With reports emerging that Amazon is finally set to gear up its Brazil plans, it seems electronic goods (high demand, high margins, easy shipping) will be the first non-books sector on the agenda, and that might just be good news for ebooks.
In India, where Amazon is engaged in a major push to dominate the India e-commerce landscape, Amazon has made an art form of partnering with smartphone manufacturers. It is a common sight of late to see new smartphones released with the Kindle India app (and Prime Video, etc) pre-installed on new phones, and a Kindle ebooks deal as part of the package.
Amazon faces more ebook competition in Brazil than in India, and will no doubt see the expansion into electronic goods as an opportunity to promote the Kindle store, and especially Kindle Unlimited, in the country.
At the time of posting, over 80% of the Kindle Brazil top 100 ebooks are in KU, compared to just 40% on Amazon US.
I had two Brazilian Portuguese books in Kindle Unlimited Brazil for over a year. Sales and page-reads were practically zilch. Lots of free downloads during the KDP Select free days, but almost zilch for KU downloads or page reads. And that was despite having a bit of help from Amazon Brazil featuring my book several times. Meanwhile, the moment I pulled the two books out of there and ‘went wide’, they started selling pretty nicely on GooglePlay and getting lots of nice reviews. Which tells me Amazon’s KU presence in Brazil is anemic. They’ve got readers, they just don’t want to PAY for Kindle Unlimited.
I represent author Robin Gunn and we have two published books in eBook form thru Bookbaby in Portuguese. Unfortunately, in the first book, we did not elect to put DRM (Digital Rights Management). Once on Amazon it was immediately hacked and turned into a PDF file that was shared all over Brazil. We sold approximately 5 copies. Brazil is still the Wild West and authors need to be aware and careful before spending their effort, time, and resources.
I think if someone is intent on pirating an ebook to make a PDF they will know how to hack any DRM.
Piracy exists everywhere, and we need to take it in our stride. Books from big publishers and small publishers and indie authors alike are routinely pirated and can be found on pirate sites. Yet still many of these publishers are selling in huge volumes, depending on the book’s perceived value to its audience.
Brazil has a vibrant print and digital book market, so clearly PDF copies, while undoubtedly out there, are not impacting the market that much.
It was only in January this year that IPA President Karine Pansa was stressing the importance of digital as Brazilian publishing revenues hit record highs.
https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/2022/01/23/ipa-vps-karine-pansa-on-the-importance-of-digital-as-brazils-2021-publishing-revenues-reach-record-high/