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From Today’s Zaman:

 

Mehmet İnhan, the general manager of the online bookstore idefix.com, which introduced e-book sales in the Turkish market a year ago, said in an interview with the Anatolia news agency on Monday that the e-book market in Turkey was still in the very early phases of its development, with only 1,500 books released in electronic format a year.

İnhan noted that in the US, the birthplace of electronic books, e-books accounted for around 7 percent of the total number of books published a year, while in Europe this average was around 3 percent. İnhan also added that there has been a 200 percent growth in the e-book industry in the US over the past year.

“In Turkey, we have not yet reached a level that is statistically significant,” said İnhan. “In the countries mentioned, hundreds of thousands of e-books are in circulation, whereas in Turkey, the number of books that have been released in e-book format [in one year] is only 1,500.”

The number of e-book readers available in the electronics market in Turkey is also low, İnhan said, adding that they expected Turkey to reach the current rates in the West in the next four to five years.

İnhan said that as of May, e-book sales accounted for 8 percent of his company’s total sales. “Our authors and translators are not yet fully aware of what’s going on in the sector. Publishers in Turkey only managed to release 1,500 titles in e-book format, however, the [Turkish publishing] industry produces more than 30,000 titles annually,” he said.

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