Ever wanted to know what ebooks are doing across the globe?

The newest ebook report has been published, looking at different publishing markets across the world, including the U.S., U.K., Europe, Brazil, China, India and more.

The Global Ebook report, which it is now called, also looked at emerging trends in the digital publishing world such as regulation and subscription services. The report is published by Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, after O’Reilly Media handed it over when it discontinued the Tools of Trade Conference.

In the U.S. and U.K. markets, the report states ebook penetration has slowed. However, it seems there is a greater move toward innovation with subscription services, but also the burgeoning relationship of publishers with new partners.

More importantly though ebooks are triggering a wave of structural innovation in an old industry, with ever-broadening experiments to explore new business models, such as subscriptions as drivers for reading communities (Nubico in Spain, Scoobe in Germany, Youboox in France, Oyster in the US), new models of cooperation between publishers and telecommunication giants and other partners in technology, and scores of startups, which include digital-only publishing ventures, social reading platforms, or service providers that adapt data mining to the requirements of publishing and book retail.

The report repeats earlier findings that the U.S. market has seen a decline in ebook sales. It was the first time the industry saw a decline in e-books in the first six months of 2013. The numbers were down 5 percent.

When it comes to looking at the American market, there are interesting notes here. However, the report is just a recap of the news over the last year. It’s a good tool to have, to be able to look back and compare information to the year before, but the report doesn’t say why or give calculated theories as to why any of the numbers are what they are.

Nevertheless, it is interesting reading and a good reminder of what we have witnessed over the past several years.

I didn’t have time to read the whole report. I just read the U.S. portion to see if there was anything new. I am more intrigued to read what it has to say on other countries and will come back with more information on that when I have it.

In the meantime, the full report can be downloaded for free until the end of the month.

Editor Note: Many thanks to the alert reader who noticed that we hadn’t linked properly to the report. It’s fixed now.

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