While Amazon and Kobo are both looking to launch a Portuguese language ebookstore in Brazil, one media retailer stole a march on them and has opened a new ebookstore in Portugal.
eBook Portugal is reporting that Wook now sells ebooks. This retail website is owned by Grupo Porto Editora (a major Portuguese publisher), and it's stocking around 1500 titles in Portuguese (and 200k in English), including both translations and titles published locally. They plan to triple the number of Portuguese ebooks by the end of the year.
The ebooks are sold in Epub, PDF, and eWook. It's not clear what the differences are between the formats, but Wook does say that the eWook format has a browser based HTML5 reading app, while the Epub and PDF formats are constrained by Adobe DE DRM. Wook isn't offering an ereader or app for the Epub ebooks just yet.
That's a rather limited number of titles, given that Amazon offers 5400 ebooks in Portuguese in the Kindle Store, and Barnes & Noble even stocks 2100 titles in the Nook Store. Of course the latter aren't available in Portugal, but the fact remains that B&N has more titles.
P.S. I used to wonder why Amazon was more interested in Brazil than in Portugal, given where the language was invented. A brief look at the population stats answers that question. Portugal has a population around 10 million, while Brazil has a population of 195 million. Which market would you pursue?
The name is pretty bad too unless its owned by Chewbacca.
Maybe, but it does set them up quite nicely as a B&N partner. They could sell the Wookie.
Does the logo do something cool if you put old-school 3-d glasses on?
No, but it looks like it’s supposed to, doesn’t it?
I think it’s to appeal to those on an acid trip.