Edinburgh Napier University

  After years of rapid e-book market share growth, sales have slowed with its share still being small. Nevertheless, the publishing industry continues to be in a transformation phase initiated by digitization, confronting the publishing industry with new challenges. E-book distribution in most markets of the EU is dominated in particular by an oligopoly of international hardware and software companies as well as digital content distributors with their fenced-off e-book ecosystems. These ecosystems do not only hamper the differentiated bricks-and-mortar bookselling infrastructure and the cultural diversity in Europe, they also restrict the scope of action and the innovative potential especially of small-nation publishers – ‘small’ in this context relates among other things to the nation’s linguistic and economic status and refers to countries such as Slovenia. Thus forcing publishers to think anew about innovative business strategies.

For this reason, my research project consists of a theoretical investigation of potential business models for e-publishing, and their relationship to publishing operations, as well as of an empirical analysis of current policy frameworks and e-publishing practices within a number of small nations in the EU. With the help of expert interviews and secondary data answers will be sought to questions like: ‘What are potential business models for e-publishing in small nations?’; ‘Which new possibilities arise for publishers in this nations and why are they taking active part in e-publishing?’ and so forth. I am mainly investigating whether digitisation could be a chance especially for publishing houses in smaller nations to produce, distribute and market literature. In addition, this research project also looks at policy frameworks and whether they are suitable to support the growth of a decentralised e-publishing sector in Europe.