With two international announcements this week and more a possibility at next week’s Frankfurt Book Fair, we’ve prepared a recap of recent international expansions of the big ebookstore platforms: Amazon launched their first non-English Kindle store in Germany in April. As part of their international expansion, the company added a general Amazon store in Spain last month (and they opened a general store in Italy in November 2010). Kindle stores are expected soon in both Spain and Italy, where advertisements have been seen for Kindle positions. Among other countries on Amazon’s horizon, Brazilian publishers have reported discussions for both a […]
ebookstores
Google eBooks Launch in the UK; Weltbild Adds German Readers
We’re glad we won’t have to spend the early days of the Frankfurt Book Fair wondering when Google will launch their long-expected UK ebookstore: it is live now. It looks just like the US version, except when visited from US IP addresses you mostly see blank carousels, so there is not a lot to check out. (We infer the store is IP restricted, since UK visitors report seeing a regular store display.) Strategic partner development manager Jason Hanley told The Bookseller, which has the first story on the store, that the Australian and Canadian versions will launch “soon.” As announced […]
Kindle Library Lending Begins
Kindle’s library lending initiative has gone live in the US libraries served by OverDrive. The program was first announced in April, and spotted in a beta rollout that began Monday at the Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System. (Though a You Tube video from King County describing the download process was taken down at Amazon’s request, according to an LJ story.) Director of the King County Library System Bill Ptacek implied that the Kindle tablet expected later this year may more prominently promote library ebook lending, though his remark is a bit cryptic: “Ptacek is expecting Kindle […]
eNews: Amazon Spain, Local Kindle Ads, Estimates of 5.4 Million eReaders in Q2, and More
As expected, Amazon.es launched yesterday with a press conference in Madrid featuring vp for Europe Greg Greely (in English). Greely announced the company offers 2.5 million print books in Spanish and 80,000 in Catalan, which because of the fixed price laws they can sell at a maximum discount of 5 percent. Orders from Spain will be served from a warehouse in a secret location outside Spain–just as Amazon.es’s 100 employees (many of whom joined Amazon as part of the BuyVIP acquisition last year) are not in Spain either, working out of the company’s European headquarters in Luxembourg. Regarding the reported […]
Google Settles with La Martiniere; Will Launch Google eBooks In France
Google has settled its differences with another French publisher, La Martiniere. Perhaps more importantly, they acknowledge that Google eBooks is coming to France. (Now we just need to know when.) The companies will work together to put the publisher’s out-of-print, in-copyright books online, which “effectively ends the legal dispute” between the two. In 2009 a French court ordered Google to pay La Martiniere a small fine for scanning their books without permission. (They sought 15 million euros in damages, and were awarded 300,000 euros.) AFP says Google has now withdrawn their legal appeal–but indicates the company has not settled yet […]
Mondadori to Put Thousands of eBooks on Kindle
Italy’s Mondadori will make “more than 2,000 ebooks” available via Kindle stores in the UK, Germany and the US. They expect to add another 1,000 titles before the end of the year, and hope to have 80 percent of their 10,000-title list as ebooks “by 2012.” Remarks from deputy chairman and chief executive Maurizio Costa at least imply that an Italian Kindle store might not be far off, following Amazon’s recent launch of an Italian web site. Italy is on Kobo’s list of local ebookstores planned for the coming months as well, though today’s release only mentions Amazon. Barnes & […]