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I think we're still on the very, very thin edge of the wedge here. pBook sales still swamp eBook sales so the economic arguments for independent electronic only publishing are still a little shaky. But I doubt anyone here thinks that will still be the case 5 years from now, and maybe not even 2 years from now. The way that eReaders have been dropping in price lately, not to mention the opening up of the tablet computer market, is changing the landscape very quickly. Would any of you have predicted last Christmas that a $139 Kindle would be available by this summer?
I'm not sure anyone can really predict what the impact of this is going to be on the marketplace or on society. These technology changes have a habit of coming with a bunch of surprises. Who would have dreamed that the iPod would bring about podcasting? Have you ever wondered how many person-listening-hours that commercial broadcast radio has lost to podcasting?
My guess is that any "reasonable" prediction on the impact of this stuff on the publishing world is going to turn out, in hindsight, to be pathetically conservative. I'll check back in 2015, and see how many of the big publishing houses are still afloat.
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