European market for eBooks grows

Forgive me father for I have sinned, it has been 4 months since my last blog post!

In all seriousness, my absence in this space is a reflection of just how incredibly busy Yuxi has been over the past several months. My recent travels have taken me to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Paris, Frankfurt, Miami and New York City.

Among the more interesting revelations from my travels, while in Paris I learned that the French government has plans in the works to subsidize the creation of eBooks. Always keen to promote French culture and language, several major publishers are now in talks with the French government to receive subsidies to cover the costs of these conversions to EPUB standard format.

At Yuxi Pacific, to my surprise, Europe has represented our largest market for EPUB conversion services. European publishers clearly see the ROI in distributing content on eBook platforms and reaching new audiences.

Among those European publishers, Norway has surprisingly represented one of our biggest markets. Norwegian publishers have been stymied in recent years from launching eBooks onto a domestic platform, as a dispute with the federal government over taxation has held up launch. This dispute just about resolved, there has been a mad rush to conversion over the past several months.

Spanish publishers are also seeing the opportunity. While in Frankfurt, I met with many Spanish publishers, all with seemingly the same message. By getting their Spanish-language titles into eBook format, the market for their books to reach new audiences. According to the census that took place in 2000, the Spanish language in the United States is used by more than 34 million people as a common language at work and at home.

All in all, it has been a hectic four months, but I will endeavor to post more and deeper insights into the ever changing publishing industry in the coming weeks.