Competition in the online bookselling market is set to increase in EU markets, with Amazon, the biggest Internet bookseller, poised to accelerate its European expansion. It is to start Amazon-branded Internet bookshops in Britain and Germany. The imminent launch of the two European sites, which are expected to adopt a similarly aggressive pricing strategy to Amazon.com in the US, comes as Amazon's dominance of the online book market is threatened by growing competition.
Last week, Bertelsmann, the German media group which owns the world's largest book publishing and book club businesses, agreed terms to buy 50 per cent of the Internet sales arm of Barnes & Noble, the US book chain, for $200 million (£130 million).
Both Bertelsmann and Barnes will each invest an additional $100 million in expanding barnesandnoble.com's core US business.
Barnes will source foreign language books from Books Online, the online bookseller Bertelsmann plans to launch next month in Germany, France, Britain and Benelux. It will also supply US titles to their European customers.
Amazon, which has become one of the best-known Internet brands by pioneering the development of the online book market, has timed the launch of its British and German sites to pre-empt Books Online's introduction.
Since its launch, Amazon has supplied books to customers outside the US from its Seattle headquarters. But customers outside the US have had to pay higher delivery charges and to wait longer for their orders.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, realised the company needed to operate locally outside the US to remain competitive against the growing number of foreign rivals.
This year, Amazon acquired Telebook, the biggest online bookseller in Germany, and BookPages, a similar business in Britain. Both companies have since continued to operate their old services under their own names. But behind the scenes they have been working with Amazon to develop expanded services that will use the Amazon brand.
In Britain a new amazon.co.uk site will replace the old BookPages operation. It will offer a wider range of books than BookPages' 1.2 million titles, including thousands of US books.
