Mondadori and Amazon today announced an agreement which will make more than 2,000 e-books published by the Mondadori Group available to Kindle customers. Customers across Europe will be able to buy Mondadori books through Kindle stores on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.com.

According to Mondadori, the Mondadori, Einaudi, Sperling&Kupfer and Piemme publishing houses will offer thousands of e-books to Kindle customers in Europe from Kindle Stores. In addition, Mondadori expects to add another 1,000 titles by Christmas for readers to enjoy, including all of the new titles planned by each publishing house in the coming autumn-winter season.

The Mondadori trade catalogue includes more than 10,000 titles, and in addition to many backlist titles all of the Group’s most important new titles have been launched simultaneously in print and digital formats since last January.

“For Mondadori, working with Amazon to make thousands of e-books available to Kindle customers is an important step forward in the Group’s digital development strategy,” Maurizio Costa, deputy chairman and chief executive of Mondadori. “After a year of studies and experimentation, we expect 2012 to show great acceleration of e-book sales in Italy. E-books have tremendous potential in our country and I expect them to be a major part of our business going forward,” Costa continued. “Mondadori aims to play a driving role, making available to readers by 2012 more than 8,000 books in digital format and we are excited to work with Amazon to take this step”.

“One of our top priorities for Kindle is increasing selection for our customers in all languages,” said Greg Greeley, vice president, Amazon EU. “We already offer customers in over 100 countries thousands of foreign language titles. Now, together with Mondadori, we are excited to bring Italian-language titles to Kindle readers in Europe from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.com.”