Greek ebooks in February

[omk3]

It seems that finally Greece is also waking up to the ebook reality!
Some readers were sold here and there (Plaisio even sells its own brand now), but until today there were no Greek ebooks to speak of (except a handful of free titles offered by Kastaniotis, and some public domain ones).

Here is the article for anyone who can read Greek
http://www.tanea.gr/default.asp?pid=...d=4558025&ct=3

For those who can't, the main points:

A new site, http://www.myebooks.gr/, is being launched and is supposed to start working in February. It will sell iRex, Cool-ER and Hanvon ebook readers, and ebooks by several major greek publishers. Prices of ebooks will be around 10 euros.

Publishers Livanis, Psychogios and Kastaniotis are expected to also sell their ebooks through their own websites.

Eleftheroudakis, a large greek bookstore chain, also mentioned their intention in selling ebooks. Bookstores generally seem to realize that if they don't move with the times they may be left out of the game.

I found a strange quote in the article about ebook prices. Loosely translated:

The greatest advantage of ebooks is their price. They are sold internationally for up to 60% of the price of their paper equivalent. In Greece, as long as the VAT problem is solved, publishers claim that ebooks will be at least 30% cheaper.

(bold mine - well, that is not my experience at all)

Publishers are also looking to offer multimedia books, which will only be able to be read on a computer. Those will mainly be educational titles. School books will also be published as ebooks. Young people are expected to be the target market, as the most enthusiastic new technology adopters.

Ebook reader purchases have been going up since Christmas in Greece, they say. Even though not really many devices are available. I suspect many Greeks like me have bought from abroad and don't even figure in these statistics, so the number of ebook reader owners must be greater than calculated.

Greek publishers too are afraid of piracy. They will of course use drm, and feel confident that it will stop piracy Another clever way of fighting piracy is delaying the ebook by three to four months, according to one publisher who looks up to the international example... It seems the Greek market will make exactly the same mistakes as the international one..

Anyway, all this is generally very good news. I have been waiting for legal greek ebooks for a long time. (yes people, piracy existed before the new technology, sorry). I'm eagerly waiting to see what will actually be available and how they will handle it.