If I were a betting man, I\u2019d wager quite a bit on these predictions. However, if you\u2019re currently in the book sales racket \u2013 from publisher to used bookstore owner, I\u2019d be very worried. The time to pivot is now and it\u2019s clearly already happening. While I will miss the creak of the Village Bookshop\u2019s old church floor, the calm of Crescent City books, and the crankiness of the Provincetown Bookshop, the time has come to move on.<\/p>\n
2013 \u2013 EBook sales surpass all other book sales, even used books. EMagazines begin cutting into paper magazine sales.<\/p>\n
2014 \u2013 Publishers begin \u201csubsidized\u201d e-reader trials. Newspapers, magazines, and book publishers will attempt to create hardware lockins for their wares. They will fail.<\/p>\n
2015 \u2013 The death of the Mom and Pops. Smaller book stores will use the real estate to sell coffee and Wi-Fi. Collectable bookstores will still exist in the margins.<\/p>\n
2016 \u2013 Lifestyle magazines as well as most popular Conde Nast titles will go tablet-only.<\/p>\n
2018 \u2013 The last Barnes & Noble store converts to a cafe and digital access point.<\/p>\n
2019 \u2013 B&N and Amazon\u2019s publishing arms \u2013 including self-pub \u2013 will dwarf all other publishing.<\/p>\n
2019 \u2013 The great culling of the publishers. Smaller houses may survive but not many of them. The giants like Random House and Penguin will calve their smaller houses into e-only ventures. The last of the \u201cpublisher subsidized\u201d tablet devices will falter.<\/p>\n
2020 \u2013 Nearly every middle school to college student will have an e-reader. Textbooks will slowly disappear.<\/p>\n
2023 \u2013 Epaper will make ereaders as thin as a few sheets of paper.<\/p>\n
2025 \u2013 The transition is complete even in most of the developing world. The book is, at best, an artifact and at worst a nuisance. Book collections won\u2019t disappear \u2013 hold-outs will exist and a subset of readers will still print books \u2013 but generally all publishing will exist digitally.<\/p>\n