Amazon has been in talks with a number of Swedish logistics companies, including PostNord, as it continues to explore its Scandinavian options.
While Amazon has of course not confirmed a date, the expectation seems to be later this year, which is in keeping with speculation I explored here at TNPS back in March:
At that time the rumours included the possibility that Amazon was a looking at a simultaneous launch across the region, with Sweden, Denmark and Finland in the cross-hairs.
That may or may not be the case – so far the only reports emerging are that Amazon is in talks with Swedish companies – so perhaps a Sweden only launch is the most likely scenario.
But we can reasonably safely say books and ebooks will not, at this stage, be on the agenda, given there are no reports emerging that Amazon is talking with Scandinavian publishers.Amazon, was apparently in negotiations with Swedish publishers back in 2013, but self-evidently nothing came of it at the time.
This time publishers are, so far at least, out of the loop.
That said, the Kindle does support Swedish, Finnish, Danish and Norwegian, and given the fact you’d be hard-pressed to find many Scandinavians who do not speak English the region would be a logical next step for the Kindle store should Amazon revive its global Kindle ambitions (it’s been four years since the last Kindle store was launched).
Last week we reported how OverDrive had won a four year contract to supply Sweden’s digital libraries:
OverDrive wins 4 year contract to supply ebooks to Sweden’s libraries
As I’ll be exploring in and upcoming post here at TNPS, there are concerns for Norway’s publishing industry, although the reports emerging are contradictory, but overall the Scandinavian book markets, including Iceland, are just too good to ignore.
So while Amazon’s short-term indifference may be down to relative margins (there’s a lot more profit for Amazon selling a mobile device than a printed book, and the whole of Scandinavia has a population smaller than that of Texas) my guess is perhaps in the next decade, once Amazon has tested the waters, we will see Jeff Bezos look again at the potentially lucrative Scandinavian book market.
