On a purely anecdotal note, I often receive paperback books as gifts from Dutch friends — books and flowers are popular gifts.

E-readers are more expensive in Europe (both in real terms, and in relative terms), so maybe people are holding off for now, or buying a gadget with more functions.

The price of e-books are higher too. This is partly to do with taxes, but even in Ireland, where there is no sales tax on books, there is a notable difference in prices, and because we are talking about e-books, they can’t blame it on shipping.

On a related note, indie authors receive less commission on ex-U.S. royalties of Kindle book sales (they only receive standard commission rates in the $2.99 – $9.99 increased royalty range), so this might be a factor too.

And for indie authors based outside the US, there are a few barriers to entry which might be affecting the self-publishing scene there. They have to jump through extra hoops with the IRS (which is time-consuming and a bit of hassle), they face reduced income because they can’t list with PubIt, and they must be paid by cheque instead of wire transfer (unless they have a US or UK bank account), which delays payment, and many European banks will charge to process a U.S. check. Throw in a little uncertainty with exchange rates, and this adds up to being a factor too.

Finally, the café scene is very different in Europe. People are far more likely to read a paperback than a laptop. There is something about the olde worlde surrounding that make you feel gauche for going up to the dickie-bowed waiter and asking where you can plug in.

But mostly I think it’s cost. If prices drop (and they will) we will see a boom.

If you’re a reader outside the US and you read a lot of books that originate in the US, geo-restrictions will prevent you from buying those books as eBooks. I’m quite sure that this is artificially suppressing demand for Readers. Price is another issue. Even print books are more expensive outside the US.

Here’s some numbers to think about: I recently self-pubbed some backlist titles of mine for which I have had rights revert to me. I re-issued them with no-DRM and no geo-restrictions. On Amazon, about 30% of my sales are coming from outside the US/UK.

From that, I extrapolate that geo-restrictions may well be costing publishers an additional 30% in sales. If there were more books available to these readers, a eReader might be a much more attractive purchase.

A good indicator to the strength of the European trend would be to look at the publisher contracts and see if any houses still allow authors to reserve digital rights.

One thing I’ve noticed based on watching sales across the board is that the UK readers of ebooks are more price conscious than their American counterparts. So I think that when Amazon and others cut the cost of the ereader again (and some think Amazon will be giving Kindles away free in the not too distant future) that’ll really spark adoption in the UK when it becomes clear that the device will pay for itself in savings on books.