Disruption through online book sales - is Germany next?

[fjtorres]

From The Shatzkin files:

[T]he disruption, so far, has been confined to English-language publishing. In no other market are publishers and booksellers so obviously questioning the basics of their business models or speculating so openly about whether the publishing business we have known for a century can survive in its present form for another decade.

We keep scanning the horizon looking for the first market that will be disrupted in a similar way. We think we’ve found it. That market is Germany.

Amazon is growing like a weed and is the dominant online bookseller, despite their inability to use price as a club in the competition. One observer told us that Amazon is about 2/3 of the online book sales marketplace [in Germany]. That’s not as much as they have in the US and UK, but let’s remember they’re playing without their pricing weapon.

(Bold mine.)
Yup, Amazon can do just fine without discounting.

And a fact we’ve learned that made us gasp is that many estimate the sales of print online to now constitute 25% of the total German market. This was also hinted at in a Borsenverein report, but it didn’t seem to strike many of the local players we talked to with the same impact with which it hit us.

Just as overall digital sales are 2-3% but they peak at 5 or 10 times that for some titles, the 25% online purchase of print is also unevenly distributed. So it is likely that there are a lot of titles in the German market now for which half or more of the sales are taking place outside of the shops.

Not sure how accurate his read of the market is or how things look on the ground but I suspect he isn't totally wrong.

One thing he doesn't go into, that may factor in the disruption, is that German-language books, like English-language books, have strong markets *outside* Germany. While he is looking at Germany alone, I expect that German ebooks from the trad-pubbers and emerging indie publishers won't be restricted to the borders of Germany. Those cross-border sales should be an extra incentive for authors looking to go indie.

Again, I don't know how much difference it'll make but the numbers he cites suggest ebooks in Germany may soon be breaking from hobbyist/enthusiast territory into the mainstream, and every little bit should help accelerate the transition.

Does his analysis hold water?

[image by Pen Waggener via Flickr]

[Miilu]

"One observer told us that Amazon is about 2/3 of the online book sales marketplace [in Germany]."

The statistics the German national booksellers' association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) published earlier this year show that Amazon.de had 75 % of the German online book market at that time.