Benedict Evans has written an excellent piece for PaidContent on the state of the E-Book marketplace compared to print. Read it while sitting down. be sure to look at the graph showing n almost collapse in print sales compared to E-Books. Benedict makes three key points:
Market data and industry anecdote point to an explosion in ebook sales in the US and UK in 2011. Leading consumer publishers are seeing ebook sales at 10-15 percent of total sales in January and February, driven by Christmas device sales.
So far ebooks had been strongest in niches: romance, business books and frequent travellers. They have now moved into the mass market: few genres will be untouched.
This shift brings with it a very different market structure, with Waterstones likely to shrink dramatically, technology companies with little stake in the health of publishing taking major roles and publishers faced with disintermediation and forced to build direct consumer relationships for the first time in their history.
This is relevant to newsagents as the disruption because faced already in the book space will play out, to a certain extent, in other print products … albeit to a different timetable.
The relevance today is that we should be building shops which are flexible and can easily chance as our needs change. We should also take more control over magazine distribution – by flexing our collecting power. we own the retail outlets after all.