According to the early findings from The Digital Census 2011, The Bookseller’s annual survey of digital trends and opinions, more than half of people working in the industry think that by 2020, sales of eBooks will overtake those of their printed counterparts.
Responses are still being collected, but provisional figures from the survey show around a quarter (25.8%) forecast that a ‘tipping point’ of sales from print to digital will occur between 2015 and 2019, with smaller numbers predicting it will happen in 2012 (4.9%), 2013 (8.6%) or 2014 (16.4%). The balance of sales will tip sooner in the US but later in other regions of the world, survey respondents suggested.
The last year has seen many publishers reporting sharp rises in their digital sales, but The Bookseller’s survey indicates the revolution is only just beginning. It found that digital formats currently account for less than 3% of total sales at nearly a third (32.5%) of all publishers—but a similar proportion (32.1%) suggest they will account for more than 50% of their sales by 2020. More than nine in ten (92.7%) publishers now sell content digitally, with e-books and apps the two most common formats.
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