[Katsunami]

In the Netherlands, we have a choice of 10.000 titles in Dutch (including the free classics), according to that report. OOOOWW YEAAAH BABY! *cough* Only 10K in total, while 23K new titles a year are published.

The report says that we're an audience that "has already heavily embraced reading in English".

Nooo... REALLY?

That started way back before e-books already. (edit: Probably helped by the fact that English was a mandatory language in high school, at least in my time. Dutch and English were subjects you could not fail on your final exam. Therefore, all people of around my age speak, read, write and understand at least basic English.)

Maybe that's because most current-day Dutch writing is crap. (edit: I never got farther than half a sample before thinking: "Meh".) The stuff that's not crap, is either a classic, or translated from English, often weeks, months or years after the original work came out. Sometimes, if a publisher feels like it, they just stop translating and you'll mis part of a series. (I'm looking at YOU, Spectrum.)

So, people got the English paperback. Now, with e-books, you'll pay €10 for an e-book (either Dutch or English), while you can get the original version in English for something like €6 or even less. With paperbacks, shopping in other countries was much harder because of shipment costs.

We over here in The Netherlands buy more e-books than any Dutch authority or institute can guess. Only thing is, apart from the people that read only in Dutch, nobody buys them at a Dutch retailer. No, really. Of all the people I know that buy e-books, nobody has ever bought one in a Dutch store, and nobody has ever bought one in Dutch; except one of my aunts.