61 : The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections But self-publishing, notably with regard to ebooks, reaches far beyond the ful llment of production services to individual authors. It has grown into a signi cant segment of the publishing industry altogether. Since 2010, global leaders from both the distribution and the publishing side of the business have launched or acquired major operations targeted at the quickly expanding segment. The previously mentioned AuthorSolutions was acquired by Penguin in summer 2012 for $116 million (Publishers Lunch, July 19, 2012). eBook provider Kobo launched its own self-publishing portal, Kobo Writing Life, in direct competition with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, started in January 2010 and Barnes & Nobles PubIt, online since October 2010. With Apple’s educa- tional authoring and publishing package iBooks 2, even a major player totally outside traditional publishing has taken a strategic position in the sector. (For details, see the earlier discussion on Apple.) Key Market Parameters Regulatory Frameworks For the recent US debate on the “Agency” pricing model for ebooks and the intervention of the Department of Justice (DoJ), see above in the close up on the US market. In several European countries, book prices are regu- lated and subject to reduced VAT, yet these regulations do not automatically apply to ebooks. In France, legisla- tion to apply xed prices to ebooks as well was intro- duced in 2011. In Spain, the existing Book Law is understood to cover ebooks as well as printed books. In Germany, Börsenverein—the professional association for publishers and booksellers—is lobbying the federal government for an extension of the law of xed prices for books to ebooks. The problem with the VAT is that, according to the European Commission, books are considered products, but in the case of ebooks, the consumer is acquiring a andere Katastrophen—Meine abenteuerliche Suche nach dem Mann furs Leben (Love, Sex and Other Catastrophes— My Adventurous Quest for the Man of My Life), a book that blends well in the current ood of romance ction. A mere 20,000 ebook copies sold at €3,49 were enough to generate broad media coverage exploring the new model for success. “Never had it been easier to publish a book” was the new gospel sung by mainstream media such as Der Spiegel (“Mein Verlag und ich,” July 17, 2012). The “Angst” article and the bestselling Love, Sex, and Other Catastrophes book originated at epubli, the print- on-demand and self-publishing platform of the Holtzbrinck group, Germany’s second-largest publishing venture but not the market leader. This position is held by BoD (or Books on Demand”), the service arm of Libri, Germany’s largest wholesaler by far, that has explored customized solutions to production for 10 years, claim- ing a market share of 80 percent in the print-on-demand segment with a backlist of 420,000 titles and some 10,000 new releases per year (http://bit.ly/T1FUOP). In early 2011, author Amanda Hocking (born in 1984) sold one and a half million copies of the self-published version of her debut work My Blood Approves, which was then picked up by traditional publishers for global sales (Livres Hebdo, April 25, 2012). In summer 2012, four self-published titles were on the New York Times best- seller list (The Guardian, August 3, 2012). In 2009, BiblioBazaar, a US-based company in the new self-publishing segment, was already producing 272,930 titles (according to Bowker, quoted in Publishers Weekly, April 15, 2010). In 2011, BiblioBazaar alone pro- cessed 773,857 ISBNs (http://bit.ly/T1G74L). In 2012, Bowkers’s Kelly Gallagher proclaimed the “golden age of self-publishing,” with 211,269 titles for 2011 (up from 133,036 in 2010). Amazon’s CreateSpace is seen as the segment’s market leader, publishing 57,602 titles, followed by AuthorSolutions with 41,605 (www. authorsolutions.com Publishers Weekly, June 4, 2012). Of these titles, 45 percent are ction and 41 percent are also released as ebooks (http://bit.ly/T1G74L).
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