At Frankfurt, Many Say Digital Will Take Over Print Books by 2018

Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 10/22/2008

• 40 percent predict digital will rule by 2018
• Only seven percent say publishers "driving" digitization efforts
• 50 percent say users will pay for online content

(This article first appeared in the October 21 issue of the LJ Academic Newswire.)

Well, Gutenberg, it was a good run. But according to some 40 percent of 1000 industry professionals who participated in a brief survey at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, issued via the Frankfurt Book Fair Newsletter, digital content will overtake traditional printed book sales by 2018. This is remarkable, given that ebook sales currently account for just a sliver of the estimated $25 billion book market. But, not so fast—some 33 percent of respondents said digital content would never surpass traditional books sales. 

That finding was one of many to reveal a divide over how—and how quickly—digitization will affect the book industry. Another apparent disconnect: some 70 percent of respondents said they felt they were ready for the digital future, but almost 60 percent of respondents said they do not currently use ebooks and e-readers at all. Some 66 percent of industry professionals, meanwhile, said they expect traditional books to dominate the market for the next decade. 

Amazon, Google
Of course, this is the Internet we’re talking about and, as we’ve seen with things like the e-journal, attitudes can shift very quickly. While in the near-term, professionals were divided over when the tipping point will come, they agreed that consumer attitudes will continue to evolve, with over 50 percent of respondents saying that Internet users would be “more willing” to pay for digital content in five years time than they are now. 

The Frankfurt Book Fair, held in Germany, is the biggest book fair in the world. This year it drew nearly 300,000 attendees, including more than 7000 exhibitors from over 100 countries—fertile ground for drawing opinions on the industry. 

Another interesting survey finding, meanwhile, suggested that the fate of the book was out of publishers’ hands. When asked who was “driving the move towards digitization in the book industry," only seven percent felt that publishers were leading the way. Some 22 percent said consumers were in charge, followed closely by e-retailer Amazon.com (21 percent), Google (20 percent), and the telecommunications sector (13 percent). Only two percent felt that authors were driving this aspect of the industry.

Job threat?
Respondents agreed that the industry faced some serious challenges to realizing the full potential of digitization, including copyright (28 percent) and Digital Rights Management (22 percent) issues, and adopting universal standards (21 percent). Some 26 percent of respondents said they needed a better base of “knowledge and strategy,” including market research and understanding and developing new business models. However, respondents said digitization also offered up potential new fields of cooperation, with 22 percent seeing “mobile handset manufacturers and networks,” as the most important future partners. Somewhat surprisingly, only 13 percent thought that the gaming industry was an important future collaborator.  

The survey offered some potentially gloomy news for certain sectors of the industry. While 39 percent of respondents agreed that online bookselling was the most important industry development in the 60-year history of the fair, some 25 percent forecasted that the traditional retail bookseller would be obsolete in the next 60 years; the literary agent (21 percent) and the editor (14 percent) also were said to be facing a slow demise.

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