the e-book market | France

1.1 INTRODUCTION

A e-book (or digital book) is a book published and distributed in digital format, available as files that can be downloaded and stored, stored and read on a screen (computer, tablet, smartphone, e-book reader), on a Braille page or on an audio book reading device.

Enter 15% and 25% of the French population is said to be adept at digital reading, but customs and practices are slowly changing even if the supply of digital books is growing exponentially

Several well-known players have entered the e-book market since 2005, with Amazon entering the market through its subsidiary Mobipocket.com, which is now the leading e-book reseller in France, but also the Ibooks application developed by Apple. The pure book players are also present on the market: Hachette Livre since 2008 with Numilog.com, ePagine, Chapitre.com or Eden Livres. Physical distributors are also present on the market, with players such as FNAC in particular.

The passage from the paper book chain to the digital book chain has led to a reduction in some production and marketing costs, but also an increase linked to the implementation of the all-digital system (IT development, archiving, maintenance and referencing costs). One of the challenges facing the market will be to adapt to the constant changes proposed by the IT giants (Apple, Google, Amazon) so that the traditional players in the library do not fall behind too quickly in terms of technological innovations.