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

of local or regional leaders, Fnac , the German Tolino alliance, China Mobile as well as Spanish Telefonica with Grupo Planeta , or Brazilian Livraria Cultura with Kobo , are keen to form paramount platforms to ideally wrap their offer around all reading, listening and watching that a cultural audience is craving for - pushing the traditional book country to the fringes.
    Particularly the expansion of Amazon , but also the ambitions of Apple and Google , across territories, but also by assuming all the different roles of the profession, from the creation through to production, distribution and marketing of - printed and electronic - books, have triggered an increasingly ferocious criticism, at various levels, among their customers, who call on their governments to make sure that the global leaders actually pay local taxes, or even to encourage buy local initiatives, to provide a similar convenience and choice, with the comfort of being good, local emloyers, sustaining communities and the diversity of culture. This spawns a real wave of innovation, as new digital-only publishing ventures are experimenting together or alongside with new reading communities, book streaming services or localized selfpublishing startups, while on the other end of the scale, the pressure in the publishing pot leads to industry consolidation, resulting in ever bigger, more global groups, with the merger of Penguin Random House defining the agenda.
    The concerns raised in German or North American buy local initiatives are not just fancies of the most affluent audiences. On the periferies, in fragmented, crisis struck markets, in Central and Eastern Europe, but also in Spain or Italy, the challenge from the global players is felt as a direct menace, as they cater, notably through reading in the English language, to the strongest, best educated, most versatile readers - while increasing the stiff competition with the local industry.
    The United States plus Western Europe are not anymore the sole centers of gravity. China continues to grow, also with regard to books and publishing, and readies several of its largest publishing groups to have a role internationally, while the - long delayed - advent of Amazon and the Kindle, as devices and as an online shop, are expected to accelerate Chinese responses.
    In Brazil, as in India, and throughout all the other emerging economies, the global players have arrived, expand their footprint, while the local book industries feel the mounting challenge from an economic slow down, even further aggravated by the recently chilly developments in formlerly friendly currency markets.
    But in those same countries, yet another factor is framing the ebook trajectory, and that is various ambitions of governments, to actively shape the new horizons through regulation. In the US and in the European Union, they have stepped into the arena, to have their say on central business practices (and notably competition issues, which are defining pricing strategies and, as a result, on the power balance between publishers and distributors), and on copyright. In all emerging economies, government spending are crucial in framing the educational sector. It is far from certain though, if these ambitions, in the long run, will meet the initially outlined political goals.
    Throughout history, books, and the content contained in and disseminated through books, has been a scarce and also well-guarded source of knowledge and entertainment. This will change drastically and most likely rapidly, as books get embedded in the global flows of digital content, easy and affordable to access, anywhere, at any time.
    One thing is clear though, as 2013 comes closer to its final quarter, with again, forseeably, the annual peak in book sales, including ebooks, and a new generation of ever cheaper devices charming readers, as consumers: Ebooks have started to transform the entire ecosystem of publishing and reading. By 2014, expect the entire value chain to be under scrutiny from all sides. And expect the transformation of the book, and of publishing, to morph into a transformation of reading.

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The Global eBook Report
    Rüdiger Wischenbart
    Carlo Carrenho
    Miha Kovac
    Veronika Licher
    Vinutha Mallya
    Revision History
2013-10-01
First release
    Copyright © 2013 Ruediger Wischenbart Content and Consulting

    Ruediger Wischenbart Content and Consulting
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    2013-09-30T13:00:25Z