Our clients often ask, "If my book is written in English-why should I be concerned about worldwide distribution?"

The answer lies in an analysis of the world population and their primary and secondary language based on their census reports and other studies. Obviously, English is the native language for the US, UK, most of Canada, Ireland,  Australia, and New Zealand.

Here's where it gets interesting. Here's a list of countries and the percentage of people that speak English. Okay-so the stats may not show how well they speak English as a second language, but the numbers show how strong the potential markets are in those countries for consumption of books written in English.

With over 1.2 billion people, India ranks second (after the US) with a raw number of 125 million listing English as a second language-or 33.3% of their total population. (226,400 listed it as a first language).  

Western European countries showed impressive percentage numbers for people speaking English when combining English as a primary language and ESL. The Netherlands 87%, Belgium 59%, Germany  56%, France 35.7%, Italy 29%, Poland 29%, Spain 27%. Scandinavian countries ranked even higher by percentage-Norway 89%, Sweden 89%, Denmark 86%, Finland 63%.  

What about Asia you ask? In Hong Kong 35.9% speak English.

The most startling revelation comes when you add up the numbers of English speakers. If you add up the English speaking populations of just Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and Poland, you get a staggering potential market of 84,981,456 buyers for books written in English!  Add that number to the English speaking population of India (remember 125,000,000?) and throw in Thailand (27%) with 17,121,187 and Israel (85%) at 6,205,000. The math comes to 272,098,691 English speakers, which exceeds the US English speaking population by population by almost 5 million.  

Although these statistics don't show how many people read English, or what their book buying habits are, you can now see how important worldwide distribution of your book is! We do know through experience that there is a hunger for eBooks in many parts of the world.  The internet has simplified the task of marketing a book internationally. 

We pride ourselves in being the world's largest distributor of eBooks and look forward to getting your book out there.