Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Let's look at this logically, Jon.
1. Amazon has the majority share of the eBook market in both the US and UK.
2. The US and UK markets, combined, constitute around 85-90% of world-wide eBook sales.
Those are indisputable facts. It's therefore nonsense to say the ePub sales "dominate" world-wide. "Dominate" means something like "massively out-sells all its rivals", yes? Can you explain how ePub can "dominate" when at best it could out-perform Amazon in something like 10-15% of the market?
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Harry, I know that everyone assumes that Amazon has majority share of the market, but has anyone ever seen any actual figures.
In the UK at least Smiths actively promote the Kobo (Admitedly Waterstones promote the Kindle - and sell ePubs on their own website), Kobo seem to be in a very healthy place in Canada as well and Rakuten has a good global presence to promote ePub.
Nook has a sizeable (Although not majority) chunk in the US
Google must be starting to make inroads around the world.
Sony must still have a fraction of a percent
Books on Board, Powells, Books a Million, BOL etc all sell epubs
Amongst the publishers eHarlequin/Mills & Boon probably sell most direct but Random House, and others have websites selling direct as well (in epub)
Baen sell in any format so I'll ignore them for the moment.
IOS has their own version and can be ignored in the ePub/Amazon cage fight.
Adding all of these together with the smaller publishers (Angry Robot, Ridan, Black Library etc) may still come to less than Amazon, but how much less - and for how long? (Or are amazon still gaining ground?)
Even if they do have a massive advantage at the moment iPple's AAC format sold vastly more than mp3's back in the day but mp3 dominates now.