Quote:
Originally Posted by eric11210
My prediction (for whatever it's worth): the bookstores will show off a handful of the very best sellers in print form and offer to sell ebooks for the rest of the titles. I also think they may start installing machines that can build a book instantly using PoD technology so that people who prefer real paper will be able to buy a book in print on the spot.
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Actually, they started researching that system years ago, and have actually come up with a quick POD book printer that can generate a paperback in 5 minutes, and it's done using a kiosk system. I don't know what happened to it, as there was a lot of hype over it at first (mostly for printing out of print books), which quickly died down to nothing. But either way, I don't see print books falling into the minority in the ways that some are predicting. As stated before, that would require a fundamental shift in the social and habitual norm, and I don't see that happening for at least another generation.
Sure, we'll see a greater uptake in ebooks for a while still, but then stall for a few years once the niche is saturated. It'll only resume again and move upwards towards totally replacing print books as older, more traditional readers either make the jump to ebooks, or the younger generation becomes the majority buyers. And again, I'm not dissing ebooks. I'm merely taking a more realistic look at the market. Just look at netbooks. They were flying off the shelves in the early days, and now the market has stagnated. Will it grow again? Yes, but much slower. Ebooks will do the same. They'll continue to grow for a while longer, stagnate, and then move up again.
It's normal market cycles. There's the big rush of acceptance from early adopters, the pause when that market is exhausted, and then the slow but methodical march into mainstream usage.