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"Prediction is hard, especially about the future".
(No prizes as to who said that!)
Now that ebooks have exploded, its easy to say that publishers should have foreseen that, but really, did anyone foresee the course of ebook expansion? As Shatzkin pointed out, ebook expansion was driven by the introduction of innovative hardware , and publishers don't make hardware.
( With Audiobooks,, the publishers weren't involved in the creation of hardware,AFAIK.)
The publishers did what they could , which was to continue to create content and to license it to the tech companies for distribution. Now they may have to directly distribute it themselves, thanks to the vagaries of the market- a development that they did not foresee or want .
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