The Global eBook Report: Current Conditions & Future Projections. Update October 2013 by Rüdiger Wischenbart Page B

e-enabled books, compatible with the Kindle platform. At present, some of its fiction and general interest titles have been made available in EPUB format.
    Diamond Comics , another popular comics books publisher in Hindi and English and other languages, has also digitized its formidable list and made it available for web, and for iPad and Android, in partnership with the Readwhere newsstand platform.
    The multilingual children’s picture book publishers like Tulika Publishers and Pratham Books were among the first to experiment with book apps, with multilingual content in the case of Pratham, on the Apple App Store, in partnership with application platforms like Fliplog Reader and Mango Reader . Pratham makes its books available on open platforms as well as on the entire range of reader applications, including The Wink Store, Google Play , Rockstand , etc. Popular children’s picture-book publishers Karadi Tales who are known for audio books, flash videobooks, DVDs and CD-ROMs, recently launched some of their books on the App Store. At the New Delhi World Book Fair 2013 , another children’s books publisher, Katha , announced the launch of its ebooks list, developed in partnership with Impelsys .
    Publishers in Indian languages are also launching ebook catalogues, by digitizing their backlist. Among them the notable ones are from publishers like Rajkamal Prakashan[Rajkamal Prakashan] (in Hindi); Mehta Publishing House (250 titles in Marathi launched in last week of September 2013); and Sapna Book House .
    DC Books , the popular Malayalam publishing house, was one of the first among Indian languages’ publishers to launch ebooks. Most of their titles are available as ebooks, which are selling just under 10% of their sales, according to its CEO, Ravi Deecee .
    The Wink Store , which was launched in late 2010, was unique because it was able to sign up several trade publishers producing Indian-language books, giving the language segment its first entry-point into ebook publishing. While many of the publishers who signed up, started with PDFs, it was their first effort at testing the waters. The Store, which is an associate of DC Books, offers ebooks and emagazines. In 2010, it had launched and marketed the Wink eReader, an e-ink device, which has now been discontinued. But the ebooks and the apps are available for readers to read on other devices.
    Another initiative, Bookganga , based in the US, with its technology centre in Pune, retails more than 75,000 ebooks in Marathi , Gujarati , Hindi and Sanskrit languages, which can be read through their own app.
    For many reasons, including difficulties of font support on e-reading devices, and also the investments that they need to make, to adopt a digital workflow, the publishers in Indian languages are held back from launching their electronic publishing programmes.
    The many digital service providers that have been servicing foreign publishers so far, are now aggressively seeking domestic business from Indian publishers. The boom in tablet market is also helping the start-up software ventures in India to court publishers for potential content partnerships. But the collaborations have been few.
    Delivery platforms: Amazon, Flipkart, Kobo
    There are interesting developments taking place in retail of trade ebooks. Ebook retail is taking off from the online retail of physical books, which is continuing to grow too, with almost 25–35% of printed books sales coming from online retail for many publishers.
    Amazon’s homegrown competition in India, Flipkart , which started as an online retailer of books, and later introduced other categories of products, had forayed into retailing ebooks in September 2012 through its Flyte digital store (which started with selling music). Flyte was shut down in May 2013. By August 2013, Flipkart launched the Flipkart ebook app for Android, iOS and Windows platforms, as well as a web reader. The company has tied up with several Indian publishers,