THE CASE OF THE E-BOOK IN "SMALL LANGUAGE" CULTURE: MEDIA TECHNOLOGY AND THE DIGITAL SOCIETY.

The article describes a research project conducted in Sweden and its initial base-line results that were produced by investigating statistical data from general statistical sources, representative surveys o f the Swedish population, and from public and academic libraries. The project looks into the change introduced into the book sector by e-books. Sweden was chosen as a special case - a country with a high literacy level and high penetration of information technology into everyday life of people. A t the same time, the spread of e-books is at the very start and it seems that the diffusion of e-books, their production, distribution and use are affected by the problems characteristic of a typical small publishing markets. The authors present the goals of the project and the theoretical framework. The data were collected in 2012 and demonstrate the relatively low scale of e-book publishing and use. Libraries emerge as the main channel of access to e-books for readers. The usual problems of e-book production and distribution that are visible in other countries are observed in Sweden as well: e-books legally are not books, but services of licensed software and thus excluded from the privileges enjoyed by paper books; readers demand more e-books but are not ready to pay for them the same price as for traditional books and prefer to acquire them through free channels. Publishers seek to maintain the monopoly o f e-book distribution and fear piracy. Libraries lose independence of acquisition and collection management. The choice of e-books by readers is determined by access to technology, age and education as well as reading habits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]