Spanish electronic Book Market: distribution and sales platforms, business models and digital reading

Abstract

[EN] In accordance with known international data publishing industry, the ebook’s phenomenon is becoming further strong and solid. In The United States (US), from where are setting trends in the electronic book market development, from January to August 2010 sales increased 193% over the same period last year. According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP) report, "Sales of books (not including academics) for the period January to August 2010 amounted to 2910 million dollars. The e-book sales reached 9.03% of the total, compared to 3.31% throughout 2009”. In addition, this report revealed a parallel decrease phenomenon in print-book sales. In Spain, with data from the Ministerio de Cultura and published in the Boletín del Observatorio del Libro y la Lectura in December 2010, the domestic electronic publishing reached 12,839 new e-book titles, meaning 97.8% of digital and other publishing media materials and 16.0% of whole book’s production in Spain (Ministerio de Cultura, 2010). Over the same period last year, the electronic publishing has increased 40.1%. With regard to the grow experienced, in the Foro Internacional para Contenidos Digitales (FICOD 2009) held in Madrid in November 2009 the experts predicted deep changes in business models relating to print-books and digital publishing..