Best Practices Guide to Exporting Digital Books

Livres Canada Books’ Best Practices Guide to Exporting Digital Books will be available on our website later this month. It will serve as a ‘one-stop’ resource and allow Canadian publishers to maximize their opportunity for digital book sales in international markets.

As a teaser, we are pleased to present the primary findings of our research.

Primary findings

The eBook market is both robust and evolving, but certain core findings apply across the markets of greatest interest to Canadian publishers:

The success of Amazon’s Kindle and its competitors has made the United States the world’s largest eBook market.  In 2010, between 7.2% and 8.0% of trade books were sold in a digital format.

Demand for eBooks in both core and emerging markets is expected to continue to expand rapidly.  Between 2011 and 2013, compounded annual growth rates for eBook sales in the United States, the United Kingdom and France are projected to be between 41% and 51%.  At these growth rates, the number of eBooks sold will double every 18 to 24 months across all core markets.

Content forms are evolving.  Across many markets, the dominant form of digital content has been the PDF.  In the U.S. market, however, Kindle-format titles now match the share of eBooks read as PDFs.  In early 2011, updates coming to EPUB, the de facto open eBook standard, are expected to strengthen its share as a format as well.

The market is served by both dedicated ereaders (Kindle, Nook, Kobo and others) and multi-function devices.  The latter range from smart phones (iPhone, various Android devices) to tablets, most notably the iPad.  The increasing number and complexity of eBook reading platforms is a challenge that any publisher looking to deliver digital content must address.

Sales of tablets like Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy may take share away from multi-function smart phones.  Although the tablets introduced to date do not offer wireless cell phone coverage, they can support Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology using 3G and wi-fi connections, and their functionality is expected to improve.  Tablets offer publishers a better reading experience than smart phones, they also offer many other distractions for potential eBook consumers.

Opportunities in emerging markets almost certainly exist for publishers who can work with partners (device manufacturers, content aggregators and in some cases local or regional publishers).  In Europe, available data points to Spain, Germany and Netherlands as markets are expected to reach critical mass in the next three to five years.  Other, perhaps longer-term opportunities include Australia and India.

Growth in the supply of and demand for eBooks is challenging traditional models for regional rights sales.  Aggregators like Kobo, Google and increasingly Amazon and Apple can distribute digital content globally.  This provides opportunities to distribute content cost-effectively to multiple markets.  Publishers who have relied on local partners may need to develop new schemes for rights.

Tricia McCraney | 03/09/2011 | Digital, Export, Rights

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