Poll at Frankfurt Book Fair: Almost 60 percent of publishing pros don’t read e-books at all
By Paul Biba
From a press release by the Frankfurt Book Fair. These are excerpts selected from a survey the organizers did of over 1000 industry professionals from 30 different countries.
As the much-hyped e-readers hit the stores, and digitization continues to revolutionize all aspects of the book trade, this year over 70 per cent of respondents revealed that they feel ready for the digital challenge. The survey also reveals that current opinion is divided on the future of the e-books and digital content versus the printed word. 40 per cent of respondents expect e-content to overtake traditional book sales as early as 2018—whereas a third predict that this will never happen.
Perhaps more surprisingly still, almost 60 per cent of respondents do not currently use e-books and e-readers at all, and 66 per cent of industry professionals still expect traditional books to dominate the market in five years time, with very few expecting e-books (seven per cent) or e-readers (two per cent) to be the main sources of revenue by 2013.
Digitization opens up new fields of co-operation. With which other sectors should the publishing industry work more closely?
• 22 per cent thought that mobile handset manufacturers and networks would be the most important future partners
• film (20 per cent), other consumer goods (19 per cent) and the music industry (18 per cent) followed
• only 13 per cent thought that the gaming industry was an important future collaboration
The survey looked at how digitization might shape the future of publishing, and whether some of the main components of the industry would still be around in 60 years time:
• 25 per cent forecast that the retail bookseller would be obsolete in 60 years
• the agent’s demise was also predicted by 21 per cent, and a similarly bleak future was expected for editors (14 per cent)
• 12 per cent of industry professionals think that e-readers are a passing craze, and will be gone in 60 years’ time
February 27th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Interesting statistics. My personal polling is that editors, at least, are big on eBook readers–if not for casual reading, at least for reading manuscripts. It’s a lot easier to carry a bunch slush pile in a reader than it is in a brief case–plus you don’t have to worry about spilling coffee on what you send back to the author.
My personal prediction, in 5 years, eBooks outsell paper books (in unit sales). As the most expensive books will be paper, another couple of years before dollar volume exceeds that of paper.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com