e-books in figures

the development of e-books in the Dutch language market (Q4 2014)

sales
sold loaned1
quarterly (x 1,000) quarterly (x 1,000)
‘An e-book in the
library is averagely
800 800

600 600

400 400
3 years old and is
200 200 borrowed 10 x more
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
0
2014
often than that it’s
been sold.’

share of e-books in share of e-books in

total book sales2 online book sales2
‘In Q4 2014 the sales
of e-books were 22% 5% 26.4%
higher than the same digital digital

quarter of the year

95% 73.6%
before.’ physical physical

breakdown of genres (sales) breakdown NUR 300 (sales)

100%
10%
75% 2%
3%
50%
11% 37%
25%
‘Children’s books,
0%
non-fiction and 37%
physical digital
educational are
literature fiction (300)
management (800)
non-fiction (400 + 600)
travel (500)
relatively least repre- novel (NUR 301 en 302) literary non-fiction (NUR 320)

sented in e-books.’
human development (700) educational (900 + 100 + 000) thriller (NUR 305, 330 en 332) fantasy (NUR 334)
children’s books (200) romance (NUR 343) others

supply
e-book versus paper file formats file security (sales)3

13.2% 1.6% 1.4%

2.1%

83% ePub2
84.7% watermark
97%
of the titles in the Bestseller 60 ePub 3 Adobe DRM
are available as e-book as well PDF not protected

publishers and retailers devices4

titles publishers retailers 1,400,000 7,900,000 10,000,000
e-readers tablet owners smartphone
owners

And many others

191 7%
8% 7% 11%
Retailers are webshops and ecosystems that
35,633 3% 297 5% sell e-books, and the library which lends out
e-books.

CB has a central position in the distribution of e-books in The Netherlands and 1. Loaned titles are loans through Bibliotheek.nl.
2. Sales over the past 12 months.
Belgium. CB takes care of distribution and invoices of e-books to all e-book
3. Only sales from webshops (not the ecosystems), not loans.
sellers. 4. Source: GfK (December 2014).

Growth and/or shrink percentages are based on figures from

January 2015 the previous infographic (October 2014), unless indicated
This infographic is compiled from data from CB and GfK. Misprints reserved. No part of this publication otherwise.
may be reproduced without permission from CB.