Netherlands European Capital of Culture. Book sales are rising, but mainly in English
The Netherlands, a nation of 17.53 million intellectuals, the Atlantis on the North Sea, the Library of Alexandria with Germany and Belgium as its walls.
Our biggest export product was of course already KNOWLEDGE about our even greater agricultural exports while we are still allowed, but 2023 will be the year in which the Netherlands will finally explain it to the world. We read a lot more books. “The Dutch bought slightly more books in 2022 than in the previous year. Figures published by the CPNB Foundation show that 43.2 million books were sold last year, ranging from paper books to e-books. The total book market in 2022 was therefore worth around 664 million euros.“
And it seems that the West German dialect called Dutch is getting to know its spot better. That growth is entirely attributable to English language books. “The market for Dutch-language books has shrunk to some extent; Last year, sales of Dutch-language books fell by 3 percent. For Dutch-language fiction, the deduction was even 10 percent. The market for Dutch-language books has shrunk to some extent; Last year, sales of Dutch-language books fell by 3 percent. For Dutch-language fiction, the deduction was even 10 percent. The fact that more books were sold after all was entirely due to foreign-language books. One of the five books sold was in a foreign language, the vast majority of which were in English.“
Good thing. English is the legal language of North-Western Europe because it is not a country, Southern Europe is exempt because in the end they can’t do anything and the Baltic states are being postponed because nobody knows where they are.