Rüdiger Wischenbart presented the new data on E-books and audiobooks 2019 market evolution in Canada, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain & English imports, during the READMAGINE 2019 conference.
According with the Austrian consultant there are two differente satges in digital books market:
The first phase: The digital containers with copies of printed books are only one way for a reader to approach “long-text” on a digital device.
The second phase: Platforms and ecosystems, new business and distribution models, and a coexistence of many digital formats.
Because format has lost its central significant. With the sudden rise of audiobooks, even ‚ “type and reading” have been subsituted by “voice and listening”.
Wischenbart stated that books have ceased to have one clear format that everyone, for any given type of content and purpose, uses in similar ways; digital books are increasingly morphing into a continuous stream, or flow, of media which newly forming audiences consume in various fluid ways and instead of e-books, we must analyze and understand ‚digital consumer books now.
Wischenbart, born in 1956 in Graz, Austria, is the founder of “Content and Consulting” (since 2003), and a writer specialized in culture, cultural industries, the global book markets, innovation in the book industry, literature, media, and communication.
Most recently, he researched and (co-) authored several reports on global publishing markets, notably the “Global eBook” report, the “Global Publishing Markets” survey for the International Publishers Association”, (IPA), and the “Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry”, updated annually since 2007 (initiated by Livres Hebdo, France, and co-published by The Bookseller, UK, buchreport, Germany, PublishNews Brazil, and Publishers Weekly, US). Wischenbart co-authored the “Diversity Reports” 2010, 2009 and 2008 mapping translation markets and cultures across Europe. He serves as director for international affairs to BookExpo America, coordinating its “Global Market Forum”, and has been the director of the program for the Publishers’ Forum in Berlin.