Quote:
Originally Posted by Nathanael
3) The international market, which collectively dwarfs the US, and lies outside the Amazon ecosystem. Kindle is late to the party in the EU, and so far is a complete no-show here in China, where ePub and PDF dominate.
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At least in Germany, they wouldn't have to fight for market share: I just had another look at
the txtr store: They have roughly 3.500 German titles - which is a sad joke considering that the Frankfurt book fair features more than 100.000 new (pBook) titles every year.
The reason for that is that publishing houses here very much cling to the tried-and-true pBooks and don't really look like they *want* eBooks to succeed. So they're releasing only a select few titles at hardcover prices and can point to the German market just not accepting eBooks.
If - by some miracle - Amazon could waltz in with an iTunes-style deal and offer much more content at reasonable prices on the Kindle, the handful of early adopters who already bought ePub devices wouldn't matter. If Amazon doesn't manage that, however, publishers will probably eventually get their act together and find a business model that'll work for both them and their customers. Right now, though, the German market is still up for grabs.
From what I hear, it's different in Eastern Europe and Russia where the ePub market is already much more mature and accepted.