Czech Electronic Book Market – Obstacles and Opportunities

This master dissertation "Czech Electronic Book Market -- Obstacles and Opportunities" analyzes Czech market with e-books. The aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current situation on the market in terms of technologies, distribution models and legal issues. It describes commercial, free and illegal sources in the market, including a description of digitisation projects in Czech libraries. The thesis also includes a theoretical introduction to e-books and their development in the past. Details are discussed, focusing on technology, modern electronic readers with electronic ink. For comparison, the thesis also analyzes the U.S. market with e-books. In analytical part the individual portals with e-books on the market, their supply and user interfaces are compared. The real example analyzes the costs of an e-book and its comparison to costs of a printed book. At the end of the thesis, alternative models of distribution requirements for establishment of a new portal with e-books are characterised, the Creative Commons licenses are described and the current trend of e-journals is mentioned. Finally, I suggest recommendations especially for sellers on the Czech market describe the advantages and disadvantages of e-books in terms of individual roles in the distribution model and estimate the future market development. More detailed information related to the comparison of different types of electronic ink, a list of electronic readers that are available on the Czech e-book market at this time and specific examples of various users' interfaces that are being used on Czech e-books portals can be found in Appendix.