Up until recently, the vast majority of authors would only be read in their countries of origin, or in the countries they chose to publish their works. It used to take an exceptional piece of literature, or at least one that was marketed in an extraordinary fashion, to really be captured and printed internationally. With the Internet's global reach, however, as well as the many different mechanisms in place online to read other people's work, the written word has become part of a global market that so far has seen incredible growth. Customers all over the world searching for e-books are a global market that publishers online are looking to satisfy.
E-books have incredible potential for reach and influence; it is, in a sense, limitless. Far from simply being advertised in traditional ways like posters and printouts, e-books have the full power of social media and viral marketing behind them. Various websites online also allow writers and authors to advertise their works. There are also different websites that allow one to publish their work for free, making it easier to create such influence and exploit such reach. Examples include Wattpad, which has become a melting pot of sorts for literature of all shapes and sizes. This is one site which many publishing companies have also chosen to be a sort of spawning ground for budding authors.
E-books are also easily spread, formatted, and reproduced in other countries due to their electronic nature. There is no shipping of printed material, no negotiation with large companies from other countries. There's only a simple click in a website that allows international sales and suddenly your work is available to every single person on the Internet who has a taste for reading and a credit or debit card in hand.
Sometimes even books in different languages can be found spreading across the typically English-dominated Internet. They may find their way into large migrant populations, or even be translated and localized if the work is deemed popular enough to warrant it. This is unprecedented in literature; for the first time, translations, and international distribution of works in foreign languages, are becoming popular, without having to build up a massive base first in other countries outside of the sphere of the parent language.
All these developments aren't always good things. There is the potential for the market to eventually become saturated, and for the world to be filled with bad self-published books that only become popular due to word of mouth and aggressive social media marketing. It can become very difficult to find diamonds in the rough, when "the rough" is so broad and crowded that the good ones are lost in the chaos. This is not enough, however, to offset the gains that come from diversifying the market and enabling more authors to contribute to the industry.
E-books are a global market, for better or for worse, and in this way, among many other ways, they have changed the way the literary medium works forever. You can only adapt to these changes or risk getting lost in the current.
