Predictions

ABI Research has just finished up a report this week on how people will be using tablets. The whole report is behind a paywall, but they did drop a few hints about what you can expect to happen. According to their theories, we’re just at the beginning of what’s going to be a long period of increasing sales of apps, with media tablet owners expected to average more than 31 downloads per year per tablet.

They have also made the rather obvious prediction that consumers will opt for the more versatile media tablet over dedicated eReaders.This is a trend that we may already be seeing, so it’s not a stretch to suggest that it will continue. The biggest growth in readers will be among seniors (ages 60+) and children (ages 1-9). “The magic of media tablets for seniors and children is the touch screen interface. It’s so intuitive,” adds Mark Beccue, senior analyst. “These demographic groups will rely heavily on downloaded apps over web surfing on their media tablets.”

Enhanced eBook apps and other media apps are expected, in the near future, to replace the portable DVD player for entertaing kids on trips. ABI is predicting that in 2016, nearly one billion media tablet apps designed for young children will be downloaded.

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Smashwords founder Mark Coker thinks 2011 is poised to be the year for indie eBook authors.

With eBook adoption growing, Coker predicts that eBook sales will grow, agents will play a bigger role in the process, eBook prices will drop, and international eBook markets will explode.

GalleyCat has Coker’s predictions for the New Year. Here is one: “Agents write the next chapter of the ebook revolution – Agents, serving the economic best interests of the best-selling authors, will bring new credibility to self publishing by encouraging authors to proactively bypass publishers and work directly with ebook distribution platforms. Agents will use these publishing platforms for negotiating leverage against large publishers. The conversation will go something like this: ‘You’re offering my author only 15-20% list on ebooks when I can get them 60-70% list working direct with an ebook distributor like Smashwords or a retailer like Amazon?’”

Follow this link to see Coker’s ten predictions.

Earlier this week, we published a 2007 list of 10 reasons why Kindle will fail, meditating on our misguided predictions. However, back in November of 2007, Business Week published a list of five reasons why the eReader would succeed.

Thanks to Aaron Pressman for sharing the link to his thoughtful story from 2007. Here are a few of our favorite reasons why Pressman thought the platform would succeed back in 2007.

“Solves real “problems” for consumers and readers”
“Moves the value equation in favor of consumers”
“Smart design changes the existing product landscape”

Following a speech at the Authors Guild gala this week, author Garrison Keillor declared: “I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea.” In a NY Times op-ed, the author proceeded to outline the industry’s problems and poke fun at self published authors.

Here’s an excerpt: “And if you want to write, you just write and publish yourself. No need to ask permission, just open a Web site. And if you want to write a book, you just write it, send it to Lulu.com or BookSurge at Amazon or PubIt or ExLibris and you’ve got yourself an e-book. No problem. And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.”

Flavorwire collected responses from various publishing folk, including this GalleyCat editor. Blogger Maud Newton had this response: “It is not only possible, but increasingly common, for people to read the New York Times on the smartphones Keillor disdains. Nicholson Baker, who fought so hard against the destruction of libraries’ print collections, reads books on his iPhone. Toni Morrison has a Kindle. Reading novels, she has said, is like entering another world; once they’re lost in the story, many readers don’t care whether the delivery mechanism is a piece of paper or a screen.”

Someday, enhanced eBooks will come with blimps, airplanes, and other vehicles. Like the video embedded above, you will be able to fly the blimp using the eBook and your iPad.

Actually, that sounds like a ridiculously silly and expensive idea. But nevertheless, we, like most of the tech world, had to link to this crazy little video of an iPad-driven blimp.

Here’s more from Engadget: “Some are smitten by the iPad, some wonder just what the heck they’d do with the thing. We finally have an answer for members of the latter group: iPad blimp. The lighter-than-air portion of this equation features an Arduino controller board and some helium, while the decidedly heavier-than-air iPad runs an app to receive a video signal from the blimp and to send it controls via accelerometer.”

Hoping to get out of the house in New York tonight? Hoping to beat back the snow with a good publishing panel? Well, sadly, you’re out of luck, as the Future of Book Reportage panel discussion scheduled for tonight at 7 p.m. in the Melville House Bookstore has been postponed.

GalleyCat‘s got the full scoop:

The new date will be announced soon. At the panel, this GalleyCat editor will join journalists and reviewers to discuss “the future of book reportage.” The panel includes: Laura Miller (Salon.com), Michael Miller (Time Out New York), Craig Morgan Teicher (eBookNewser), and John Mutter (Shelf Awareness)

Here’s more from the site: “With both the book industry and the journalism industry in historic tumult, whither literary journalism? Where will people read about books and authors and publishers in the future? Will reviews remain important? Will blogs play a more or less important role? Will reportage of industry trends and business developments improve or worsen? What kind of journalism will impact how people hear about books, and where they buy them?”

See you at the rescheduled panel, probably in late February or early March.

Look up and to your right. See that little box under the eBookNewser tagline (“The First Word On Digital Publishing”): it’s an anonymous tip box. MediaBistro moved it from some much more obscure place on the page so you can actually see–and hopefully send us your tips, anonymously.

What does eBookNewser want to know? Obviously Apple’s secrets, but if you ain’t got access to those, we’d love to hear if a new gadget’s got a glitch. We’d love to hear if the publisher you work for has struck a a new eBook deal. Maybe you’re following somebody on Twitter that we’re not and they said something smart. Maybe your Toyota doesn’t stop when you hit the breaks…wait, wrong blog.

Anyway, if you’ve got eBook news to share, we’d love to hear it. Just type it in that box and click send.

OverDrive, the eBooks and downloadable audiobooks distributor for libraries, has just released its 2009 library stats. The release summarizes the most-checked-out eBooks and audiobooks at OverDrive-client libraries. The most popular eBook was, not surprisingly, Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol.

More surprising, however, is the fact that, according to OverDrive, there were “401 million website pages viewed by library patrons (69 percent growth over 2008) and 8.7 million digital titles checked out (63 percent increase over 2008)”

The “Digital titles” mentioned above include eBooks, audiobooks, and music.

Here are the top five adult fiction and nonfiction titles according to OverDrive:

Most Downloaded Adult Fiction eBooks from the Library (2009)
(Title, Author, Publisher)

1. “The Lost Symbol,” Dan Brown, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
2. “Devil in Winter,” Lisa Kleypas, HarperCollins
3. “Again the Magic,” Lisa Kleypas, HarperCollins
4. “Because You’re Mine,” Lisa Kleypas, HarperCollins
5. “Dreaming of You,” Lisa Kleypas, HarperCollins

After the jump, see a list of the most downloaded adult nonfiction eBooks…

Read more

Jeff Rivera at our sibling blog GalleyCat continues his series of interviews on publishing in ten years time with a post from former Soft Skull publisher, and outspoken publishing person, Richard Nash. As ever, Nash has some provocative things to say.

First off, he says that five years from now is the new ten years from now: “Most predictions for 2020 that are not actually wrong will happen by 2015 or sooner.”

Nash’s predictions are bolstered by some heady stuff indeed (Nash did go to Harvard…), as well as in a firm disdain for greedy business practices: “Long-form text-only narrative will continue to thrive as it has since cavemen gathered around the fire, just as painting has thrived since Lascaux. The advent of more and richer iterations of multimodal entertainment and edification will not kill off others (either multi or single mode) in the future, just as they did not in the past, though they certainly will kill businesses with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement based on past success in a given mode.”

Nash sees digital and print living together in some interesting ways. Click over to GalleyCat for the full post.