The global e-Book market has been valued at $14.5 billion dollars and is expected to reach more than $22 billion by 2017. These figures are courtesy of Kobo who published their inaugural Book Report.
“The advances that we’re seeing year-over-year are incredible, with more publishers, users and new technology changing the face of the industry at an unprecedented pace,” Kobo chief content officer Michael Tamblyn said in a statement.
What type of e-Books are customers reading the most globally? Overall, Canadians find romance to be the most engaging genre, with 62%completion, followed by fantasy (60%) and mystery (59%). Romance is also the most engaging genre in Italy (74%), the Netherlands (67%) and Great Britain (62%), while the French (70%), Australians and New Zealanders (64%) and Americans (44%) prefer a good mystery.
What’s more, according to Kobo’s data, Canadians love nothing more than to curl up with a good book in the cold winter months. Over the 2013 holiday season, they read almost 300 million virtual pages. 16 million of which were read on Christmas day alone.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.