The Changing Economics of the Book Industry

A timely and telling evaluation here of the state of play in the book industry. Retail sales of e-books are declining - the technology has not become as ubiquitous and popular as many assumed. As Diane Coyle observes "it’s always wrong to assume that a new technology will completely replace an old technology, and hard to tell a priori which will settle down to be the majority version in use."

Lots of good context about changing consumer preferences and innovative business models in publishing. Overall, UK publishing had a record breaking year in 2016 with sales up 7% to £4.8 billion.