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

late 2012 for this report. Some of the interviewees, however, recognized in that shift an opportunity, notably with regard to bringing ebooks to the tenfold larger German market, as it allowed them to compete on par with the much larger German publishing houses. eBooks and the various services proposed by Amazon would more and more lower the barriers of entry and compensate for a disadvantage of geography for small enterprises.
    A top 20 fiction ebook bestselling list for October 2012, which was included in the association’s ebook report, was unsurprisingly dominated by James’ Shades trilogy, followed by Rowling with Casual Vacancy and numerous international blockbuster titles, like Ken Follett’s Giants saga and Jonasson’s Hundred Year Old Man . All top 20 titles came from German publishers.
    Table 7-8. Austria
    Key Indicators
Values
Sources, comments
Book market size (p+e, at consumer prices)
€792 million
Publishers Association
Titles published per year (new and successive editions)
8,505
Publishers Association
New titles per 1 million inhabitants
1,028
    Austrian publishers have been very cautious with regard to investing in digitization, with most starting only in 2011, or even 2012, to regularly offer new print releases in ebook formats. A preference for direct distribution of ebooks by the publishers, which could be seen in 2011, has diminished, as most houses have signed service contracts with German distributors.
    Some, like general trade publisher Haymon, started to build a modest list in 2011 and added digital editions of their printed releases as a routine procedure as of spring 2012.
    But, as on the German side, the ebook market is largely dominated at this point by a few leading publishing groups. It is forseeable that it will be increasingly difficult for small Austrian publishing houses to carve out a digital niche.
    A first survey of the Austrian ebook market, released on September 29, 2011, by the Austrian publishers’ and booksellers’ association HVB showed that just 17 percent of Austrian publishers have sold ebooks as of 2010. Another 21.7 percent are planning to do so in 2011, 30.1 percent at some point in the future, and 36 percent said that they had no plans for ebooks. This compares to Germany, where 35 percent of publishers already offer ebooks, and another 43 percent plan to include ebook editions in the near future (for details, see the Börsenverlag study from spring 2011 in the discussion on Germany). The Austrian study reveals several more distinctly different developments and expectations between the two countries, as even those publishers in Austria who have launched ebooks do so for just 10 to 20 percent of their new releases and prefer distribution from their own website (with online retailers and Libreka being the second and third most popular options for distribution). PDF is the prevalent file format, with 88.5 percent of the titles, but half are available as EPUB as well, and 15 percent in the MobiPocket format for Amazon’s Kindle. Three out of four books are distributed with some copyright management included, but only 35 percent of the books come with DRM, and 65 percent have digital watermarks built in.
    Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that no domestic infrastructure for ebook distribution and services has been set up, and publishers — just like local chain and independent bookstores — are instead encouraged to use services from companies based in and run from Germany. At this point, no local branch offices of any of the major German service providers have been opened.
    As in other European countries, books are subject to a reduced VAT of 10 percent, and ebooks carry the full 20 percent VAT and are discounted against printed editions by 10 percent on average.

Poland
    With an estimated 8,000 trade titles available as ebooks and scanning initiatives for public domain books accounting for about 27,00 titles (mostly in PDF), the Polish ebook market is in its early stages. However, the topic is widely debated, such as in panels at the 2011 Warsaw Book Fair. More importantly, major domestic actors are committed to developing their strategic position.
    By the end of 2011, and for the holidays, ereaders were promoted heavily, and most publishers started to add rights for ebook editions to new author contracts. However, printed editions and ebooks were considered different products and were usually not promoted together. This resulted in only modest