Die Marktmacht von Amazon und wie sich der Zugang zu Büchern verändert. Eine Nahaufnahme.

Amazon gibt immer mehr den Ton an, auch was die Aufmerksamkeit für mögliche nächste Erfolge ausmacht. Die Zeichen stehen auf Sturm

(…)

In allen diesen Veränderungen, Verlagerungen und Beschleunigungen kommt den Internetseiten von Amazon eine zentrale Rolle zu. Bestsellerlisten mit ihren zehn oder 20 Spitzentiteln bilden nur die alleroberste Spitze des Eisberges ab. Doch abseits von “Shades”, “Twilight” oder auch, in bescheidenerem Umfang, Wolfgang Herrndorfs “Tschick”, verästeln und spezialisieren sich die Präferenzen der Lesenden immer weitläufiger. Wir nehmen alle möglichen Informationshappen und Empfehlungsimpulse aus vielen Richtungen auf und steuern damit die Entscheidung, welches Buch wir als Nächstes öffnen. Um hier etwas Übersicht zu gewinnen, auch um das Aufgeschnappte zu überprüfen oder weitere Meinungen einzuholen, klicken viele immer regelmäßiger dann bei Amazon. Denn dort gibt es kurze Beschreibungen, eben die Bewertungen von Lesern mit Sternchen und Besprechungen – inklusive Fakes, aber ich denke, dieser Aspekt wird eher überschätzt -, die Verkaufsplatzierung und den Verweis auf ähnliche Titel zum eben gesuchten.

Genau dies finde ich beim kleinen Buchhändler im Grätzel natürlich auch – vorausgesetzt, ich wohne in einer größeren Stadt. Aber die Ballung an Informationen im Netz wächst.

Mehr im Standard nachlesen.

 

 

Join us for the Frankfurt CEO panel: Disruption and New Frontiers

The CEO panel debate at the Frankfurt Book Fair is hosting leaders of this transformation, to discuss the transformation of the industry, and its future perspectives as they are shaped by their companies.
Wednesday October 10, 2012, from 14:30 to 16:00
Hall 4.2, room Dimension.
Speakers:
Santiago de la Mora, Director, Print Content Partnerships, EMEA , Google
Jamie Iannone, President, Barnes & Noble Digital Products
Elodie Perthuisot, Director of Books, Fnac
Michael Serbinis, CEO, Kobo
V.Valliappan, Category Head-Books, Indiaplaza

Details here

The Diversity Report 2010 is out: Mapping and analysing literary translations in Europe

The Diversity Report 2010 aims at portraying and mapping how a significant sample of the best renowned contemporary authors of literary fiction in Europe shape cultural diversity (and its limits) across 15 European book markets.

Translation of works of fiction makes stories, memories and idea travel across cultural boundaries. And literary authors and their work stand for the cultural richness of this continent.

However, our understanding of the flows of – and the barriers to – translation mostly lacks the empirical groundwork for a solid analysis.

Building on its two preceding reports, the Diversity Report 2010 will track ca. 200 well established fiction authors and their work across large parts of the European book markets and hence the cultural landscapes for a detailed account of

•  Who is translated into which languages, and who is not;

•  What languages are more receptive for translations, or are better received by other territories, than others;

•  What are the overarching patterns and trends with regard to translations of the core of European contemporary fiction?

Surveyed authors will include writers from English (British and South African), French, German, Austrian, Spanish, Swedish, Italian as well as, with specific emphasis, Central and Southeast Europe.

The Diversity Report 2010 will be presented and debated on March 31 st , 2011, at the World Book Summit 2011 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. ( www.wbs2011.si ) and at the London Book Fair, Centre for Literary Translation on April 12, 2011, 10 to 11 am.

eBooks: Kleine Verschiebung, grosse Wirkung!

Natürlich ist die Suche nach eBooks noch ziemlich mühsam, zu unberechenbar ist das Angebot, zu willkürlich, was von Verlagen digital zum sofortigen Download angeboten wird, und was nicht. Und die Wirrungen enden nicht mit der erfolgreichen Suche. Die fangen mit dem Fund erst so richtig an.

Das Auffälligste ist gewiss, wie durchgängig hier, auch bei deutschen Angeboten, plötzlich über den Preis geworben wird. “Jetzt kaufen. Print Ausgabe 31,00 Euro – durchgestrichen. eBook 26,99. Sie sparen 5,01. Sofort lieferbar (Download)”. Darunter wartet schon der “Warenkorb”.

Weiter lesen hier.

Deutscher Buchpreis: Congrats to Jung und Jung Verlag and winning author Melinda Nadj Abonji (and a quick foot note)!

With Melinda Nadj Abonji winning the Deutscher Buchpreis very unexpectedly (and Jung und Jung Verlag proving in a most stunning way that a very small publisher can land a very big hit in German language lands indeed!) I am, first of all, in line for all the best wishes! What an accomplishment!

This said – and in an earlier bet on this blog, based on Amazon.de market data, wrongly  predicting a head on head race between Autrian Doron Rabinovici and German Bachmann Prize winner Peter Wawerzinek, I must add that I am of course very pleased with the final result.

This just adds evidence that book landscapes are much more diverse and open to new voices, and new publishers, small and big, than many would suspect. Initiative, good knowledge of literature AND the trade pay off, and it is just not true that successful literature in Europe is more or less always much of the same. NO.

So we will very closely map incoming data about what this surprise evening will set off – and report here as well as through the channels of professional publishing media.

The Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry 2010: Join us at the Frankfurt Book Fair for a debate with industry leaders on facts, trends and outlooks

The Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry 2010:
Facts, Trends, Outlook.
Industry leaders discuss the business of publishing today
.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 14:30 – 16:00
Frankfurt Book Fair, hall 4.2, Room Dimension
Organiser: Livres Hebdo with buchreport, Publishers Weekly and The Bookseller.

What is the state of the publishing industry? What are the powerhouses, what the strategies and the perspectives for winning the game of change? How is the complex relationship between publishers and retail evolving in a landscape of changing roles?
Based on the empirical evidence as presented by the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry for the fourth year in a row, top representatives of leading global trade publishing and retail groups discuss where the business is going.
Two years into the financial crisis as well as into the take off of e-Books, the consolidation and the globalization of the business, as well as the challenges and opportunities from digital innovation are on top of everyone’s agenda.
But what does this mean, really?
Initiated in 2007 by the French book trade magazine Livres Hebdo, and co-published by buchreport (Germany), Publishers Weekly (US), and The Bookseller (UK), the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry is updated annually and has been researched by Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting.
In cooperation with the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Speakers:
Jesús Badenes, Managing director books, Planeta
Peter Field, CEO Penguin, UK
Carolyn Reidy, President and CEO, Simon & Schuster
Pascal Zimmer, Managing director, Libri, Germany

Moderated by Fabrice Piault and Rüdiger Wischenbart

Lesen – Vielfalt – Übersetzungen. Ein Rundgang zur Leipziger Buchmesse

(…)

Knapp neun Prozent aller Neuerscheinungen in deutschen Verlagen sind Übersetzungen. Davon entfallen etwa zwei Drittel auf die Belletristik. Zwei von drei Übersetzungen stammen von englischen Originalen ab, weitere rund zwölf Prozent aus dem Französischen. Das bedeutet, dass Übersetzungen aus allen anderen Sprachen insgesamt gerade einmal ein Fünftel aller Übersetzungen ausmachen.

Außerdem nimmt die Zahl der Übersetzungen ins Deutsche im langjährigen Durchschnitt kontinuierlich ab. Weitgehend unbemerkt hat Deutschland auch seinen Ruf als wichtigstes Übersetzungsland in jüngster Zeit an Frankreich abgeben müssen. Diese und ähnliche Daten deuten auf ein vertracktes Problem hin.

Stellt man sich die kulturelle Kommunikation zwischen unterschiedlichen Ländern und Sprachräumen als überaus komplexes Nervensystem vor, dann gehören die Übersetzungen von Büchern klarerweise zu den Hauptsträngen der Kommunikation. Komplexe Ideen und komplizierte Geschichten reisen meist nur über Sprachgrenzen hinweg, wenn sie auch als Übersetzungen angeboten werden. (…)

Die ganze Geschichte hier.

Back to live! With the European top 50 fiction authors 2010

After a pause of a few months – and lots of strategizing, research and development and just a huge load of regular work, this blog is back in operation. So expect to find posts and a few improvements here on a regular basis again.

The quick link of today points to the “50 Fiction Authors Whose Work Had the Greatest Impact on European Reading Markets in 2009“.

While we are fully aware of the leading trio – with Stieg Larsson, Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown -, the report and analysis carries quite a few surprises, too.

Only 21 of the 50 strongest authors write in English! Among the top 10, we find 3 Swedish crime authors. And we can deduct a number of insights on European reading markets – and how the reader’s curiosity seems to be much more substantial than conventional media reporting has it!

Freshly brewed: The “Diversity Report 2009” – Cultural diversity in translations of books: Mapping fiction authors across Europe.

Books allow ideas and stories to travel, and translations are the vehicle of choice. Oddly enough for such a fundamental mechanism at the core of culture and cultural diversity, we have little precise knowledge, and certainly no data based analysis about the patterns formed by those flows, and even less about the forces driving or hindering the exchange.

After having tried to map the flows of translation across Europe at the most general level in the “Diversity Report 2008”, the present analysis has the ambition to break down those general observations to the level of individual (fiction) authors and their work, and track how they move across languages, or how they do not. Metaphorically speaking, we try to get from a general physical map of the European landscape of translations to a road map.

Findings include:

  1. Books translated from English represent on average about one third of the bestselling authors and titles across the continents, with only Sweden being significant exception;
  2. The UK bestseller market is by far the most averse to translations.
  3. As one consequence, national preferences show a much wider variety of – particularly domestic – authors and books, representing on average another solid third of the top segment, to the effect that countries’ reading preferences seem to be much more diverse, than ‘homogeneous’ across Europe;
  4. Only a small group of authors writing in ‘other’ languages than English or the respective local majority vernacular succeed with translations of their work in a larger number of markets and countries, with some like Larsson and Zafón out-competing their Anglo-Saxon peers;
  5. The very top segment in bestseller lists is a very narrow segment indeed, propelling just 2 or 3 authors in their own category for each country, with the singularity of this high peak marking a significant distinction between markets, and remarkably, it is the UK and Sweden, or two markets with a particularly high percentage of domestic authors on top, where the entire curve of the bestselling authors is considerably flatter than in countries with lesser impact of domestic authors;
  6. At least for the past few years, a recognizable number of European, non-English writing bestseller authors evolved and found a broad mainstream readership across markets and languages, yet exclusively authors from “Western” (or “old”) Europe, forming an exclusive club which is almost impossible to access for authors e.g. from CEE.This West-East “one way street” described above is the only pattern where West & East forms meaningful categories, just as “big” and “small” languages and markets of origin seem to play a far smaller role than often assumed;
  7. While in EUWest, no systematic distinction between a (‘high’) literary elite and eventual access to the top bestselling segment across Europe through translations seems to prevail, this is clearly the case for authors from CEE who made their way to the European literary ‘elite’, but as niche authors, not as authors found access to the European mainstream book readership.
  8. The diversity in fiction bestsellers in terms of treated topics, background of the authors, tonalities and styles is huge, and many of the most successful authors are initially ‘made by readers’, and not planned, contradicting, in the initial career of authors and their successful books, the popular notion of bestsellers being engineered and homogenous.

These findings come with a few provocative insights.

  • The market for rights and licenses which is currently the core driver for translations, does not take in the full spectrum and diversity of what is on offer from authors across Europe, nor what seems to be reader’s preferences. Instead, only a limited set of authors from a restricted set of backgrounds are given the full access to the European reading markets, despite the fact that the recent careers of European non-English writing authors provide strong indications that an appreciative readership for such a wide diversity may exist. The funding policies for translations lack the information and the tools for a realistic assessment of their efficiency.
  • The data compiled and, at least partly, analyzed for this report suggest that a more differentiated and realistic picture of the cultural dimensions of the European book and reading markets can actually be developed;
  • The ambivalent role of English as a bottleneck and as a driving force:
    All general translation data show the evidence of how little is translated into English, if compared to other target languages; and yet more of the ‘elite’ authors are available in English than what is generally assumed. English therefore plays a significant role as a transfer language (together with French and German), a factor of growing importance as the readiness of reading literature in certain foreign languages (most often this means: in English) seems to spread. In many markets, English reading of books written not only in English, but in any language seems to expand, and new digital technologies will drive this development forcefully in the near future.
  • For policy makers, this brings up the critical question of either continuing to focus on translations between the many languages, or to also emphasize lead programs of translations into English.
  • The potential for innovation by digital:
    As digital distribution currently picks up momentum with electronic reading devices and most new titles being rapidly available not only in print, but also in digital formats, there is a strong likeliness that books in translation as well as in their original editions (or in one transfer language, notably in English) will spread much more easily than in the past; this aspect has the potential to develop into a “game changing” mechanism for all kinds of niche reading, hence for literary translations, within a relatively short period of time.

The full “Diversity Report 2009” is ready for download at www.wischenbart.com/translation .

Bestselling Fiction in Europe 2008 / 2009: An Extraordinary Case of Diversity within Strict European Contours.

Together with Miha Kovac of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, we did a survey on book bestseller lists in seven major European markets over the past 12 months The top 40 writers divide into 13 writing in English, and 27 writing in other – European – languages, with Swedish (8), French (5) as the strongest, beating Dutch and German (each 4), Italian (3), Spanish (2), and Brazilian Portuguese (1). Not a single writer to be translated from a non-European language could make it into the top 40 author’s charts (in previous years, however, the Japanese Haruki Murakami, or Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk may have spoiled this exclusively Euro-centric pattern, yet only slightly). Not even a Central European or a Russian author is among the top listed. However within the English realm, 2 authors with clearly non-Western bearings and agendas are among those who met with the largest reading audiences across the continent, Afghanistan born Khaled Hosseini and India born Man Booker Prize Winner of 2008, Aravind Adiga.

More to this here.

A separate, yet related piece by us has been published by the Frankfurt Book Fair here.

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