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

time to come, and we can be fairly certain that it will not become the open digital space that many across the globe wish for. Exclusions and inclusions will remain a governing pattern for a long time, often enough in not planned, but accidental ways.
    For instance, US headquartered Amazon launched a localized platform and Kindle shop in neighboring Canada only in January 2013 (!), over five years after its introduction in the US in November 2007. Google Play varies the media it offers to consumers widely, according to territory. Another example had two deeply intertwined, neighboring markets such as Germany and Austria at first separated by a gap, as books were initially available in Germany, yet not in Austria. Only since spring 2013, books can be purchased in Austria as well through Google Play. Also an ebook edition of a given (English language) title may be available internationally on Amazon for the Kindle, yet not through other major international platforms in ePub, despite the fact that an ePub version has been made available by the publisher.
    Sometimes, the result of all these contradictory developments are simply funny: My wish, in late 2011, to acquire a digital copy of, ironically, a book on the global spread of English (Nicholas Ostler’s fabulous The Last Lingua Franca , published by Penguin in the UK) led to an unexpected odyssey. Buying an EPUB version (as opposed to one for Mobipocket/Kindle) of the book from online retailers in the UK ( Waterstones or WHSmith ) from a computer in Vienna, Austria turned out to be impossible. British retailers would not accept an overseas customer. They would, of course, have shipped a paper copy anywhere in the world without hesitation (with a few extra pounds charged for shipping). The same applied to the publisher, Penguin, despite that house being at the forefront of both the globalization and digitization of books. In the end, the purchase was possible through Kobo , a (then) new Canadian venture, which had started to become an international player exactly by venturing into this odd mix of challenges and opportunities.
    Two years later, in fall 2013, such surprises are far from overcome, as many author contracts are not clear enough when it comes to global distribution rights, and not all involved in the new dimensions of the trade, from publishers to -global or local- distributors to retailers have been able to intetgrate all their catalogues and the complex metadata involved.
    These are times of transition, with huge turbulences that often enough make it hard to be sure what in this new world of digital books and reading introduces a new opportunity, and what is instead a cumbersome, or even threatening challenge.

Chapter 4. Advertorial Klopotek. How Soon Is Now?

Start marketing digital content in a future-proof way
    Publishers around the world have started embracing or are about to embrace the burgeoning e-book market. But, as digital pioneer Bob Stein pointed out at Klopotek’s Publishers’ Forum in 2011, “publishers are fooling themselves when they minimize the difference between reading on pages and reading on screens.” To date, most e-books are digital versions of printed books. There are ‘enhanced e-books’, adding video and audio elements. However, as Bob Stein argues, digital – and, more importantly – online texts “live on a network which connects readers to other readers, allowing social components to come forward and to multiply in value.”
    Manage products that do not even yet exist
    The potential of e-books has not been fully realized; the development is still in its early stages. The result will probably be something new, something completely different, something very different from marketing printed books through digital channels. The problem is: we don’t know what these e-books will look like. But the good news is: a system to handle future products is already available.
    Klopotek provides a tool to manage content which is split into separate parts (chunks, chapters,etc.) and pieced together into various other products. Publishers can create open product structures (including for products that do not yet exist) and easily manage their associated components and metadata. These components can be reused in different products – so new, evolving business models can be supported with Klopotek, even if these models change.
    With this tool, Klopotek provides component-based rights and royalties management. It is capable of