Original Article: Nederlandse e-bookverkoop stijgt met ruim 60 procent in 2013
Translation:
In 2013, 60% more e-books were sold as compared to the year before. In total 1.95 million e-books were sold in 2013, compared to 1.2 million in 2012. Boekblad reported that at this moment, e-books are generating about 3.2% of all revenue.
According to Mathijs Suidman, manager Digital Media of Centraal Boekhuis, which distributes almost all Dutch books, the figure is so low because e-books cost less on average. "If you'd look to the number of books sold, they'd make up about 4.6% of the A book market."
Still, the growth is disappointing to him. "I expected that this amount would grow faster - partly because of my expectation that libraries would have started to loan e-books already, beginning last October," says Suidman.
It looks like the market share of e-books is not rising very fast. Figures published earlier by NUTech showed that 4.1% of book revenue was generated by e-books in May 2013.
More than one in five books that are ordered online is digital, says Suidman. The number of e-books on offer rose from 19.230 titles to 28.319. Centraal Boekhuis offers over 80.000 different physical books.