Lots more ebooks in English...
...than in any other language probably has something to do with it, I'd say.
Brits are embracing e-books more enthusiastically than anyone in Europe, the numbers show. Last year, UK e-book buyers were responsible for half of Western Europe's digital book spending - even though the nation only accounts for 15 per cent of Europe's combined spending on physical books, market watcher Futuresource said …
Not sure of the usefulness of a survey of this type, at least not for the sake of comparisons between regions.
The German Kindle store was only recently launched and due to the size of the Amazon content it instantly makes it Germany's largest digital bookstore.
So, given Germany is Europe's largest economy, how can you make any meaningful comparison?
I never thought the ebook 'thing' was ever going to amount to much. Paper books are a remarkably usable technology (drop em in the bath dry them out etc). But having been bought a Kindle 3G I've come to eat my words somewhat.
The Kindle is a cracking piece of kit which Amazon has got really sorted. Certainly I've loaded up the Kindle with free books but I've also started buying the cheaper ebooks too. I've no doubt I'll buy full price books soon enough.
Amazing how one product can be a game changer for a whole medium.
But it doesn't make the book shelves look very good.
Surely the big, obvious point here is that there are more English language ebooks, due to American success and media ownership; and pricing of these English books is probably more competitive, due to existing popularity (in America).
What would be more informative is to take one single ebook with multicultural appeal (a standard textbook?) that is on sale at the same price point in several countries in several languages, and see where it is most popular.
All the people who work in the Spanish office where I work have to buy most of their e-books "in the UK" because they are not available in Spain. So all of those books should increase the numbers for Spain and reduce for the UK. This may not be unique to Spain, so maybe the numbers are measuring the wrong things (Where they are bought, not by whom).
Also factor in the nonsense that Amazon UK won't sell Kindle titles to non-UK residents, instead forcing them to the US store with a poorer selection and almost invariably higher prices. I know it's not entirely Amazon's fault, and the blame lies rightfully at the door of the publishing industry with their questionable pricing practices and who haven't learnt much from the debacle that's been the music industry for the past decade. Torrents start to look appealing when what should be the most seamless part of the whole process, actually buying content, involves jumping through hoops involving proxies.
Amazon sent me an email asking for a copy of my passport as I'd dared, shock, horror, to buy an ebook from an Irish IP address. I told them where they could shove their request
"The market has exploded in Britain after Amazon introduced a UK version of its Kindle online bookshop..."
Want a Kindle or an e-Book from Amazon in Europe? You'll be getting that from the US store then. So rather than intra-EU shipping and prepaid VAT on your Kindle, you get to pay transatlantic shipping rates and then get stung for import duties and VAT. Nice one! Then you're stuck with the US book store, paying in dollars, getting stung on currency exchange transactions and stuck with all the spelling mistakes in English language books.
Sheer insanity.
If Amazon want to know why the European market is not battering their door down, they should get a dictionary (they probably have a few knocking around unused) and look up what the words "European market" actually mean.
Barely exists after a seemingly failed launch. Many of the "free" e-books aren't, and dozens (The Secret Garden) aren't available in my location.
Frankly, as far as I'm concerned this is a good thing for me as French Amazon is not polluted with Kindle stuff, unlike the British counterpart...
Try stuffing 3-4 paperbacks in your luggage whenever travelling, you'll notice the difference. Paper takes up a lot of space and I certainly like looking at my Discworld series collection, all lined up on the shelf. But alas - currently, it is about 9000 km from me, because I simply couldn't rationalize stuffing kilos of paperback fiction in my luggage when going abroad.
That said, I certainly prefer reading textbooks and technical literature on paper (scribbles, squiggles, and just plain old visual memory). It's just all the other fiction, novels and even news articles are so much more convenient when contained in a slim 240 g package.
I'm just not a big fan of DRM. Every time I look at an ebook that I haven't made myself, I seem to have to have a mac or a windows pc. Bit of a problem that... Yes, I know about Calibre (and highly recommend it) and the scripts for unlocking books I own, but I'm hoping they'll do the decent thing and assume I'm *not* a book-stealing criminal.
I'm really not sure about all these 'and the book is logged on our servers so you can use it on a number of devices, and start where you left off'. To be honest, I don't particularly want datasnarfing multinationals to know everything I read (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 1992-05, scanned and proofed by my own fair hands, as it happens) and I'd rather have a non-DRM'd file sitting on computer(s) that *I* control, in the same way I keep my proper books on a shelf.