In an article from the Guardian website, Michelle Pauli talks about this years Frankfurt Book Fair and particularly about a survey of top book industry professionals. According to the survey almost a quarter of the participants believe that the good old paper book will still be with us in 50 years…and so they should.
Here’s an extract with results from the survey;
Almost a quarter of the 1,324 industry professionals who took part in the survey predicted that the high street bookseller would no longer exist in 2057, while only 11% thought that the printed book would be obsolete. However, nearly as many – 10.5% – also thought that the electronic reader would be superseded. The respondents, of whom nearly half were at senior director level or above, were not asked to look into their crystal balls to predict what might replace the book and e-reader, but 44% identified the use of e-books as a key area of growth for the industry. In an increasingly globalised world, 27% saw books in translation as a growth area, and nearly a third saw China as the future dominating market in the publishing industry.
One of the other points made was how the Frankfurt Book Fair is no longer just about books but about content. Director of the book fair, Juergen Boos suggests, “The book is just one of many transmitters of contents and the ‘content’ of the product in which we trade is not just a cultural, but also a political commodity,”.
Extracts taken from;
Short shelflife for booksellers, industry figures claim by Michelle Pauli
Guardian Unlimited, October 10, 2007