Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
I apologise if I've been rude or unfair. I didn't intend to be.
IMO, I haven't moved the goalposts at all.
I first mentioned 'within' 10 years for 50% and 20 years for 80%. I'm reasonably happy with those estimates. Note that these are upper bounds.
You were the one who erroneously suggested that I thought that we'd still be seeing the majority of books sales as paper books in ten years time (when my previous statements stated that I expected the majority of books sold to be ebooks no later than in ten years time).
Let me try again to state my position for you, since it seems to have become confused.
I'm talking about the UK book market. The US book market may see the change happen more quickly, other parts of the world more slowly, I can't be certain, but I'd guessing for the UK.
I'm talking about the volume of books sold, not the value of books sold. I would expect the value proportion of ebooks sold to lag the volume proportion because in general I expect paper books to be more expensive.
I expect that within ten years we'll see 50% of the books sold in the UK being ebooks.
I expect that within twenty years we'll see 80% of the books sold in the UK being ebooks.
I didn't previously give lower bounds, but I have since said that I don't expect to see the 50% mark reached within the next five years. Note that this provides a limit that my previous statement didn't have.
Summary:
I expect that in between five to ten years time, we'll see 50% of the books sold in the UK being ebooks.
I expect that in between 10 and twenty years time, we'll see 80% of the books sold in the UK being ebooks.
I'll now add an extra guess. I wouldn't expect to see more than 95% of the books in the UK sold as eBook within the next 25 years.
HTH.
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In that case I apologise and retract my comments.