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registered more than 7,000 ebook library users. In September 2013, Biblos started to offer users the opportunity to buy ebooks from the library platform if no copies for lending were available. Mladinska knjiga started to run its ebook store in July 2013 with 200 titles, including a majority of its bestselling authors.
    By the time this report was completed, it was clear that, in first nine months of 2013, sales of Slovene ebooks grew more than 300% in comparison to all of 2012 (when only Apple’s iBookstore was open for business), and the number of available ebook titles in Slovene has doubled. Nevertheless, ebook sales still represented less than 1% of the overall market, and only Mladinska knjiga and Studentska zalozba are systematically publishing their new releases as ebooks, together with print.
    The e-bestselling authors of 2012 and 2013 were Jonas Jonnason and Sylvia Day, and the Slovene publisher of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy decided against an ebook version of this title. Two heavy bestsellers of 2013, Dan Brown’s Inferno and Sylvia Day’s Entwined with You were published simultaneously in ebook and print formats. It can be assumed that, concerning reading devices, tablets and smartphones prevail.
    Ebooks are subject to the normal 22 percent VAT, while printed books benefit from a reduced rate of 8.5 percent. A legal deposit applies to all Slovene ebooks.
    Table 7-10. Slovenia
    Key Indicators
Values
Sources, comments
Book market size (p+e, at consumer prices)
€80 million in 2012
Estimates by Mladinska publishers
Titles published per year (new and successive editions)
5,621 (from 6,139 in 2010, of which around 3,500 are trade titles)
Estimates by Mladinska publishers
eBook titles (available from publishers)
1000
Estimates by Studentska zalozba and Mladinska publishers

Romania
    The Romanian book market saw a major downturn around 2008–2009, and since then, it has remained flat. Kiosk (or partwork) editions have also decreased in volume recently.
    An ebook segment only started to emerge in 2012, and for 2013, it is estimated that the market share will be above 1%. Approximately 65% of newly published fiction books are converted to eformat and put on sale as ebooks. According to industry estimates, only 10 to 12 trade publishing houses have started to release ebooks, including Polirom, Humanitas, and Litera. Currently, some 1,500 to 1,800 titles are available in digital format, mostly in EPUB. The leading ebook distributor is Elefant .
    Besides local authors, Tracy Chevalier and Haruki Murakami were e-bestsellers in the first half of 2013. As in most of the other CEE countries, the VAT on ebooks is much higher than the VAT on printed books (24% vs. 9%).
    No Kindle editions are produced, as Romanian is currently not among the officially supported languages.
    Source: Siviu Lupescu, Polirom , Iasi, Romania.

Serbia
    The Serbian book market has an estimated retail value of €50 to €70 million (excluding textbooks).
    No local distribution platform for ebooks exists so far, as the cost of development would exceed the possible income. For the Apple platform, some local subcontractors operate and normally add a markup of 30 percent on the retail price of a work, in addition to Apple’s 40 percent fee, leaving a mere 30 percent for the originators of the work. Amazon’s direct publishing services are not available in Serbia, and the Serbian alphabet (either in Cyrillic or in Latin) is not actively supported for the generation of ebooks.
    Piracy is endemic, with illegal downloads of movies, music, and now ebooks being routine for many consumers. As a result, content owners (namely publishers but also authors and translators) are very reluctant to expose their content to piracy in digital formats.
    Source: Aleksandar Drakulic, Knjizara , Belgrade.
    Conclusions on Central and Eastern Europe
    In this current, early stage, small markets overall seem to lag behind in their domestic production of ebooks, as