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'Digital is here'

12 November 2012

'Thematically this email is a microcosm of publishing now and tomorrow. Mega-mergers, new devices, Amazon growth (and losses) and established players seeking to re-adjust for the digital age through innovation and restructure. The Penguin Random House story suggests that the phoney war is now over, digital is here, it is driving our thoughts and strategies, and will come to dominate this content led business as it has other content sectors.


The next 12 months are likely to be among the most tumultuous this sector has ever witnessed. Barnes & Noble, Microsoft, Apple, Kobo and Google need to find a way to break Amazon's e-book market share, while the growth in tablet devices indicates that publishers are going to have to redouble their efforts to make both immersive reading and non-immersive reading attractive for those billions of users who do not have e-ink readers, but who will want to interact with content that used to come in books on their tablet devices.


Philip Jones in the Bookseller's Futurebook