How big will e-books be, how quickly?

The Economist has an interesting article about the growth in e-publishing, with views and comments on Amazon’s Kindle and the threats and opportunities offered by Apple’s iPad.

The Economist quotes two predictions about the future scale of e-books, PriceWaterhouseCoopers things e-books will be about 6% of the North American market by 2013 (compared with 1.5% in 2009). By contrast a spokesperson from publisher Simon and Schuster thought the USA figure might be 25%.

This got me thinking, what do I think is likely to happen, and how quickly do I think that it is going to happen.

I think my gut feel is that I would go with the lower figure in the short term, i.e. about 6% in 2013, in markets such as the US. I think this for several reasons. At the moment the book format has several advantages

1. Great battery length.
2. When reading in a risky situation (e.g. bath, train, in rucksack one is only risking the cost of the book, not the reader). 
3. Does not look odd or daft.
4. Great for impulse buys (might require reading glasses for some of us, but not the reader).

In the longer term (4 to 8 years) I expect to see three changes:

1. Growth in the number of people listening to audio books.
2. Growth in people comfortable reading e-books, perhaps more on their iPhone than their iPads, in the way Japanese commuters read keitai shousetsu (mobile phone novels).
3. New formats of books, much shorter, or sold one chapter at a time (perhaps similar to the way Charles Dickens initially published his books weekly or monthly and later compiled them into books).

Net, I expect people to spend people to spend fewer hours reading in 8 years than they do now, regardless of format.

Comments

[Praz]

Great post here Ray and very timely given I'm getting in to the E-book business so this is a very timley post for me (and one I agree on almost all counts).

I do think the number of people comfortable with reading e-books will grow a lot quicker than people anticipate overall.

Early to say, but HOW we write, read, publish and distribute books will under-go huge transformations in the next few years. It happened to the music industry, the DVD industry is dying as Online DVD shops take over and the book industry transform with the launch of iPad and subsequent other "tablets".

Agree on the new format of books and love the Charles Dickens analogy.

Cheers,

Praz