Question
When will publishers decide to stop printing books?
Answer
The right cutoff point is when printed books become collectors' fads, like LPs today. The fad market will likely be less than 1% of the size of the current market.
I think this will happen by approximately 2022 in the US Market, and by 2030 or so worldwide.
For the US, the limiting factor will be the retiring baby boomers, who now have a lot of time to read, and a significant number of them simply won't want to change their ways. To put it crudely, the market will have to wait for them to die. Until they do, there's a paper-book market to be harvested.
The other factor that is going to slow things down is that the digitization technology is far clumsier than it is for music. In music, there was really no good reason, besides sentiment, to prefer older media. That's why we've seen 3/4 significant medium shifts (cylinders, LPs, 8-tracks, tapes, CDs, MP3).
Books are fundamentally harder. The low-strain vs. color tradeoff is real. I don't like reading on the iPad, but OTOH, I don't like the lack of color on my Kindle either.
There is also a small segment where the tactile properties of paper actually matter, like comic books.
Also, for calibration, it generally takes at least a decade for a medium to die. There is STILL a residual market for 35mm film that is hanging on, believe it or not (outside of the special movie-making market).
I think this will happen by approximately 2022 in the US Market, and by 2030 or so worldwide.
For the US, the limiting factor will be the retiring baby boomers, who now have a lot of time to read, and a significant number of them simply won't want to change their ways. To put it crudely, the market will have to wait for them to die. Until they do, there's a paper-book market to be harvested.
The other factor that is going to slow things down is that the digitization technology is far clumsier than it is for music. In music, there was really no good reason, besides sentiment, to prefer older media. That's why we've seen 3/4 significant medium shifts (cylinders, LPs, 8-tracks, tapes, CDs, MP3).
Books are fundamentally harder. The low-strain vs. color tradeoff is real. I don't like reading on the iPad, but OTOH, I don't like the lack of color on my Kindle either.
There is also a small segment where the tactile properties of paper actually matter, like comic books.
Also, for calibration, it generally takes at least a decade for a medium to die. There is STILL a residual market for 35mm film that is hanging on, believe it or not (outside of the special movie-making market).