The Global eBook Report: Current Conditions & Future Projections. Update October 2013

growth in sales. eBook bestselling titles included Umberto Eco’s new novel, The Prague Cemetery , and the biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.
    Regarding devices, industry sources estimate an installed base of about 20,000 Kindles, 7,000 ONYX BooX readers, 20,000 to 40,000 iPads, and 250,000 to 350,000 iPhones (source: EMPIK).
    A discussion of ebooks in Poland cannot be limited to a focus on an exclusively domestic market. Not only are foreign-language imports — notably in English and, to a certain degree, in German — already a staple for printed books, but in addition, imports and adaptations of devices are met with significant attention, such as when a Kindle edition of the weekly news magazine Polityka is promoted (without a localized Kindle shop by Amazon in sight) or when a Polish programmer comes up with an upgrade that allows the popular American Kindle device to read ebooks aloud in Polish .
    Empik , the largest chain store and online shop for books and cultural goods in general (CDs, films, multimedia games, art&pap, press, tickets for cultural events), which is owned by NFI Empik Media & Fashion, is moving into the emerging market, with 175 stores in Poland and 19 in Ukraine (as of October 4, 2011). In 2007, Empik set up empik.com to extend their international business by offering foreign language (primarily English and German) products and by catering to communities of Polish customers internationally. In its online stores, Empik is offering 250,000 Polish and 425,780 products in its foreign catalog. Since November 2010, Empik has promoted 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.
    Table 7-9. Poland
    Key Indicators
Values
Sources, comments
Book market size (p+e, at consumer prices)
€697 million
Renek Mendrun: Polish book market study, 2010
Titles published per year (new and successive editions)
21,740
New titles per 1 million inhabitants
571
eBook titles (available from publishers)
18,000
at EMPIK, by year end 2011: 9,937 ebooks, 1,017 audiobooks, 7,288 free ebooks for logged on customers (EM&F Group/EMPIK/Virutalo)
Key market parameters
    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 the 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 platform 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 goal is to “popularize ebooks,” serving various formats (PRC, PDF, EPUB, and mp3), and to expand their offer 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 offspring of Apetonic, a local consultancy specializing in IT and telecommunications and financed through the Dracula Investment Fund, plus private investors from Poland and France.
    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 identified by the Polish Ministry of National Education, with a library of predominantly Polish classical literary books in the public domain.

Central and Eastern Europe: eBooks in English and Local Languages
    Overview by Miha Kovac
    While most of the international debate focuses on ebook developments in only the largest markets, an analysis of smaller markets allows