Someone just sent me a clipping from Metro, a free newspaper distributed in Milan, where Marco Ferrario of Bookrepublic.it gives his take on ebooks in Italy in 2011, including numbers.
I already gave numbers a few days ago here. There are indeed some really big discrepancies!
Let’s take a look:
- I talk about 3.7 million euros, Marco Ferrario says instead that the 2011 ebook market in Italy totalled “6-8 million euros”: he gives a rather rough estimate (and maybe I’m a bit too precise, working with the decimal point and all) but anyway he sees twice as much as I do.
- I talk about 500 thousand ebooks sold, Marco Ferrario says instead that “700-800 thousand” were sold: here again we have wide margins of tolerance but above all, even here, according to Ferrario the market is performing at twice the level I see.
So what’s the real situation? I suppose Ferrario’s numbers are taken from the research he’ll be presenting along with A.T. Kearney on February 2 . And so I wonder: do we really need an “authoritative market research company” to provide data with a margin of fluctuation of 2 out of 6 million (30%), or 100 out of 700 thousand (15%)? Well, I’m still sceptical, and I stick with my empirical, less bombastic data which seems more real to me. The ebook, and anyone working in this market, has no need to embellish the situation in order to entice customers – they simply arrive and will keep on coming on their own. And embellishing the data is always, in my opinion, a sign of weakness.
And now a word to you, Marco: disprove me please, I’m begging you, I’d certainly be delighted if ebooks are selling better 🙂
