 800,000 customers each month. BezKartek (literally “book without pages”) is a plat- form launched in 2009 and dedicated to the distribution of ebooks, audiobooks, ereaders, and Apple iPhones. Its catalog includes 145,000 books, of which 1,400 are in Polish. The initiative’s vocation is to “popularize ebooks,” serving various formats (PRC, PDF, EPUB, and mp3) and to expand their o er by partnering with selected foreign publishers, notably German educational and language teaching Klett Group and the Polish branch of Canadian romance publisher Harlequin. The venture is the o - spring of Apetonic, a local consultancy specializing in IT and telecommunication and nanced through the Dracula Investment Fund, plus private investors from Poland and France.
Previous Page Next Page

Extracted Text (may have errors)

37 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections Libranova is a promotional platform for ebooks and digital reading. “Wolne Lektury” is a project launched by the Modern Poland Foundation in 2007, promoting and displaying school reading as identi ed by the Polish Ministry of National Education, with a library of predominantly Polish classical literary books in the public domain. Russia With a book market currently worth US$2 billion, accord- ing to the o cial Russian Federal Agency for Press and Mass Media two publishing groups with revenues of more than US$200 million, AST and EKSMO another publishing group reaching out internationally by pur- chasing British book chain Waterstones and several relevant domestic retail chains (e.g., Top Kniga, with more than 500 stores) and online book stores (e.g., Ozon. ru, o ering 370,000 titles), yet so far no presence of any of the new global players of the book industry such as Amazon or Kobo, Russia is taking a position among the largest emerging book markets, alongside Brazil, China, and India. However, market development in Russia is complex and unsteady. After signi cant growth in the early 2000s, when the value of the Russian book market almost doubled from US$1.6 billion in 2003 to US$3.0 billion in 2008, this trend was reversed after the economic crisis hit, bringing the market down to about US$2.3 billion in 2011 (US$2.5 billion in 2010). Due to its immense territory—which covers nine time zones between its Western and Eastern boarders, making distribution of physical books extremely complex and costly—with only few consumers carrying credit cards and the severe e ect of piracy, Russia is a particularly challenging environment for publishers and retailers, yet there is also a thriving reading culture in which writers and intellectuals occupy a prominent role in the public sphere and in which books stand at the center of the country’s cultural ambitions. of Polish customers internationally. In its online stores, Empik is o ering 250,000 Polish and 425,780 products in foreign catalog. Since November 2010, Empik has pro- moted its own dedicated ereading device, the Oyo, and in 2011 it added the Boox as well as other devices. By summer 2011, the empik ebook catalog included 4,521 titles in EPUB format and 4,068 in PDF format, with most (7,010) selling under 50 Zloty (or €12), similar to the retail price for printed books. eBooks have their own section at empik.com, plus a “Top 50 ebooki” bestseller chart, and promotional campaigns such as heavily discounting a popular series (which included the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy) in March 2011. Virtualo Sp. z o.o., in which EMPIK Group holds a controlling stake of 51 percent, claims to be the largest electronic bookstore in Poland, specializing in a mix of ebooks, digital magazines, and devices, with a catalog of 12,600 ebook titles. Weltbild is the Polish subsidiary of successful German parent Weltbild, as a chain store, online shop, and ebook platform Weltbild relaunched its Polish platform earlier in 2011, aiming to strengthen its position in the Polish market as a vendor for cultural as well as beauty and household supplies, catering to some 800,000 customers each month. BezKartek (literally “book without pages”) is a plat- form launched in 2009 and dedicated to the distribution of ebooks, audiobooks, ereaders, and Apple iPhones. Its catalog includes 145,000 books, of which 1,400 are in Polish. The initiative’s vocation is to “popularize ebooks,” serving various formats (PRC, PDF, EPUB, and mp3) and to expand their o er by partnering with selected foreign publishers, notably German educational and language teaching Klett Group and the Polish branch of Canadian romance publisher Harlequin. The venture is the o - spring of Apetonic, a local consultancy specializing in IT and telecommunication and nanced through the Dracula Investment Fund, plus private investors from Poland and France.

Help

loading