Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Yes, have you? In Germany, the largest market in Europe (and the largest book market in Europe), 10,000 e-readers and about 100,000 e-books were sold in all of 2009 (the latest year I could find data for). That's about what Amazon sells in a *week*.
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Yes? So what? Given that the first ebook readers were only introduced in 2009 this figure is completely irrelevant (we ignore the very substantial and widespread availability of high quality illegal ebooks at this point). We are just talking about a delay to the development in the US market, even though the large number of bookshops obviously favours the survival of the paper book. The main aspect is that Germany is one of the world's largest book markets and everyone - publishing houses, libraries and reader hardware providers are using epub. Amazon has no content, no hardware adapted to the market and is currently nowhere to be seen. Have you taken a look at Japan? Another huge market and Amazon isn't selling any ebooks. This wouldn't be the first time that the technical development in the US deviates from the rest of the world.