Quote:
Originally Posted by GlenBarrington
This is more of a question than a statement. But my impression of the "e" publishing industry is that it is far more popular in the English speaking countries than it is in countries that speak/read/write something else.
Is that true? And if so, could there be a linguistic and cultural component to this? It would be interesting to hear from people who live in multilingual countries if there is a difference in support between the various languages.
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Linguistic? Dunno.
But cultural, absolutely.
Reading for entertainment is not a universal custom, even among affluent societies. It has, however, been common in the US/UK since the early 19th century with their history of Penny Dreadfuls, Story Papers, and Dime novels. They were all steps towards the pulps of the early 20th and, eventually, paperbacks. Now ebooks are moving to fill the market for affordable prose entertainment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_paper
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dime_novel
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine
In many countries, though, prose has traditionally been dominated primarily by literary prose and reading for entertainment isn't as ingrained in the popular culture and thus the content isn't as common. Chicken and egg. Without a tradition of native popular prose there is little incentive for local writers to produce popular prose and without a ready supply of content the habit doesn't spread.
In more recent times, the niche of affordable entertainment has been filled via TV dramas, particularly in latin america:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenovela
And of course, in more recent times competition for eyeball-hours (and consumer spending) has expanded to include video games and online social media (gossip).
Even in countries with a long history of popular prose, reading for entertainment has been on a long, steady decline going back 50 years and more. It's not all due to TV, though. Changing publisher policies have had a lot to do with it, too, which is one of the factors the OP paper looks into.
It's not a simple issue by any means.