The Ebook Market in Germany – Growth in 2014 and Perspectives

This week, I’ll just take a brief look at some numbers from an article by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association about the market share of ebooks in the current German book market.

It states that the German ebook market share has grown from 3.9% in 2013 to 4.3% in 2014.

Even though it may take a while until sales figures of digital books in Germany will approach those on the US and UK markets, it seems the ebook is settling in comfortably and is expected to keep rising.

5.7% of the German population (> 10 years of age) have bought ebooks in 2014, which translates to about 3.9 million people. The clear majority of ebook sales came from (adult) fiction (84%), 5% from children’s and young adult literature, and a total of 11% from nonfiction.

Why is growth in Germany relatively slow, compared to the English-speaking markets? Germany does offer a variety of ebook readers, and new reading material is published every day by indie authors and traditional publishers, so it can’t be the shortage of supply. It was speculated that the fixed pricing law might have something to do with it, as it hampers creative pricing strategies, but I don’t think that’s the whole story.

So what does that tell us? Germans still love their print books. Thus, if you want to publish in Germany, consider a print edition of your book.